Ronny Kinuthia


The New Unicorn Breed
An investigation on the anatomy of the
contemporary unicorn and its natural habitat



Video installation, Sculpture, 3D-rendering
The unicorn has lingered in the collective consciousness of humankind since around 2000 BC. Throughout history, this mythical creature has undergone various interpretations, shapes, names, and abilities. It has been perceived as anything from a real animal, like a pelican, to a mystical being that can only be lured by young female virgins. It is also a constellation on the celestial equator, visible to observers located between +75° and -90° in latitude.

In Silicon Valley and the startup sphere, the unicorn symbolizes an aspirational status—a startup that achieves a valuation of one billion dollars. These modern unicorns are multilayered and opaque in structure, often built on infrastructures that are not easily understood, but very much exist.


Limb of Acquisition (Devouring)

Acquisition reveals capital. Through so called funding rounds large capital is collected in exchange for shares. The capital is used to buy other companies to make them part of itself. Thus the unicorn grows through devouring others. Traces of this growth can be seen through the limb of acquisition. 

Image: Timeline of acquired companies 2013 - 2023

Limb of Acquisition to Product
(Devour to Growth)

From devour to implication. A process that turns into a tale of becoming. Through the newly acquired it reinvents itself into a new being in hopes for 
more play-presses. 

Image: Acquired company to service within the app

Limb of Opaque
(By Nature Wants to Hide)


The fundamental sediment which makes up the unicorn is one that exist in the opaque. While often highlighting the contrary there is here a strict contradiction where fundamental structure Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is closed and thereby condones opacity.  Yet the whole structure is built on the idea of transparency. The music file format Vorbis ogg, the move away from P2P structure.   
 
Image: The Infrastructure codecs and softwares that make the substance. 


 

Limb of Digestion
(The Hub)



At the center is the gut where the digestion and filtering of systems occur. Within this spaces there are many entities that live. Data broker, music aggregator, AI bot surveillance.
Image:
Official and unofficial services within Spotify

The startup unicorn Spotify is one that exist in the deep sea internet cables and the CDN networks. It you take a map on the earth and the hubs of those servers and network in which google cloud exists within, then you have a vague approximation of the Spotify unicorn anatomy. 

This lines that then form on earth could represent the bone as its the fundaments of infrastructure that Spotify and other networked based startups desperately depend on in order to function. Through this long mileages of cables and network a shape is made that only changes form through material for the hubs it creates at network crossings and the times it reaches the servers. 

The structure and shape begins to resemble the look of the Unicorn in the sky, the constellation. They both share the quality of being node-based. This quality is something that echoes through the unicorns existence, from how Google visualises Spotify when moving it’s infrastructure, to how the designers through wireframes operate when designing it, or to how its developers view there tasks in nodes. The sculpture becomes a lens where the tube and wire translates the network and the lenticular sheets distinguish how the operation is an opaque system one closed and not accessible. Further the suction cups is reference to what holds this structure, the interests of the investors and the major record labels which again is core to the probability of its existence.