'THE GENERATIVE ART THAT WEARS THE COLORS OF THE SOUL'.
Exclusive interview by Kate Vass with generative artist - Manolo Gamboa Naon, aka - Manoloide.
‘Last flowers’, 2021 by Manoloide - unique Hahnemühle Photo Rag Fine Art Print, Image 2x2 meters, unframed
"Not everyone can do what a genius can," the famous art historian Ernst Gombrich spoke, "and not everyone can produce a masterpiece even after long training." I am not a big fan of Gombrich, but I should note that his quote fits best when I refer to the generative artist from Argentina– Manolo Gamboa Naon, aka Manoloide.
In his first and last interview, published in English in 2018, Artnome refers to his artworks as 'the result of the entire contents of twentieth-century art and design being put into a blender.' I could not agree more. Looking at Manolo's creations, I feel that he combines the contemporary genius of generative art with ancient primary forms of visuals and the power of colour.
I am thankful to get to know Manolo and work with him since 2018. Since that time, there have been many developments, and I felt the importance to reach out to interview him once again after three years and speak with him about his life, Processing, and artworks. In this interview, I wish to feature a selection of 53 images cataloguing the past three years of Manolo's practice, exported between 100 and 1000 variations and filtered by the artist as his top-notch.
1 ‘Field of Poppies’, 1907, Gustav Klimt I 2 ‘Cllm’, 2019, Manoloide I 3 Fragment from 'The Poppy Fields near ‘Argenteuil', 1873, by Claude Monet
The cultural scene initially rejected generative art for many years. Nevertheless, we know many non-computer related talents without whom we cannot imagine art history nowadays. Artists such as François Morellet, Hans Haack, Sol LeWitt or Ellsworth Kelly. The last was one of the forerunners of generative art; Kelly used to create paintings using random operations to assign colours to the grid and works on paper, which was then cut into strips or squares and assembled using random operations to determine the placement. Sol LeWitt created generative art in the form of systems expressed in natural language and geometric permutation systems. Many more predecessors of conceptual art led to the acceptance of generative art, therefore of computer art. That is probably linked to the increased accessibility of technology and its common use in everyday life in the last two decades. As generative art is commonly described as 'algorithmic art' (made using a predetermined system), it often has an element of Randomness. It is often accused of lacking the value of artwork by questioning its creator. I tend to disagree with this accusation. As Manolo's example shows, many have access to the open-source code and know Processing, but only he creates such masterpieces, diverse in composition and colour. Regardless of the tool that the artist uses, whether it's a digital paintbrush or code, only his genius has the power to move simple forms into a composition that none of us even have ever imagined.
Manolo was always interested in Randomness. By integrating chance into a piece of code art, one receives a unique artwork each time one runs the script. I remember his quote from the first interview: "when I come and create, the most beautiful parts of the work are born from the errors. After a certain point, I believe that the maturity of my style was formed by making small errors because I was discovering as I went along. From these errors, I take an idea, and it stays. I learn how to manipulate these errors. The error is central to the work of generative artists apart from, obviously, the rules. The rules become a text that converts into an image. It is impossible to have what you imagine become what you see. The beginning is errors, errors, errors, errors. They are beautiful errors."
The philosophy of generative art is so deep; to me, it replicates life itself. From our mistakes, we learn, and mistakes/errors make our lives more stimulating. From choices and decisions – we let the universe write its code. Technically, the whole civilization as we know it - is one giant artwork generated by the universe.
1. Mark Rothko, ‘Untitled (Multiform)’, 1948, oil on canvas. Copyright ARS, NY Kate & Christopher Rothko 2. ‘Inside’, 2019 by Manoloide
While preparing for this interview, I could not help but notice by looking through Manolo's works for the last three years - it unintentionally inflames the viewer to dig into his 'connaissance' of the history of art, each image is unique in colour, style, and composition may remind you of some famous paintings. I, e.g., see the resemblance of some masterpieces by Klimt, Monet, Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Eyvind Earle's and many more great artists. The more you browse through Manolo's artworks, the more it captures your attention and challenges you to know the whole spectre of art genres, as you can find images so unlike in style: from Impressionists and Abstract to Kinetic and Illustrative Design. On the other hand, generative art always tends to draw inspiration from modern art, particularly pop art, where geometric patterns are standard. The basic Geometry, Algorithm, and Randomness are the three main components of the regular generative artist. Manolo's use of geometric shapes and patterns are worth noting. But, to me, the colours that he mixes in the extraordinary chaos – this is a true revolution! Manolo brings colour as the fourth element to generative art practice, which the majority usually ignore.
The richness of colours impresses and captures. In the work cllm, you see Manolo dilutes the contours and constructs a colourful rhythm with red and purple drops. Pure impressionism, and at the same time - a step to abstraction art. Looking at the other work tratab, 2019 - the constructivism of colour, exposure of architecture of simple geometric shapes combined in complex dance provokes you to feel a strong spiritual connection to science and art. Doesn't it? Imagine all his works in monochrome colours. Would you feel the same way looking at it? The power of colour is inevitable. Colour moves your reactions often on a deeply personal level. A particular colour can calm your nerves, agitate, motivate and empower you to take action, and carry healing energy when you look at it. As Wassily Kandinsky proclaimed, "Color provokes a psychic vibration. Colour hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body." Manolo proves this statement well with his colourful art.
‘Magical Forests’, Eyvind Earle, ‘Monta’, 2020 by Manoloide, ‘Sanctuary’, E.Earle
Another artwork that strikes my attention is Monta, 2019. Unlike many others, the choice of colour pallet inspired by famous illustrator Eyvind Earle stands along with many of Earle's famous works. The bizarre choice of some colours, taken to the extreme of their saturation, makes Manolo's landscapes in 'Monta' pleasant to the eye. It has been said that Leonardo da Vinci preferred to meditate in a lavender or purple-coloured light. Same colours that we see in Monta, I also find very meditative.
To conclude, Manolo’s style is simply unique, synthesis is the main balance of his technique.
Before starting the interview, I'd like to thank Sofia Crespo, another talented generative artist. She has helped with some translation from my far-from-perfect Spanish during our long zoom conversations with her and Manolo. I also want to thank Manolo for agreeing to publish this material. I hope you will enjoy the interview, and you will enjoy browsing through 53 works that have been selected in the gallery attached.
KV: The First and last interview in English was concluded by Artnome back in 2018, and since then we have had many changes. You have participated at various art exhibitions and moved to Germany and then again back to Argentina. Could you tell us more how these 3 years have been for you? The interesting turn was when you also took a sabbatical year from the art scene last year. What was the main reason and how do you feel about this?
MG: The last 3 years I've been living many different experiences and circumstances, although much of my life happened on a more mental level and on my computer. I went from living with one backpack to two and a suitcase, changed home more than 20 times, building new routines is something I enjoy. In 2019 I went to Germany to work in one of my favorite studios. I felt stimulated and supported, this allowed me to focus a lot on my work and life in Berlin flowed, with the months I started to understand some English, but I also enjoyed a lot living in silence. In 2020 I came back to Argentina for a few months with the idea of concentrating on my projects, then COVID happened and I felt a bit locked in myself, over stimulated by the internet. I stopped being on the computer all day, I didn't code for several months, I closed my social networks, turned off my cell phone, and suddenly I was full of emptiness which I was filling with new routines playing outside the screens; I enjoyed reading, going back to study more freely as I did before, playing the piano, drawing and doing physical activity. It was a necessary process to get out of a depression, reconnect with my body, take distance from my work and what was happening.
KV: We share here around 53 images that you have selected as 'best works 'for the last 3 years, and we see some changes in the compositions and some or the images seem like a dreamland. What do you feel code gives you?
MG: At the beginning of this year I started to catalogue and order my work, I had never taken a moment to analyze the projects I had worked on. I made a selection of the 53 series that most attracted me visually, exported between 100 and 1000 variations and filtered them until I was left with one per series. I use the code as a tool, but also as a language where I can represent very diverse ideas: sometimes I am only interested in solving a geometry problem, exploring how colours blend, give the sensation of a material, a pattern on the floor, how to represent a tree.. the most beautiful thing is when the idea is close to a feeling.
KV: Many of your works, particularly from 2018 contain circles. By looking at the Mantel or ppraparr , one can dive into the image and circle around with the imagination, surrounded by powerful colour palettes that strike me. Does it happen intuitively, that you have been creating circles, and more circles around, can I compare it with a meditative process of 'monks' meditation?
1. ‘pparappar’, 2019 2. ‘Mantel Blue 2’, fine art print 2018
MG: In 2018 I was really in love with my work and my process, I spent almost all day focused on that, a constant exploration. I feel that those deep connections are very similar to meditation; after a lot of time of routine and exercise, you can stop thinking, the ideas flow and you don't pause to question or analyze them. Mantel is an automatic piece, I had no thoughts when I made it. I love circles, many of the series are just circles, they can really represent very different ideas, the most magical thing is when they are camouflaged.
KV: What is about writing or mixing the code that fascinates you the most? It's known fact that the Processing is not new per se, and that this code is open for public, nevertheless your work is so strong and easily recognisable among millions of other artists using same processing technique. Do you sketch the ideas or what is your approach when you create the work? Do you imagine the image before you start or do you write the natural code (Pseudocode) ?
MG: I think the code gives me precise boundaries, I can only write and see what happens. Then you imagine, write, observe, this is constantly repeated. I prefer to have a fuzzy idea or a trigger, the ideas in my mind are pretty, but when I have a very specific or complex one, I tend to get disappointed in the process. I can just write and see what happens, in general I draw some random dots, a big spot and try to control it, or I draw the figures shape by shape. I start from something simple, see what happens and add another idea. After several iterations I usually come up with images of the dialogue with the process that evokes something in me.
KV: When we look at the landscape image monta, 2020 or arbolito2, 2020 or : I wonder which forest/field or place served as inspiration to you?
‘arbolito’, 2020 by Manoloide
MG: I never lived in the forest or near the mountains - it is something that at some point I would like to experience, but I grew up surrounded by trees and plants, "arbolito2" reminds me of the trees I grew up with in my mother's house. "Monta" is an image that was in my head for several years, as much of my work is a set of references, the structure is a copy of Eyvind Earle's work, an artist who involves me in his moods. But above all, my mental image is of the forests of Japan, a place I've never been to, but it is very close to how I imagine it. Something similar happens with "cllmt", for a long time I wanted to depict Gustav Klimt's flower landscapes, the feelings are not the same as what I want, but they are close to it. I don't usually take vacations or visit places, so my references are usually images made by others (photographs, paintings, books). Trees/plants/flowers, on the other hand, are usually my strongest connection to nature, I take walks, I really enjoy seeing and contemplating them, they are beautiful systems, totally exposed.
KV: Recently you have participated at Feral File exhibition, how did you like the experience and what did you find challenging?
Feral File project (screen shot)
MG: I felt a great motivation to participate in Feral File with artists that I have lived with on the internet for many years. To me, Casey Reas built a place (Processing) and I really enjoy his work, he is a sensitive and fine artist. It was a difficult process to get back to coding after months, I'm usually very self demanding, I'm never satisfied and even less when I know it's going to be exhibited; it was difficult, I spent many weeks working on "uneasy dream", fighting with my head, trying to find something.. it's the published project I worked on the longest, I started to live at night, I stopped sleeping. I like to play with my mind, but it wasn't a good way, I was angry with myself, I think some of those things are visible, so now I'm happy with it.
KV: As far as I know you also play piano and write/read poetry and draw by hand. Which process do you enjoy the most and do you get inspired by practicing piano ,for example, to create a work with Processing?
MG: I always like to study and do multiple things, they may not have an evident connection but I feel that all the things I learn end up merging in my mind. Something happens with Processing, it's the only tool with which I managed to move myself or feel something interesting enough. I spent many hours making music, drawing, playing with software, but I never found such an intense way of satisfaction. But keeping several different projects and processes and jumping from one to another always helped me to stay active.
KV: How would do you feel about NFTs and its trend?
MG: It is difficult for me to have a clear idea, many contradictions arise as with cryptocurrencies, they're the things in which I am immersed but I really do not understand nor they interest me. I wish I could not believe in contracts, nor the idea of property, nor money, nor individual development, I say, it is something that touches too many models that exceed me. I was happy for many friends and artists, the visibility of digital art, I feel that there are many more people exploring this. I'm not usually interested in what happens when something is trending but I'm curious to see how it evolves in the coming years.
KV: What is your biggest challenge and what is the work of your dreams that you still wish to create?
MG: I usually live in dreams that vary constantly so my ideas change, but it is an adaptation to the context. I would like to eliminate the words, the ideas. Fall in love with a language again and explore it freely in my mind. Learn to enjoy slow processes without expecting so much for results.
KV: I would like to thank once again, Manolo and share his Instagram account, so you can check out his remarkable works: https://www.instagram.com/3.42010163/
If you have any questions request, please contact us via our email: info@katevassgalerie.com. If you have not already, I encourage you sign up for our blog and twitter: @katevassgalerie @keyvass
Selection of works from 2018:
Selection of works from 2019:
Selection of works from 2020:
We do not accept any further enquiries for minting NFTs of the works feat. In the current interview, please register your interest via email: info@katevassgalerie.com if you are interested in Manolo’s work & we place you on a waiting list:) and will notify you once we have some new works available. thank you !
“Machine Pollocks” by Desmond Paul Henry: British Computer Art Pioneer of the 1960s
Generative art has a history as long and fascinating as computing itself. It produces elegant and compelling works that extend the very same principles and goals that analog artists have pursued from the inception of modern art. Geometry, abstraction, and chance are important themes not just for generative art, but for much of the important art of the 20th century.
We would like to present here some early machine-made drawings by British artist Desmond Paul Henry, considered to be probably the first artist to have an exhibition of "computer" generated art, made actually by an electromechanical machine.
Born on July 5th in 1921, Desmond Paul Henry was a prophetic exponent of art and technology collaboration. He was a trailblazer in anticipating the use of computers today in the eld of interactive graphic manipulation. His 1960's analogue computer-derived drawing machines preceded digital computer-derived graphics and as such represent an important artistic and technological link between two distinct ages of the twentieth century: the earlier Mechanical/Industrial Age and the later Electronic/Digital Age.
#824, 1963
Signed and dated on front by the artist
“Automat und Mensch” exhibition history of generative art at Kate Vass Galerie, 2019 May-October. From left: Desmond Paul Henry,…
In 1961 Henry won first place in a contest sponsored in part by well-known British artist L.S. Lowery. The prize was a one-man show at The Reid Gallery in August, 1962, which Henry titled Ideographs. In the show, Henry included drawings produced by his first drawing machine from 1961 adapted from a wartime bombsight computer. These artworks were later also included in the seminal computer art exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA London in 1968. In 2019 his unique works were also exhibited at Kate Vass Galerie in a group show “Automat und Mensch”.
Henry's electromechanical drawing machines of the 1960s were not 'store and program' machines. Not only did they rely in part on a mechanics of chance but they also allowed the artist to interact with the machine at any point during the drawing production process. As a result, the machines' abstract, repetitive, curvilinear eects could not be reproduced and were innitely varied.
«For all his love of technology and science, Henry was never inspired to explore the graphic potential of digital technology, even though he would have had access to the Ferranti Mark 1 at Manchester University, which in 1952 Christopher Strachey used to produce one of the very first digital art pieces, in the form of love letters. Henry, on the other hand, expressed no interest in the opaque interface of the digital computer. What he relished above all was observing the whole chain of cause and effect that the mechanical components of the bombsight computer afforded him.” says his youngest daughter Elaine.
«The mechanical analogue computer, was a work of art in itself, involving a most beautiful arrangement of gears, belts, cams, differentials and so on—it still retained in its working a visual attractiveness which has now vanished in the modern electronic counterpart.» Desmond Paul Henry.
The machine-drawings, numbering some 800 in all, consist of an infinitely varied combination of repetitive single lines forming a host of abstract curves, similar in feel to contemporary work by Thomas Ruff and Jean-Pierre Hébert. Henry’s machine-effects struck him as “weird” organic forms, which he compared to “natural form mathematics” as he found illustrated in the works of Theodore Cook (1914), D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1917) and Matila Ghyka (1927). The unique combination of control and chance involved in producing his machines’ graphic effects inspired Henry to call them “Machine Pollocks” .
Here is a link to the full article ‘The Contribution of Desmond Paul Henry (1921–2004) to Twentieth-Century Computer Art’by Elaine O’Hanrahan from Leonardo, April 2018, The MIT Press:
https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01326
*Examples of Henry’s machine-generated art are featured in the “emerging national collection” of computer-generated art at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and in the extensive Anne and Michael Spalter computer arts collection.
Few impressive works are still available and ‘new’ ones can be now pre-viewed and pre-reserved HERE.
Selection of Works coming soon, available for preview HERE.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KJETIL GOLID!
Bazaar by Kjetil Golid
Edition 1 of 1, available as unique NFT on SuperRare and as unique fine art print signed by the artist
Simple shapes create ambiguous perspectives and repetitious patterns are short-lived. \\\\\\\\
Bazaar is part of a two-piece set and is generated by a custom cellular automata from rule 171-132-110.
Kjetil’s latest drop on SuperRare include this unique two-piece set composed by works ‘Aula’ and ‘Bazaar’. Simple shapes create ambiguous perspectives and repetitious patterns are short-lived. Aula is generated by a custom cellular automata from rule 176-25-104 while Bazaar from rule 171-132-110.
Kate Vass Galerie has been proudly featuring Kjetil Golid artworks within the ‘Game of Life - Emergence in Generative Art’ exhibition, hosted here.
The show was is in part a tribute to the mathematician John Horton Conway who recently passed away from COVID-19. Among Conway’s many gifts to the world was his famous “Game of Life” popularized in a 1970 article in Scientific American. The game uses four simple rules to create a seemingly infinite amount of complex behavior and visual patterns. Conway’s work on cellular automata along with others like Stephen Wolfram has been inspirational for many of this generation’s most talented Generative Artists. The exhibition explored how complex visual systems can emerge from relatively simple algorithms to create art than can reframe the way we see the world.
Today we want to wish a very happy birthday to dear artist Kjetil Golid!
Kjetil is a generative artist and system developer from Norway, with a keen interest in algorithms and data structures.
It was this interest that kickstarted his endeavours within generative art, originally using visualization as a tool for understanding various algorithms. These visualization exercises gradually shifted their focus from being pure, "correct" implementations of well-known algorithms, into a more esoteric realm where the underlying structures mostly serve the purpose of making intricate and aesthetic visuals.
Today, Kjetil's projects are often initiated by the question "What would it look like if ..."; an unfinished idea of a home-grown algorithm together with a visual translation, where it is unclear how the end result will look.
Kjetil wants to share his mindset that programming is a wonderful platform for creative expression and, as such, large parts of his code is open for anyone to explore and manipulate. In addition to making static pieces, he also makes interactive tools for generating visuals without the prerequisite of knowing how to code. https://generated.space/
Aula by Kjetil Golid
Edition 1 of 1, available as unique NFT on SuperRare and as unique fine art print signed by the artist
Simple shapes create ambiguous perspectives and repetitious patterns are short-lived. \\\\\\\\
Aula is part of a two-piece set and is generated by a custom cellular automata from rule 176-25-104.
Golid has been developing a series of artworks inspired by one-dimensional cellular automata and noise fields. His process results in bold works with basket weave-like patterns that resemble graphic pixelated flags or banners. These works recall computing origins in the Jacquard loom, a device that employed punch cards to simplify the intricate weaving process of 18th-century textiles. The artist explains his process:
‘It's based on this traditional variant where pixels can be alive or dead on a 2D grid. I thought, ‘What if you don't change the rules, but instead, you change the visualization?’ Instead of using black and white pixels, I use lines that can go in different directions. While a 'standard' one-dimensional cellular automata gets a pixel value from its three northern neighbors, this one is a hexagonal grid with lines in three directions. The existence of a specific line is dependent on the existence of its three 'preceding' lines. The lines split up the whole area into separate spaces, and I proceed to fill these spaces with colors. The colors are selected using a one-dimensional cellular automata, with the color of each space being based on the left and upper neighboring spaces.
It turned out quite nice. It seems so random, but it is actually based on strict rules. The only seed for this randomness is the number you give it. So whenever you give it the number 120, you get exactly the same output. But it seems so random because it turns so complex so fast. The noise part comes from another piece I made, more of a tool really, that can distort any image. ‘
The exhibition and Kjetil Golid artworks were featured in The New York Times.
In February 2021the artist has been dropping the successful "Archetype” piece on artblocks.io and for the ones who became the tokens’ owners we offered the great opportunity to get a unique print 25 x 25 cm signed by the artist to combine with the NFTs.
The max number of iterations/editions for this project have been minted. You can still visit the project on OpenSea to see what is available on the secondary market!
’Archetype explores the use of repetition as a counterweight to unruly, random structures. As each single component look chaotic alone, the repetition brings along a sense of intentionality, ultimately resulting in a complex, yet satisfying expression.’
Selected ‘Archetypes’ have been additionally showcased on the ZKM Cube as part of their exhibition CryptoArt It’s Not About Money alongside CryptoPunks, Cryptokitties and many other relevant NFT artworks.
Last but not least we want to congratulate Kjetil for being one of the artists featured in the recent Sotheby’s June auction Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale with one of his Archetype work! You can explore the (sold) lot here.
HAPPY B-DAY CORNELIA SOLLFRANK!
Cornelia Sollfrank
Photo courtesy of the artist.
We dedicate our blog today, to highlight the special occasion - a birthday of a dear artist and fantastic person - Cornelia Sollfrank! Cornelia is a conceptual artist, interdisciplinary researcher and educator. She studied Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Hamburg and the Academy of Fine Art in Munich; she worked in the media industry as product manager (Philips Media) and completed a PhD at the University of Dundee (UK) in the field of art and copyright: "Performing the Paradoxes of Intellectual Property."
As a pioneer of Internet art, Cornelia Sollfrank built up a reputation with two central projects: the net.art generator – a web-based art-producing ‘machine,’ and Female Extension – her famous hack of the first competition for Internet art.
Since the mid 90s, she has investigated the worldwide communication networks and transferred artistic strategies of the classical avant-gardes into the digital medium. Her special interest lies in experimenting with new models of authorship, in continuing various forms of artistic appropriation and in deconstructing myths around geniality and originality. In the core of this strand of works is the concept of her net.art generator (since 1998) – a computer programme, which re-combines and collages material from the Internet. This project has directly influenced her practice-led research into the field of intellectual property. Related art projects are copyright © 2004 cornelia sollfrank (2004), Legal Perspective (2004), I DON'T KNOW – A conversation between Cornelia Sollfrank and Andy Warhol (2006) exhibited by Kate Vass Galerie at CADAF Miami 2019, MuseumShop (2007) and DÉJÁVU® (2009).
Kate Vass Galerie has been proudly showcasing Sollfrank’s anonymous-warhol_flowers, unique works computer-generated with the help of the net.art generator, within the extensive Automat und Mensch exhibition on the history of AI and generative art; additionally, a unique piece from the series is currently on view at the Telephone Paintings show in Montreal.
anonymous-warhol_flowers@Apr_22_17.59.13_2019 by Cornelia Sollfrank
currently on view within the Telephone Paintings show at Anteism Books, Montreal.
anonymous-warhol_flowers by Cornelia Sollfrank
Automat und Mensch exhibition at Kate Vass Galerie, Zürich.
Against the backdrop of gender-specific and institution-critical approaches, a further thematic priority of Sollfrank’s work lies in the creation of forms of organisation (collective, network, collaboration) and communication structures as artistic practices. She was founding member of the collectives frauen-und-technik (Women and Technology, 1992) and -Innen (1994) and initiated and run the world-wide cyberfeminist network Old Boys Network (1997-2001), including the co-organisation of three international conferences on Cyberfeminism (1997, 1999, and 2001).
Sollfrank also published the readers first Cyberfeminist International (1988) and next Cyberfeminist International (1999). In her project Female Extension (1997) – the hack of the first competition on net.art run by a museum – Sollfrank flooded the museum with 300 virtual, female net.artists.
“CYBERFEMINISMUS
I consider FEMALE EXTENSION as a typical example for CYBERFEMINISM. The term CYBERFEMINISM describes a group of artists, activists and theorists that started to meet the male dominance in cyberspace in an unusual fashion in the last couple of years. We use the potential of the term CYBERFEMINISM that arises from its contradictory and undefined nature. These contradictions didn't develop out of the fusion of CYBER and FEMINISM, but are already inherent in the two terms. The fusion of these two terms creates additional confusion. An important strategy of CYBERFEMINISM is the use of irony. Irony is about humor and seriousness. Only with irony can the contradictory views can be joined. All these diverse approaches are necessary and important and create a productive tension. That's why CYBERFEMINISM is not just a rhetorical strategy, but also a political method.
A new concept of politics is needed. The methods of earlier decades don't work anymore. An expanded concept of politics has to contain the possibility of both paradox and utopia. It has to be in opposition, able to argue from different perspectives at the same time, and at the same time make meaningful political action possible. A concept of politics that simulates politics, while being politically effective at the same time. With this concept of politics, once again, we approach art.” - Cornelia Sollfrank.
In 1999/2000 Sollfrank produced a series of works on the topic of Women Hackers. Since 2006, the artist re-enacts early feminist performance art in her series revisiting feminist art. With her conceptual music piece Improved Tele-vision (2001/2011) she immodestly inscribed herself in the genealogy of avant-garde artists such as Arnold Schönberg, Nam June Paik and Dieter Roth.
Recurring subjects in her artistic and academic work in and about digital cultures are artistic infrastructures, new forms of (political) self-organization, authorship and intellectual property, techno-feminist practice and theory. Her experiments with the basic principles of aesthetic modernism implied conflicts with its institutional and legal framework and led to her academic research in the field of digital commons.
Sollfrank’s work has been recently featured, among others, in the We=Link: Sideways exhibition at Chronus Art Center (CAC),November 21, 2020 – May 23, 2021in Shanghai, BLDG.18, No. 50 Moganshan RD, Curated by ZHANG Ga.
Here is the link to access the online show: http://we-link.chronusartcenter.org/
The artist keeps also lecturing, teaching and writing books. One of the latest release is the new book ‘Aesthetics of the Commons’ - available as softcover or open access PDF: https://diaphanes.net/titel/aesthetics-of-the-commons-6419.
‘What do a feminist server, an art space located in a public park in North London, a ‘pirate’ library of high cultural value yet dubious legal status, and an art school that emphasizes collectivity have in common? They all demonstrate that art can play an important role in imagining and producing a real quite different from what is currently hegemonic; that art in the post-digital has the possibility to not only conceive or proclaim ideas in theory, but also to realize them materially. The underlying social imaginaries ascribe a new role to art in society and they envision an idea of culture beyond the individual and its possessions.
Aesthetics of the Commons examines a series of artistic and cultural projects—drawn from what can loosely be called the (post)digital—that take up this challenge in different ways. What unites them, however, is that they all have a ‘double character.’ They are art in the sense that they place themselves in relation to (Western) cultural and art systems, developing discursive and aesthetic positions, but, at the same time, they are ‘operational’ in that they create recursive environments and freely available resources whose uses exceed these systems. The first aspect raises questions about the kind of aesthetics that are being embodied, the second creates a relation to the larger concept of the ‘commons.’ In Aesthetics of the Commons, the commons are understood not as a fixed set of principles that need to be adhered to in order to fit a definition, but instead as a ‘thinking tool’—in other words, the book’s interest lies in what can be made visible by applying the framework of the commons as a heuristic device.’
Text credit & copyright: Cornelia Sollfrank + Kate Vass Galerie.
GENERATIVE ART AND FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY MERGE AT MARIE CLAIRE ARABIA TO PROMOTE SUSTAINABILITY, SOCIAL IMPACT, AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION
Written by Kate Vass, 28th April 2021
Louis Viutton, Marie Claire Arabia, 2021. Photographed by Jacques Burga, feat.Sofia Crespo. Image is a courtesy of Kate Vass Galerie. Available as NFT on Opensea.io
Chanel, Marie Claire Arabia, 2021. Photographed by Jacques Burga, feat.Sofia Crespo. Image is a courtesy of Kate Vass Galerie. Available as NFT upon request
Mainstream media has been reporting daily on crypto-currencies and the emerging revolution of decentralized finance, and other trends in the fintech world.
The crypto-hype also left its traces in the art world. When people were willing to pay a five-digit amount for a virtual currency, why wouldn't they be willing to pay the same sum for a crypto punk? It didn't take long for the smiling crypto kitties and crypto punks to conquer the hearts of speculators and blockchain enthusiasts, with some characters reaching five to six-digit price tags.
For the last months, we have seen NFTs, so-called Non-Fungible Tokens, getting popularized; after many were sold for several million dollars, it became interesting for the broader audience and attracted new industries music, film, gaming and sport. In an era with little or no in-game fan revenue because of pandemic health-safety protocols, concepts such as NFTs and blockchain are viewed by leagues, teams, owners and athletes as opportunities to make more money.
While every day brings another media story about a new non-fungible NFT record sale in various sectors, the luxury fashion world has remained relatively quiet, not considering 'sneakers' auction sales at Sotheby’s. However, fashion and art have a long history; it was just a matter of time when one of the most significant industry reacts and bursts with NFTs. Vogue Business has confirmed with multiple industry sources that some luxury fashion houses are close to releasing NFTs.
At the same time, NFTs also may be a threat to the environment. One may assume that buying virtual clothes, as NFTs, would be saving resources, but the minting of assets on the blockchain requires vast amounts of energy. In December 2020, artist Memo Atken drew attention to the high energy costs of blockchain technology with his article “The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of CryptoArt”. Developers worldwide are now working to find an alternative solution that is less harmful to the climate.
Hermes, Marie Claire Arabia, 2021. Photographed by Jacques Burga, feat. ‘Tiger’ by Sofia Crespo. Image is a courtesy of Kate Vass Galerie. Available as NFT upon request
However, artists like Jaques Burga and Sofia Crespo took the initiative to outpace the high fashion and collaborated to bring awareness to the sustainability issues in the fashion industry. The outcome of this duet creative shoot was published by Marie Claire Arabia April issue. Initiated by Kate Vass Galerie and Roger M. Benites from The Blockchain Center NYC, the main goal of this issue was to implement digital art, virtual reality, and blockchain tech into the fashion and photography industry. Believing that by merging technology and digital art, we have the power to help reach the sustainability target for the fashion industry and help avoid catastrophic climate change. We understand the cultural influence the fashion industry plays in our everyday lives and its global scale reach, which is why we believe we are at a pivotal stage to merge these two industries for a global cause.
In its initial phase, blocktech helps create a new marketplace for artists and creators. Still, in its latter step, it will create a protocol or benchmark that would only interact and negotiate with brands and influencers that help promote sustainability, social impact, and technological innovation. The beauty of blocktech is that not only does it increase transparency and provenance, but it also helps validate and trace which brands and influencers are genuinely committing to the protocol using state-of-the-art technology.
The collaboration of two completely different artists, an established fashion photographer and generative artist Sofia Crespo, who is working with a considerable interest in biology-inspired technologies, founds its creative outcome in the fashion photoshoot feat. brands like: Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, YSL and was published in Marie Claire April issue. The fashion model is posing on the background of generative art by Sofia Crespo and interacting with 3D insect specimens created resulting from a collaboration with Feileacan McCormick, Sofia’s studio partner at Entangled Others Studio.
Chanel, Marie Claire Arabia, 2021. Photographed by Jacques Burga, feat. AI specimen generated by Sofia Crespo. Image is a courtesy of Kate Vass Galerie. AI specimen are available on https://superrare.co/soficrespo91/creations
Sofia Crespo’s interview with Marie Claire, as well as the photoshoot with Jacques Burga, can be viewed here.
Artist’s Bios:
Sofia Crespo is an artist working with a huge interest in biology-inspired technologies. One of her main focuses is how organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself and evolve, this implying the idea that technologies are a biased product of the organic organic life that created them and not a wholly separated object. Crespo looks at the similarities between AI image formation techniques and how humans express themselves creatively and cognitively recognize their world. Her work brings into question the potential of AI in artistic practice and its ability to reshape our understandings of creativity. On the side, she is also hugely concerned with the dynamic change in the role of the artists working with machine learning techniques.
https://superrare.co/soficrespo91/creations
Jacques Burga is a photographer and entrepreneur born in Lima, Peru and lives in Paris, France but travels around the world. In addition to his work for prestigious publications and companies such as Moda Operandi, The Webster, and Loreal, his work goes beyond photography towards organizing Charitable causes. During this unfortunate pandemic, Jacques wrote a letter published Vogue Mexico to inspire resilience and created a Charity organization named "Charity Fair" to help UNICEF PERU, where he raised $10 000 entirely donated to the institution. He has had also joined Fashion Trust Arabia on their latest Charity project. Jacques has been and is passionate about Beauty. For him, creating with passion by working hard is another of his life philosophies. “There is nothing to replace work”.
https://opensea.io/assets/limited-edition-1-jacques-burga-x-sofia-crespo
Archetype by Kjetil Golid - new drop on artblocks.io and unique prints available!
Saturday February 27th at 12pm CST / 6pm GMT Kjetil Golid is dropping his piece "Archetype" on artblocks.io!
For the ones who will become the tokens’ owners we offer the great opportunity to get a unique print 25 x 25 cm signed by the artist to combine with your NFT!
Order your print here!
T&C apply:
Please provide the proof of the ownership and link to your specific NFT using the form at the check out;
Kate Vass Galerie and the Artist reserve the right to verify the ownership before issuing the print;
Estimated delivery time is approx. 4 to 6 weeks;
The price listed includes shipping;
Offer valid until April 29th, 2021.
Below are the examples of some compositions only. Any of the token on artblocks.io can be accompanied by unique print. Prints are unique and issued only to the token owners.
‘ULTIMATE CRYPTOPUNKS' buy one if you dare.
As NFTs art goes viral, and only the lazy one hasn’t heard about #cryptopunks selling at very high prices. I decided to enlighten the story upon many requests about unique 24 punks — the ‘ones & only’ ever physically produced. Don’t rush to judge those punks and tag them as “physical” only, as we all know the devil hides in detail. There is much more to it, and I am enlightening more about them in this blog.
24 CryptoPunks were exhibited in their first and, so far, the last gallery show, { PERFECT & PRICELESS } - VALUE SYSTEMS ON THE BLOCKCHAIN at the Kate Vass Galerie back in 2018. They were hanging alongside some of the early protagonists of blockchain art and significant artists such as Kevin Abosch and Ai Weiwei.
When first asked about participating in the exhibition, Matt and John were hesitant. The CryptoPunks are a digital work containing both the characters' image and the blockchain means for ownership and auction. The famous duo wasn't sure how to exhibit them in a physical gallery while protecting their digital nature and uniqueness.
The solution was finally found - to attach the digital ownership of a CryptoPunk to a physical print using something called a “Paper Wallet.” This means they sealed a long passphrase inside a physical envelope, then sealed the back with a custom wax seal to protect the contents. Every seal has the face of the punk, corresponding to the unique work. The long passphrase inside the envelope is the key to accessing digital ownership of this punk on the Ethereum blockchain. As long as the wax seal on the envelope is unbroken, you can be sure that the digital version of the art is still attached to the physical print in your possession. You, as a collector, are then free to buy or sell the physical print and envelope as a proxy for the digital edition.
That said, there were only 12 punks produced as a first release. On 16th November 2018, a group of 9 punks had been hanging on the wall at the gallery’s big opening; among the images, the framed envelope was exhibited next to the image to signify the hidden digital component's importance. As John and Matt claimed, those two should be displayed together, and both are art.
This connection between digital ownership and physical representation seems to have a lot of potentials. Overall, it looks like these unique ‘ultimate’ punks could provide a digital rarity and ownership solution, both online and offline.
All were sold out at the opening of the show. Planned exhibition program for a couple of months ensured the other 12 punks came out as a second release and were exhibited at the Finissage at the end of February 2019. The second release was pre-sold before it was displayed, and all the punks found their smart collector before they even make it to the wall in the gallery.
As an owner of the pioneering gallery, which stands at the roots of connecting art & tech and a loyal supporter of transparency on the art market, I feel the necessity for releasing the list of all 24 physical punks and giving more information about each one.
The creativity and forward-thinking of the masterminds of John and Matt are overwhelming. The duo has chosen all the characters carefully and provided an excellent diverse selection of all, considering gender/racial equality.
Please see the lists: 1st release 12 punks, and 2nd release 12 punks accordingly.
Before we detail 24 unique punks, I would like to refer again to the 10,000 uniquely generated digital characters. ‘No two are exactly alike, and each one of them can be officially owned by a single person on the Ethereum blockchain. Originally, they could be claimed for free by anybody with an Ethereum wallet, but all 10,000 were quickly claimed. Now they must be purchased from someone via the marketplace that's also embedded in the blockchain. Via this market, you can buy, bid on, and offer punks for sale. The zoomable image above is connected to the Ethereum network and has been coloured to show you the status of every Punk in the market. Punks with a blue background have been claimed. Punks with a red background are available for sale by their owner. Finally, punks with a purple background have an active bid on them. You can click to zoom in on a Punk and reveal its details,’ explain Larva Labs on their website.
Of the 10,000 total digital punks, most are humans, but there are three particular types: Zombie (88), Ape (24) and Alien (9). There are also a wide variety of attributes with varying degrees of rarity; you can see the full list with all the details here: https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks/attributes
In comparison to 10,000 – 24 punks are:
10,000 digital vs Physical
Male 6039 (414 available) 14 Male
Female 3840 (363 available) 10 Female
There is a website https://dappradar.com where you can estimate any NFT punk's value just by using the ID number in the search field. I inserted the numbers of all 24 ‘ultimate’ punks to give me the min. estimate if that would be only digital ones. The following results came up, and below are the top 10 positions: (prices are subject to change due to the volatility of ETH and demand/supply of the marketplace, priced at 15.20 CET, 21 Feb 2021)
I think this platform gives a reasonable estimate and is almost entirely accurate to actual sales on the market. However, in this case, we should also add additional criteria to estimate better ‘ultimate’ punks.
1. Rarity/types. If we look at the recent sale of 3 punks and the rarity/price ratio, this is what we have:
· Alien – 9 in total, one available at the average price 605 ETH (
· Ape - 24 in total and two available at the average price 530 ETH.
· Zombie – 88 in total, four available at the average price 106 ETH
· ‘Ultimate’ punks – 24 in total and has 2 in 1 component, so if we take ‘Apes’ as a reference – the price shall be min. Around 530 ETH?
2. Uniqueness. All 24 punks have a unique factor that none of 10,000 has, as they come with the exceptional fine art print signed by the artist. This factor, in the traditional art world, adds a coefficient of a minimum of x10 times.
3. The scarcity. 10,000/24 is enormous proportion, and literally, one work relates to another, so we can say- two works in one: physical and potentially digital (once you unfold the envelope to access the key). Another part that we see female punks are more scarce than male ones. Let’s try to break the stereotype that the male ones should sell for more. Let’s not be sexists and be rational when it comes to valuation. 10/24 are female punks. 2 female punks have 4-3 unique features (hair, cigarette, lips, eyes colour etc.), so feel free to make an obvious choice.
Furthermore, in its original incarnation, the punk subculture originated out of working-class angst and the frustrations many youths felt about economic inequality and the bourgeois hypocrisy and neglect of working people and their struggles. It was primarily concerned with mutual aid, egalitarianism, humanitarianism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-consumerism, anti-corporatism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, gender equality, racial equality, health rights, civil rights, animal rights and more. So gender/racial equality plays a significant role when you acquire one punk.
4. Provenance. This is probably one of the most important one. You receive 150% of a great provenance for both physical & digital.
5. Pioneers. You can relate to the history of how cryptopunks inspired crypto art and more exhibitions of such kind where we challenged the question of the connection between digital ownership and physical representation. ‘Ultimate’ punks provide a solution for digital rarity and ownership both online and offline.
If I combine all 5 points above and give the roughest conservative valuation of using the example of the most affordable punk from the above ranking list, that would be the following: 37 000 USD x 10 x 1.5 x 2 = 1 110 000 USD.
I am not suggesting that we should evaluate those 'ultimate' punks this exact way. It is more an open conversation, which of the above criteria we shall apply and which coefficient is the right one. But at the end of the day, the price can be anything, once there is a demand. We know the supply is scarce.
Therefore, when I have a request from collectors who wish to acquire one from the secondary market, and they ask me for advice on how much they shall bid for it, my answer is: “give your best offer they can't refuse.” 99% of the current collectors don’t want and/or don’t plan on selling, so you have to convince them and, we all know that everything has its price.”
Alternatively, knowing how the ‘ultimate’ punks look like now, you can collect the digital ‘similar’ characters available on the marketplace.
I hope this article will help bring additional light to the current situation and answer most of the questions I receive. I wish you all good successful purchases of digital ones, and if anyone is interested after reading this blog to dare to offer to buy one of the 'ultimate' punk, please do your best bid, ladies and gents.
Best, Kate
Blockchain art? reserved for the cool kids only
“Rather than money issued by a nation and administrated by central banks, art is a networked, decentralized, widespread system of value.” (Hito Steyerl)
Kate Vass Galerie exhibiting Cryptopunks, Rob Myers and Kevin Abosch at CADAF NYC, 2019.
Winklevoss twins & Larva Labs in front of the Cryptopunk acquired by brothers.
In 2018, we were the only art gallery dealing with blockchain art, exhibiting this movement's protagonists like Kevin ABOSCH Larva Labs Rob Myers and many more at the very first blockchain exhibition Perfect & Priceless - values of systems. I am happy to see our collectors who followed the gallery's artists and bought at the right time are now successful investors.
For the last few weeks, in the art market, we have seen a tremendous shift towards NFTs and everyone wants to own a pioneer's works, but there are no so many. With the Christie's auction sale this week of the NFT art and 1.2mio USD sale of digital crypto punk, there is no doubt that the market has embraced NFTs as fine art.
CryptoPunks set of nine at the Kate Vass Galerie in Zurich. Photo courtesy of the gallery
In 2019 we have exhibited unique physical punks at CADAF in NY, where we had Winklevoss twins buying one to their collection. Same year, another project by Larva Labs have been exhibited at Kate Vass Galerie - Autoglyths. Autoglyphs are the first “on-chain” generative art on the Ethereum blockchain. There were only 4 physical works and the digital ones were sold out within 1.5 hours.
“Blockchain Aesthetics” by Rob Myers in “Perfect and Priceless” at Kate Vass Galerie, Zurich, 2018
Another talented pioneer blockchain artist Rob Myers, has been working with blockchain since 2014 and have created fascinating conceptual art works. Myers from New York is visualizing crypto currency transactions in his continuing series Blockchain Aesthetics while referencing concept art from the 1970s. In order to transmit crypto from one wallet to another wallet (peer to peer), a hashrate is being generated and compressed through a mathematical encryption method. The hashrates are always the same length independently from the size of information they contain. The artist renders Bitcoin transactions as rows of coloured squares or circles. Each byte of the 32-byte transaction is rendered as a square or a circle of a 256-colour palette. The transactions are being displayed on a monitor as colourful abstract moving images with a narrative context. Although the imagery reminds us of 4096 Colours by Gerhard Richter or the spot paintings by Damien Hirst, they have a different connotation. There were only four physical works ever produced and all of them exhibited at KVG and Cadaf the following year.
I am a Coin, Kevin Abosch
A common appetite for an art investment among Millenial art collectors and new principles in token economics have inspired world-renowned Irish artist Kevin Abosch to turn himself into cryptocurrency back in 2018. "We come into the world like newly minted coins - perfect and priceless. Yet we are constantly being ascribed a value." Abosch explains. He created 100 physical artworks and a limited edition of 10 million virtual artworks entitled IAMA Coin. The material works are stamped using the artist's own blood, with the contract address on the Ethereum blockchain corresponding to the creation of the 10 million virtual works. The virtual works are standard ERC-20 tokens, and token owners are free to share these artworks and even divide them into smaller pieces before sharing. We consider Kevin the only real "NFT artist" because his NFTs in 2018 were the actual art. Meaning there were no connected media- the actual unique TOKEN is art. Back in 2018-03-15 l 2018-03-27, he has created both YLAMBO & MDAV ('MAGEN DAVID). Interestingly, none of those was sold except YLAMBO inspired the Yellow Lambo neon sculpture, which was exhibited at Christie's London and then privately sold to Skype COO Michael Jackson for $400k.
Magen David by Kevin Abosch, 2018
Think how valuable the original YLAMBO & MDAV are?! It is definitely exciting to think of the value of things, but what's given is that people are now actively interested in crypto art. We see some that spend a lot of money on art and other things related to blockchain technology. It will be hard to break the record of neon sculpture, or 'Forever Rose' (1st NFT sold for $1 Mio) or recent sale of digital punk for $1.2 Mio. But who knows, maybe a picture of the Ethereum token or token itself will be sold for a record amount soon?
I came across this article https://www.krypto-magazin.de/perfect-priceless-wertesysteme-auf-der-blockchain/ and it gives a good overview of how things started. You may be surprised, but digital art can be scarce, and the good one is even rarer. So, whoever is interested in joining an exciting journey of collecting 'right' art-feel free to connect.
For any enquiries of physical works, please contact us.
Alexander Reben: GENERATE YOUR OWN ART - A NEW WAY OF COLLECTING AND EXPERIENCING DIGITAL ART
February marks as the last month of our current online exhibition ‘The Game of Life - Emergence in Generative Art’ in which we pay tribute to mathematician John Horton Conway. As a special finissage month we are dedicating these last weeks to one of the four participating generative artists - Alexander Reben. We would like to direct your attention to the conceptually unique way of experiencing and collecting art that he has introduced: Generate Your Own Art (GYOA). Alex has created a dedicated gallery which we invite you to explore here.
Curator’s Forward:
"If an artist creates an algorithm that can generate endless variations of an image at the push of a button, are the resulting images the artwork or is it the algorithm itself? What if it is not the artist pushing the button? What does it even mean to own a digital art work?
In CiAo Alexander Reben has designed a system that celebrates the near unlimited potential of digital art, along with its uncertainties of authorship and ownership. He invites you to “roll the dice” generating unlimited variations of images based on his algorithms until you have arrived at one that is just right for you. In addition to this act of collaboration, Reben has made the code freely available to you, or anyone else, to recreate the image by pasting the code into any popular modern web browser's address bar, and in so doing makes the code an integral part of the artwork itself. From issues of exclusivity to dealing with the impermanence technology, CiAo makes us rethink what it means to own something digital at a time when property is increasingly moving in that direction. But worry not, should you need something official, tangible and permanent to feel ownership, Alex has you covered. Certificates of authenticity and prints are available for sale at the push of a button." Jason Bailey, Artnome
Preview of the new GYOA gallery by Alex Reben
https://www.qr2a.xyz/gallery/
Each artwork can be accessed in a web browser and the whole experience is interactive: by clicking on the dice button the viewer keeps getting different variations of the work until the preferred one linked to a specific seed number. In this way you can Generate Your Own Art and have control over it. The final artwork can then be acquired via the cart button.
While generative and AI art is not new and many artists have open sourced the code to their creations, one may ask how is this sort of work collectable? Traditional art collectors tend to prefer unique physical artworks, while a new type of collector, such as those in the crypto NFT space, collect non-tangible and shareable works. This new breed of collector enjoys digital assets, mass online sharing of files, and new way of acquiring and authenticating art. Nevertheless, both still enjoy the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the concept of provable ownership of the artworks that they wish to add to their collection. Alexander Reben is the first artist bridging the gap between the digital and tangible art experience which is easy to access, archive, display and collect.
The certificate of authenticity (COA) is an integral part of the physical artwork itself - as an aesthetic object, and contains the code needed to generate the artwork, stored as both a QR code and text as an archival print. The innovation is in how the generative works are written in a specific type of code which is supported by major web browsers. Currently, the code can be copied from the QR code or plain text contained on the paper COA into a browser address bar and run by hitting enter, this can be done with or without an internet connection since the entirety of the code needed to generate the artwork is contained in that text. The code text can also be saved as a .htm file and run by opening that file. In this way, the collector has control over the work and nothing else is needed, but the code itself and a web browser. Since the paper COA acts as the storage medium, the work does not need to be stored on systems such as IPFS, USB thumb drives, DVDs, hard drives or other mediums which may be gone or obsolete in the future. In comparison to blockchain art available to collectors through various platforms, the risk of losing the token, IPFS failure or bankruptcy of the platform or blockchain change in the future, the collector has the most secure way of having the digital work accessible and stored the physical COA, which certifies both the digital and physical ownership and has more probability to last 100 years in comparison to a the token minted on one of the NFT platforms. Furthermore, even though others can see the code, generate the artwork and save or print the results, the physical COA confers ownership of the work.
The COA which comes with the work will be delivered as an archival paper print with a QR code and plaintext code to access the work, which is signed by the artist. A United States bank note is attached with its serial number notated, making counterfeiting the COA nearly impossible. The COA also contains a cryptographic hash so that the authenticity of the artwork can be verified by a unique password known by the artist. While someone can change the code to create a different output, they would not be able to claim it as a new artwork by the artist because they would not be able to generate a valid cryptographic hash. The bank note plus the cryptographic hash ensure that the COA can be verified as authentic and unique. A blockchain contract of the transaction can be made upon request (on a platform such as Verisart), however the paper COA takes priority in determining ownership of the artwork in the case of any conflicts.
If we consider art history and conceptual art since the ‘60s, the idea of art or the concept of it can be as important, if not more important than the physical aesthetic object itself. CiAO explores this idea further by considering computer-code-as-idea, questioning where the nexus of the artwork itself is located. Alexander Reben is an artist and roboticist who explores humanity through the lens of art and technology. Using “art as experiment” his work allows for the viewer to experience the future within metaphorical contexts.
“With a new generation of technology comes a new generation of scientists, scholars, engineers and artists exploring the relationship between people and machines. At the heart of this nexus is Alexander Reben, an MIT-trained roboticist and artist whose work forces us to confront and question our expectations when it comes to ourselves and our creations” - NPR’s Tania Lombrozo.
CiAo as explained by the artist:
High-level computer code is a representational language of mathematical logic from which seemingly infinite complexity can arise. Stemming from the most basic logic of 1 and 0, on and off, true and false, code’s purpose is to abstract fundamental digital operations into a human-readable and understandable form by leveraging the conventions of language and mathematics. The complexity which arises out of simple rules weaved together creates beauty from this conceptual yet constrained instruction set, much as how nature makes grand structures from numerous discrete units within the bounds of physics.
CiAo (code in, art out) is a series of artworks which explore the magnificent complexity of code arising from simple rules, by not only exhibiting the resultant rendering, but also by including the usually concealed generative code itself as part of the artwork itself. In this role it functions as a part of the concept, as an aesthetic object, a durable analog archival medium and in the role of certificate of authenticity as proof of ownership. These works also explore questions surrounding digital artworks such as: ownership, the embedded computing power in the world, modern copyright and authorship, sharing and cryptographic authenticness, the archival (or conversely, disposable) nature of digital and intangible works, editions within generations of outputs and artistic control of aesthetic output.
View new GYOA gallery HERE.
CURATORS' TALK VIDEO: JASON BAILEY AND ALEX REBEN IN CONVERSATION WITH KATE VASS
For the ones who missed it, we are happy to release today the video of our Curators’ talk from last December: Jason Bailey and Alex Reben in conversation with Kate Vass as a part of the ongoing exhibition 'Game of Life - Emergence in Generative Art'. We’ve been discussing exciting topics around generative art, what is John Conway’s Game of Life theory and how this was of inspiration for the artists - and much more.
We hope you will enjoy it and should you have any question please do not hesitate to reach out on Twitter or via email!
Herbert W. Franke : Border-crosser between Science and Art
We want to offer our English-speaking readers an opportunity to enjoy the most recent interview by Peter Tepe with one of the pioneers of generative art - Herbert W Franke. This article Part 1 was published in Zwischen Wissenschaft & Kunst in April 2020 and only available in German. The second part of this interview will be coming soon, and will be published in English in our next editorial Ed. XII ‘Collecting generative art’
w/k – Zwischen Wissenschaft & Kunst addresses everyone interested in the interfaces between science and art – and especially artists, scientists and curators who deal with this topic professionally.
We hope you enjoy reading this insightful interview from the living legend of generative art Herbert W Franke!
Herbert W. Franke: Border-crosser between Science and Art
April 24, 2020
A conversation with Peter Tepe | Summary
Herbert W. Franke is in many ways a border-crosser between science and art: He is a scientist (a physicist and speleologist), artist (in the visual arts and as an author) and art theorist – a case of particular interest to w/k. Part 1 of the interview focuses on the scientist and the visual artist. Part 2 will follow in the coming months.
Bühnenbild zu H.W. Franke: Kristallplanet (2019). Foto: Marionettentheater Bad Tölz.
PT: Herbert W. Franke, you are a border crosser between science and art. w/k has a special interest in such individuals. Your scientific fields of activity include physics and speleology. In the visual arts, you are a pioneer of algorithmic art, the special nature of which we will explain below. In addition, you have published texts on the subject of "art and science," such as Phänomen Kunst (Heinz Moos Verlag, Munich 1967). At the same time, you have published other books on the theory of art, e.g. Computergraphics - Computer Art (Julius Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, Berlin, New York, 1985). Another important field of your work is Science Fiction literature. You are now 92 years old. In which of the above-mentioned fields are you still active?
HWF: At the age of 92, productivity has naturally diminished somewhat. But I am still active today: I write science fiction stories or program pictures on my PC. Again and again I also give readings, for example always before the performance of the puppet play I wrote, The Crystal Planet.
PT: In order to shed more light on your individual connections between science and art, it would be useful to begin with a brief biographical outline.
HWF:After receiving my doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1950, I would have been very happy to accept a position at the university's Radium Institute, in order to confirm experimentally my theoretical work on the form record of stalactites and the connection with the paleoclimate. Paleoclimate is the term used to describe the climate in the past and how it developed over periods of hundreds of thousands of years. Unfortunately, however, there was no research possibility for me in Austria shortly after the war, because the institutes were not yet equipped with the necessary instruments.
So in 1952 I went to Germany, the land of the economic miracle, and took a position with Siemens & Halske in the advertising department. After I left the company at my own request in 1957, I began my freelance work as a publicist. I not only wrote popular technical articles and books, but also published literary books starting in 1960.
Already during my time at Siemens, I began artistic experiments in the photo lab. In 1959 I was able to realize my first solo exhibition at the Museum of Applied Art in Vienna. In addition to artistic performances, there was also extensive exhibition activity. I not only exhibited my own works, but also curated numerous exhibitions and events on computer art, including a Goethe-Institut exhibition shown in more than two hundred countries. At Ars Electonica I was one of the founding fathers. At the University of Munich I taught Cybernetic Aesthetics from 1973 to 1997, later Computer Graphics - Computer Art. From 1984 to 1998 I also had teaching assignments at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, also on computer art.
H.W. Franke: Jugendzeichnung (1945). Foto: Bildarchiv space press.
PT: How did the connection between science and art in general and visual art in particular develop in your case?
HWF: When I was a physics student in Vienna after the war, I was also active artistically on the side: I photographed landscapes and in caves, but also drew and wrote stories. However, I never thought of becoming an artist. At that time, I was already interested in aesthetics and art theory: I asked myself why we find some images from science beautiful. I saw myself above all as a scientist who always wanted to get to the bottom of things, to understand them.
H.W. Franke: Höhlenfotografie (1975). Foto: Bildarchiv space press.
PT: How did your artistic activities become independent?
Der von H.W. Franke für die Serie Oszillogramm verwendete Analogrechner(1953). Foto: Bildarchiv space press.
HWF: I started writing because during my studies at the end of the 1940s I came into contact with Neue Wege, a respected cultural magazine in post-war Austria. The editor-in-chief, to whom I had sent poems, did not accept them, but asked me if I, as a physicist, would like to write articles for the magazine about new developments and future prospects in science and technology. I gladly accepted the offer, of course. Incidentally, my first science fiction short story also appeared in Neue Wegen in 1953. And even some of my poems were later printed in it!
PT: We will deal with the science fiction author Herbert W. Franke in more detail only in Part II. At this point we are interested in the beginning of your activities in the field of visual arts. In the beginning there was photography, if I am informed correctly.
HWF: That is correct. My photo-artistic activities began, as I said, as early as 1952 during my time at Siemens. There I got the opportunity to experiment in the photo lab.
PT: What kind of photo experiments were they?
HWF: I am talking about generative photo experiments.
PT: What is meant by this?
HWF: In contrast to depictive photography, this is the realisation of abstract pictorial ideas - if you like: visual inventions that show forms and structures that are not already there, but are only created or made visible through special technical means. I experimented with very different methods. In contrast to the light graphic artists of the 1920s, I was interested in images that were created in a systematic way, under defined conditions. Physical phenomena include, for example, oscillations and vibrations as well as deformations under the influence of elasticity, and finally Moiré effects, i.e. superimpositions of line structures. Or take the group of works of analogue graphics: Here I generated images on an oscilloscope with the analogue computer a friend had made, which I then photographed with a moving photo camera with the aperture open.
PT: What happened next?
HWF: At the end of the 1950s, when I had already been working as a photographic artist for several years, I came into contact with the art historian Franz Roh, who admonished me that I "had to take my work seriously" - it could lead into new artistic territory. I also owe the publication of my first book Art and Construction in 1959 to his support. Incidentally, Roh's admonition was also the reason that I soon felt encouraged to call my work art, despite considerable resistance from the established scene.
PT: Can you distinguish between several phases in your artistic development after the beginnings you've described?
HWF: Yes, of course - and they were closely linked to the development of computers after my photographic experiments. For with the advent of mainframe computers, I quickly switched from analog to digital technology. However, these machines were only located in large research laboratories of universities or corporations. In the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn't easy to get access to them for artistic experiments if you didn't have access to such machines through your employment - either in research or in industry. My old contacts to the research laboratories in the Siemens Group also helped me. Incidentally, for my first digital images ever - the series is called Squares - I was allowed to use a mainframe computer at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in 1967. This phase was actually never completed, because again and again I had the opportunity to misuse mainframes for artistic purposes. Possibly the fact that I didn't have access to just one particular mainframe like other pioneers, but was always on the lookout for new computers, was also an advantage. Even back then, I was able to experiment with very different software on different operating systems.
H.W. Franke: Quadrate (1967). Foto: Bildarchiv space press.
PT: What artistic goals were you pursuing in Phase 2?
HWF: Actually, it was always about one major goal that runs like a thread through my artistic activities: namely, to examine machines for their creative potential applications. For me, it wasn't about the picture on the wall. From the very beginning, I was also looking for new ways in design, which I associated with concepts such as dynamics and interaction. For the visual arts, I was looking for something comparable to a musical instrument - and was convinced that the computer would point the way. Thus, as early as 1974, I made a computer film; during this period, I used other photo series created with mainframes to achieve a dynamic effect by superimposing serial motifs.
PT: Now to phase 3.
HWF: It began in 1979: First of all, in that year I had the opportunity to develop a program for one of the first small computers, the TI 99/4 from the company Texas Instruments - similar to the famous Amiga. It was supposed to give people the opportunity to experiment artistically with images. There was also an automatic mode, where the program MONDRIAN, by the way, generated sound effects to the pictures. Of course, the program did not sell. But as far as I know, it is the first interactive and dynamically running artistic program for images and music ever. Still at Texas Instruments (TI), I had to record the algorithms manually as a flow chart. It was then converted into the company's own software by a TI programmer. But in the same year I was able to start programming myself, because at the end of the 1970s the first apple II came on the market, which of course I bought immediately. Not much later, I also bought an apple GS, where GS stands for graphics and sound, before I switched to the DOS world of Microsoft in the mid-1980s. As with the TI 99/4, I was interested in the artistic design of dynamic and interactive graphics programmes on my own PCs - also and especially with regard to the control of dynamic images with music. For the first time, I was able to program myself during this phase - at first I used Basic, a simple programming language that also ran on apple. During this time, I created programmes like GRAMUS (for graphics and music) or Kaskade, a programme for music control. It fascinated me to be able to design the algorithms on the computer, see the graphic result on the screen and then modify it. What I had always dreamed of had become reality - despite all the technical limitations in computing power and graphic implementation possibilities: a machine with which one could realise artistic experiments. With the DOS computers, I switched to Quickbasic, a variant of Basic that had been developed very early on especially for graphic programming. To this day I sit at the PC and programme, but in the meantime I work a lot with the software Mathematica by Stephen Wolfram.
H.W. Franke: Serie Kaskade (1983). Fotos: Bildarchiv space press.
PT: What can be said about phase 4?
HWF: Between 1979 and 1995, I opened up a special subject: My friend Horst Helbig worked in Oberpfaffenhofen at the then German Research and Testing Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (DFVLR), now renamed the German Aerospace Center (DLR), as a programmer for the evaluation of satellite images. At weekends, we were allowed to use the computer system developed by DLR, which filled two rooms, for private experiments. During this time, an extensive collection of images was created. This subset of my algorithmic art, in which I explicitly deal with the visualisation and aesthetics of mathematical formulae and structures, is what I now call Math Art. At that time, Benoit Mandelbrodt's apple men were well-known, but we also examined numerous other mathematical formulae and logical functions for their aesthetic dimension, for example complex numbers. The subject still occupies me today, although I no longer need a mainframe computer for it. At the end of the 1990s, as I mentioned earlier, I got into the programming language Mathematica, which was used to create interactive programmes like Wavelets or Slings. It allowed me to experiment with such mathematical functions at home on my own PC.
This phase also includes my experiments with the cellular automata introduced by Stephen Wolfram, a special topic of game theory for modelling dynamic systems, which are very important today in research into artificial intelligence, for example. I myself used them to investigate the effect of random generators in such models. These world models that change over time are not only scientifically exciting, the visualised simulations also show aesthetically highly interesting results. As a physicist, I am very much moved by the philosophical question of what significance chance has in our world - for example, in relation to whether this world freezes, ends in chaos or runs infinitely - and to what extent we live in a deterministic universe or one that is also controlled by genuine random processes.
PT: Now we come to the last phase 5 for the time being.
HWF: You mean the Z Galaxy. I don't know if the term "phase" is appropriate at all. Z stands for Konrad Zuse, the inventor of the modern computer. I have been building the Z-Galaxy in a virtual world since 2009. The platform is called Active Worlds. The world I create in it is a kind of virtual exhibition site through which you can wander as an avatar. In halls you can see changing motifs of some of my works, but you can also view art by some of my friends.
H.W. Franke: Z-Galaxy (2009). Foto: Bidarchiv space press.
PT: We have thus presented the visual artist Herbert W. Franke quite broadly. It has also become clear that you are - to use the w/k terminology - in all phases a scientifically working artist, i.e. an artist who draws on scientific theories/methods/results.
HWF: I fully agree with this classification.
PT: Now we turn to address you as a physicist. In our questionnaire for border crossers between science and fine arts, it says: "Each border crosser is first asked to briefly present his or her scientific work in a generally understandable way; for example, the physicist who is also an artist explains what he or she does as a physicist." In the course of your development as a physicist, what were the most important areas of work, and what did you do there?
Höhlentour von H.W. Franke in der Weißen Wüste (2006). Foto: space press.
HWF: My dissertation in theoretical physics was on a topic in electron optics, specifically the calculation of electric-magnetic fields used, for example, as lens systems for scientific instruments such as electron microscopes or mass spectrometers. However, the later focus of my scientific work was in speleology. What began as a hobby quickly interested me as a physicist as well: the geological formation of cave spaces and dripstones. How do they form, and how can their age be determined? In the 1950s and 1960s, these were questions that science could not answer unambiguously - and so it appealed to me to look into these processes and answer the questions. In addition to this theoretical work, I participated in numerous scientific expeditions, especially in the European Alps. For example, in 1975, on behalf of the German Research Foundation, I was able to participate in a caving expedition at the University of Jerusalem in Israel. It was one of the earliest projects to clarify the connection between the Central European glaciation periods and the climatic consequences in the desert areas around the Mediterranean. Much later, around the turn of the millennium, I participated in several research trips to the Sahara. There, in a region called the White Desert, we found remains of very old cave structures. They date back to a time about ten thousand years ago, when a humid and fertile climate still prevailed in this region after the last ice age, and thus dripstones could be formed.
PT: As a physicist, have you worked entirely within the framework of the respective state of research achieved or are there also fields of work in which you have found out something new? If so, please explain these innovations.
HWF: I think the special thing about my work is the crossing of boundaries: for example, that the development of a physical method for determining the age of dripstones can provide an important insight on the way to understanding the development of the Earth's climate since the Ice Age. Together with Mebus Geyh, I have also used the new method of determining the age of dripstones, which I presented theoretically for the first time, for geochronology - i.e. not only in research into the formation of caves, but also in another field of research, palaeoclimatology. There, this method has been used to date warm periods in the last ice age and also to determine their end. Another example: Back in 1998, I was the first to write a theoretical paper on the existence of volcanic caves on Mars. When I published it, many of the experts in the field of planetary research were still quite sceptical. But that's exactly what makes border crossers: they look beyond the horizon of their expertise. By the way, in the meantime probes have observed collapse holes on Mars that can only be explained by the existence of such cave systems.
PT: Herbert W. Franke, thank you for the insightful conversation, which we will continue shortly.
Contributing image above the text: H.W. Franke (2017). Photo: space press.
to Youtube channel by Herbert W. Franke
http://www.herbert-w-franke.de
Happy birthday to a pioneer of computer art - Vera Molnar!
Today we want to wish a very happy birthday to pioneer artist Vera Molnar! Born in Hungary in 1924, Vera Molnar is one of the first women artists to use computers in her practice.
Image credits: www.veramolnar.com
‘After studying at the Budapest Academy, she received her diploma in 1947 in Art History and Aesthetics. Her artwork has always been focused on abstract and geometrical paintings.
In 1960, Molnar co-founded the “Groupe de recherche d’art visuel” , or GRAV. This group was a proponent of stripping the content away from the visual image in their medium in order to focus on seeing and perceiving. They were instrumental in the Op-art and Kinetic Art movements of that decade.
According to Molnar, in her eyes, her work has a hypothetical character. In order to systematically process her research series, she invented a “technology”, which she called “Machine Imaginaire”. She sketched a program, and then, step by step, realized a simple, limited series, which was self-contained
In 1968 she discovered the power of the computer to allow an artist to step away from “the social thing” in order to get at the real creative vision. She replaced the illusory computer, the invented machine, by the genuine computer. Her initial work involved transformations of geometric objects, such as a square, by rotating, deforming, erasing all or parts of them, or replacing portions with basic elements of other geometric shapes. She would often repeat the geometric primitives while fracturing or breaking them as she transformed them, ultimately outputting them to a plotter.’
(text credits: COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND COMPUTER ANIMATION: A RETROSPECTIVE OVERVIEW, Chapter 9.2).
In 2019 Kate Vass Galerie has exhibited one of her work as part of the extensive group show Automat und Mensch; The exhibition was, above all, an opportunity to put important work by generative artists spanning the last 70 years into context by showing it in a single location.
Comprehensive catalogues from the exhibition can be found here.
Here a selection of some of our favourites works from Vera Molnar catalogue raisonné, which you can also fully discover on her website: www.veramolnar.com.
Image Credits: www.veramolnar.com
The Lessons of John Conway’s "Game of Life"
In July 2020, Kate Vass Galerie has opened an ongoing online exhibition as a tribute to the mathematician John Conway. The show “Game of Life - emergence in generative art” curated by Jason Bailey, which explores how complex visual systems can emerge from relatively simple algorithms to create art than can reframe the way we see the world. Among Conway’s many gifts to the world was his famous “Game of Life” introduced by Mr Gardner in his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American 50 years ago in October 1970. For this show, we have included four generative artists: Jared S Tarbell, Alexander Reben, Kjetil Golid, and Manolo Gamboa Naon and published exclusive interviews with each of the participant and full essay on Artnome.
On 28th December, The New York Times has published an article by Siobhan Roberts “The Lasting Lessons of John Conway’s Game of Life” dedicated to Dr John Conway. We are very honoured to be featured in this article among the other committed supporters who reflected upon its influence and lessons over time.
Sad, but interesting fact, that Mr Conway, who used to go around saying, ‘I hate Life,’ had to die from Covid-19 half a century after his theory was introduced, to be heard and maybe help us to reflect on the current situation that we experience in 2020.
This year, we have faced the biggest challenges, which are emergent: COVID-19; political and economic turbulences, the volatility of stock markets, an unprecedented drop to negative oil prices and bitcoin appreciation to 27 000 USD; violence towards people of colour; storms and fires due to obvious impact of the climate change. All of these are classic examples of emergent phenomena. Was Conway a fortuneteller or just a genius mathematician who could predict with his metaphoric name for his "Game of Life" theory the inevitable set of rules that we are currently playing, with the highest stakes of life and death? We can only wonder, but the only thing I am certain that those predictions are not random.
I couldn’t agree more with Melanie Mitchell, saying: “In this moment in time, it’s important to emphasize that inherent unpredictability — so well illustrated in even the simple Game of Life — is a feature of life in the real world as well as in the Game of Life. We have to figure out ways to flourish in spite of the inherent unpredictability and uncertainty we constantly live with. As the mathematician, John Allen Paulos so eloquently said, “Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” This is, I think, Life’s most important lesson.”
Written by Kate Vass
Complex 01 by Kjetil Golid, Unique print 25 x 35 cm
NFT on the blockchain available here: https://superrare.co/artwork-v2/complex-01-11669
studio 2, by Kjetil Golid
Unique NFT at SuperRare
Complex 02 by Kjetil Golid, Unique print 25 x 35 cm
Unique NFT on the blockchain available here: https://superrare.co/artwork-v2/complex-02-11670
HAPPY B-DAY KEVIN ABOSCH!
On this day we want to wish happy birthday to great artist Kevin Abosch!
“Self portrait?” (2019-2020) fine art print, series “Nascent Space”
Kevin Abosch (born 1969) is an Irish conceptual artist known for his works in photography, sculpture, installation, AI, blockchain and film. Abosch's work addresses the nature of identity and value by posing ontological questions and responding to sociologic dilemmas. Abosch's work has been exhibited throughout the world, often in civic spaces, including The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, The National Museum of China, The National Gallery of Ireland, Jeu de Paume ( Paris), The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, The Bogotá Museum of Modern Art, ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medien) and Dublin Airport.
In 2018, his Forever Rose work sold for US$1 million worth of cryptocurrency. With the sale, the Forever Rose is the world’s most valuable crypto-artwork ever sold, and marks the historical merging of blockchain technology, fine art, and charitable causes. All proceeds from the sale have been donated to The CoderDojo Foundation, whose mission is to ensure that every child around the world should have the opportunity to learn code and to be creative with technology in a safe and social environment.
Later in 2018, Abosch neon- sculpture of 42 alphanumerics “Yellow Lambo” sold for US$450,000, more than the cost of a new Lamborghini Aventador motor car.
Abosch has been developing many projects, including IAMA Coin and PRICELESS (this one together with Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei), from which we had the pleasure to feature selected works in our exhibition ‘Perfect & Priceless - Value Systems on the Blockchain’ . In 2019 Kate Vass Galerie exhibited his ‘Nail S2’ piece within the extensive show on the history of generative and AI art 'Automat und Mensch’.
The IAMA Coin Project is a blockchain crypto-art project where the artist has created 100 physical artworks and a limited edition of 10 million virtual artworks entitled "IAMA Coin".
The physical works are stamped (using the artist's own blood) with the contract address on the Ethereum blockchain corresponding to the creation of the the 10 million virtual works (ERC-20 tokens).
Kevin Abosch
© 2018 ABOSCH ! I am a coin.
“We come into the world like newly minted coins -- perfect and priceless. Yet we are constantly being ascribed a value. The most unfortunate are deemed "worthless" by those who exploit human currency.
At times life may seem reduced to the transactional. I often have difficulty discerning where I end and the person before I begin, while photographing my various subjects—a sense of oneness staves off the call to market.
If I could only bleed for the blockchain, its ledger, for all to see, would reveal that I am a coin.
This project consists of an edition of 100 physical works whose meaningful existence is predicated by the existence of the virtual works. Through my blood, a blockchain contract-address and ten million divisible crypto-tokens, the very nature of value shall be redefined.”
As per the PRICELESS project, Kevin Abosch and Ai Weiwei ‘have attempted as an exercise, to make the priceless more relatable to those who find it easier to view everything as a commodity.’
‘I have been using blockchain addresses as proxies to distill emotional value for some time now, and with Weiwei we “tokenized” our priceless shared moments together. Some of these moments on the surface might seem banal while others are subtly provocative, but these fleeting moments like :”Sharing Tea” and “Walking In A Carefree Manner Down Schönhauser Allee” or “Talking About The Art Market” are the building blocks of human experience. All moments in life are priceless.
Kevin Abosch & Ai Weiwei (2018)
Image courtesy of the artists.
Each priceless moment is represented by a unique blockchain address which is “inoculated” by a small amount of a virtual artwork (crypto-token) we created called "PRICELESS" (symbol: PRCLS). Only 2 ERC20 tokens were created for the project, but as they are divisible to 18 decimal places, these works of virtual art could potentially be distributed to billions of people. Furthermore, a very limited series of physical prints were made.
One of the two PRICELESS tokens will be unavailable at any price. The remaining token will be divided into 1 million fractions of one token and made available to individual collectors and institutions. These artworks of course may be divided into much smaller artworks as the PRICELESS token is divisible to 18 decimal places. It is not unusual in the art world for large works to be priced higher than similar smaller works so should a larger fraction of PRICELESS have a higher price than a smaller fraction. One of those peculiar ways we value things — Greater size/quantity = Greater value. The question is, if one token is priceless and truly unattainable, then how do we value the other token which is made available?
How and why do we value anything at all?’ - Kevin Abosch.
The artist’s latest projects include Hexadecimal Testimony (2020), Nascent Space (2019-2020)and line work - where he generates a digital line on a computer server that grows at a fluctuating rate (pixels per minute) determined by the processing of input data (images, audio, etc) through a chain of deep-learning algorithms. The artist treats this ritual as necessary to reconfirm his understanding that the emotional value of the input data is immeasurable and can therefore be represented by any segment of the line or the line in its entirety. The segment is synecdochic and serves as final proxy in these works while the underlying photographic image is chosen by the artist to represent the synecdochic relationship between any individual image from the complete dataset upon which each work is based.
//line work //kevin abosch
One day you won’t be able to pull that rabbit out (2019)
Additionally, Kevin Abosch is the creative director for Japanese anime/manga brand CRYPTOSENSHI. Coinciding with the public announcement of the manga (comic book) which will be released Spring 2021, Abosch has created two limited edition digital artworks in the form of NFT(Non-fungible token) on the blockchain.
The two artworks “Impossible” and “Reigai” are both editions of 20 and are available through Kate Vass Galerie both NFT and prints.
As creative director of CRYPTOSENSHI, Abosch is responsible for the development of the characters and artistic direction of the brand’s anime and manga departments.
ABOUT CRYPTOSENSHI
CRYPTOSENSHI (暗号戦士, pronounced “Ango-senshi” in Japanese) are cryptographic warriors that battle in the digital realm while a proxy war takes place in the “real world.”
Abosch explains: “We are living in a world in which truth can be subverted by those leveraging technology to weaponize data — Humans with the help of benevolent AI are in the midst of a war to mitigate the deleterious effects of disinformation. It’s epic, it’s romantic and it’s our future. Cryptosenshi are heroes that empower us to find a truth, even if it’s fleeting.”
FRIEDER NAKE
We would like to wish Frieder Nake a very happy birthday!
Frieder Nake belongs to the founding fathers of (digital) “computer art” (as it was called).
He produced his first works in 1963. He first exhibited his drawings at Galerie Wendelin Niedlich in Stuttgart from 5 to 26 of November, 1965. His early work was influenced by Max Bense’s Information Aesthetics. Until 1969, he went through a succession of increasingly complex programs, using technical support from machine language to PL/I. His main work phases are identified by the collection of programs, compArt ER56 (1963-65), Walk-through-raster (1966), Matrix multiplication (1967/68), Generative aesthetics I (1968/69). He declared not to continue producing computer art in 1971 when he published the note, There should be no computer art in page, the Bulletin of the Computer Arts Society. His reasons were mainly of political origin: He did not see how he could actively contribute to computer art and, at the same time, be a political activist against capitalism. He resumed publishing on computer art in the mid 1980s with the break-down of the radical left. With the start in 1999 of project »compArt: a space for computer art«, Nake returned to his roots as a theoretician, writer, creator, and teacher in the domain of digital art and way beyond. He is head of »compArt: Center of Excellence Digital Art«.
Frieder Nake
Hommage to Paul Klee, 1965
Silkscreen print, 40 Exemplare
Edition of 40 - THIS WORK IS NOT FOR SALE
Frieder Nake has been a full professor of computer science at the University of Bremen, Germany, since 1972. Since 2005, he has also been teaching at the University of the Arts, Bremen. His teaching and research activities are in computer graphics, digital media, computer art, design of interactive systems, computational semiotics, and general theory of computing. Nake was represented at all important international exhibitions on computer art. He has published in all the areas mentioned above, with a preference for computer generated images.
“The drawings were not very exciting. But the »principle« was!“ (Nake 2004/2005).
Source :The compArt database Digital Art (daDA).
We at Kate Vass Galerie had the great honour of being able to feature selected works by the artist as part of our extensive Automat und Mensch exhibition on the history of AI and generative art.
Art and Blockchain platforms
As mentioned in one of our last posts, the future of collecting digital assets is here and now. And it’s exciting!
Kate Vass Galerie is proudly working on linking physical and digital art: the gallery is at the intersection of traditional and crypto art, like a ‘portal’ between these two coexisting worlds. We firmly believe in the great power of new technologies which can help especially during these unprecedented times; when it comes to art and blockchain, for example, we see how this can be an amazing tool to help artists and support new type of collectors while keeping trust and security together with uniqueness and provenance of the works at their best. And art can purchased using cryptocurrency.
Reputable digital art collections are now built taking all the best that blockchain technology has to offer. As said above, using tokens to represent assets on the blockchain offers a number of advantages, such as proving provenance, uniqueness and authenticity plus secure and decentralized storage. If we got your interest and you would like to investigate more, we also recommend the Julius Bär article ‘Three ways blockchain is reshaping the art world’.
Blockchain-based platforms like OpenSea and SuperRare , showcased a considerable increase in the number of artists featured and artworks traded especially during the last year. OpenSea is the world’s largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFT's), including ERC721 and ERC1155 assets. You can buy, sell, and discover exclusive digital assets. SuperRare is a marketplace to collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks. Each artwork is authentically created by an artist in the network, and tokenized as a crypto-collectible digital item that you can own and trade.
KVG is showcasing a curated selection of artists on both platforms, where you can find unique NFTs to collect.
Other well established art-related blockchain platforms include KnownOrigin (an artist-driven platform that makes it easy for digital creators to authenticate, showcase and sell the artwork & collectables they produce) and MakersPlace - Truly unique digital creations, by the World's Most Creative Minds, where we recently launched a special NFT book by Helena Sarin 'GANcommedia Erudita', check it out!
Lately, new ones with different missions emerged: that’s the case of Async Art and Nifty Gateway (this one became immediately famous because of its founders, the billionaires Winkelvoss Twins).
Asynchronous Art is an experimental art movement born out of the question “what does art look like when it can be programmed?” The latest advancement in the art space has been the ability to tokenize and sell art online using Ethereum. Although this has been an amazing first step, it still mimics how the physical world operates. What if art could evolve over time, react to its owners, or pull data from the outside world? It’s time to find out what’s possible when modern art takes full advantage of the digital medium.
Nifty Gateway is the premier marketplace for Nifties, which are digital items you can truly own. Digital Items have existed for a long time, but never like this. It was founded with a very simple mission - to make Nifties accessible to everyone.
Also interesting to call attention to is the brand new media platform Nifties; born out of a digital enthusiast's curiosity and the will to spread knowledge about non-fungible tokens, it aims to be one of the main online destinations for digital collectors interested in premium NFTs. NIFTIES team's goal is to give collectors the tools to build their own collections while they contribute to the rise of many creative minds.
All these platforms were founded to avoid the traditional art market model where the artists have somehow to go through museums or galleries in order to exhibit (and sell) their work and become known by the art world. Now things are different, they can skip intermediaries and showcase and sell their works independently. At the same time, those decentralised platforms (where there are hundreds of artists - and collectors - who can easily decide to stay anonymous) started to realise that curation is actually needed and they started to curate their program. SuperRare and others also have their “corporate collections” where they feature selected artists which are on display on virtual spaces in decentralised lands - you can read more about it in our previous post on THE RISE OF VIRTUAL WORLDS AND DECENTRALISED LANDS ON THE BLOCKCHAIN.
A growing secondary market is also on the rise and recently Artnome raised ~$4,800 for visual artists by auctioning off an important work from its collection to support artists during the pandemic.
We at Kate Vass Galerie are extremely glad to have developed our own online sales platform and we started to tokenise and offer digital artworks for sale on the blockchain already back in 2019: since then, we’ve been witnessing a remarkable growth of active collectors and bids which led to a rise in the prices.
As a matter of fact, all the 10 cryptoworks which were produced by Osinachi for his solo show ‘Existence as Protest’ at our gallery are now sold out on SuperRare, with their price rising from 2ETH to 6ETH each in just 2 months. At the same time, his work is being exhibited physically as prints at our gallery in Zürich and this is exactly also where the gallery’s purpose lies: supporting the artists with a show and presenting them to a wider and different audience of collectors.
Selection of Osinachi cryptoworks which went sold out on SuperRare.
Recently we have made available an exclusive selection of works as NFTs on OpenSea (and prints in our store) by Sofia Crespo .
‘Can we use new technologies to dream up biodiversities that do not exist ?’ - Sofia is a generative artist working with neural networks and machine learning with a huge interest in biology-inspired technologies. One of her main focuses is the way organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself and evolve, this implying the idea that technologies are a biased product of the organic life that created them and not a completely separated object. On the side, she is also hugely concerned with the dynamic change in the role of the artists working with machine learning techniques.
Don’t miss our virtual artist studio visit with Sofia where she is guiding us through a little journey and you’ll get the amazing opportunity to see where & how she produces her work, with a special focus on her latest series ‘Artificial Remnants’ developed together with Entangled Others & ‘{}Chromatophores’ created with engineer Andrew Pouliot.
Sofia Crespo artworks currently available for sale on OpenSea
For us it’s very important to keep linking physical and digital art and bridge the gap between art and technology.
During the last months we've developed and hosted a unique VR show on SomniumSpace: after the successful solo exhibition “Alternatives” of Norwegian digital artist Espen Kluge at Kate Vass Galerie in October 2019, selected Kluge cryptoworks are now featured in a brand-new exhibition in Virtual Reality "giving normal people abnormal experiences". You can experience it on decentralized land of SomniumSpace parcel 1047 at M○CA- Museum of Crypto Art. 10 digital works (NFTs on blockchain) have been acquired from Opensea by the Museum for their collection and the new experience space has been developed just for Espen Kluge art.
The idea of pushing the boundaries of human imagination of how you can exhibit, look at, and experience art came to the reality with technological progress and platforms like Somnium Space, which enables us to curate all of the aspects: architecture, the composition of works, colors as well as audio effects, and create a new type of experience using new technologies.
The Virtual Art Festival took place from May 14 to 17th and Kate Vass Galerie had the pleasure to participate as a speaker!
Last but not least, since this November we have a selection of artworks by female artists available as unique NFTs on Ephimera, the world’s first marketplace focused on the exchange of tokenized photography and video art built on the Ethereum blockchain, which launched during Vancouver Biennale #ArtProject2020.
GANcommedia Erudita — At the intersection of AI and Art with Helena Sarin
We are excited to introduce a special artwork release from renowned AI artist and GAN pioneer Helena Sarin (aka glagolista). This artwork release consists of much more than your typical creation— GANcommedia Erudita is Sarin’s second AI Art book based on her signature #latentDoodles. The first installment, Book of GANesis, was published last year as a limited edition of 75, which immediately sold out. GANcommedia Erudita will have only 10 editions, containing 24 pages of never-before-minted original AI generated artwork including 25 AI generative images and 14 AItalian (AI +italian) puns.
GANcommedia Erudita by Helena Sarin will be available for purchase exclusively through MakersPlace, in partnership with Kate Vass Galerie.
Follow Helena Sarin to be notified once GANcommedia Erudita is available for purchase>>
HELENA SARIN
Helena Sarin is a multidisciplinary visual artist and software engineer born in Russia and based in New Jersey. She has been a pioneering force within the AI-generative art space for the past three years. Within the growing AI-Art movement she’s spearheaded a particular technique called #latentDoodles in which the AI’s learning model is based off of Sarin’s own sketches, doodles and watercolors, resulting in remixed versions of her own creations.
Helena Sarin
Street Ikebana: a Generative Graffiti
Sarin is has been recognized as one of the art world’s most influential AI artists by various publications including Forbes, ArtNet News, Art in America and Interesting Engineer amongst others. Her artwork is has been showcased in collections and exhibitions world wide from Zurich to Dubai, Shanghai to London. Her artwork was recently featured in Oxford University’s AI conferences Man and Machine, Kate Vass Galerie, CADAF Miami 2019 and in the permanent display of the Nvidia AI Gallery. Her AI art was also recently featured in BBC Futures: The A-Z of how artificial intelligence is changing the world under I- for imagination.
Sarin’s artistic origins take place within the analogue space- She’s been passionate about drawing and painting her entire life. As an adult she pursued software engineering as a career, initially designing commercial communication systems at Bell Labs, and later working as an independent consultant, developing computer vision software using deep learning. Sarin continued to create art throughout her career, both for personal pleasure and collector commissions. During this time Sarin explored a number of applied art industries including fashion and food styling.
Helena Sarin
Late Summer Midnight Dreams
At first Sarin had a hard time imagining her two, seemingly opposite, passions ever colliding, but one fateful AI consulting gig would change that forever. This professional encounter with AI would later inspire her to explore Artificial intelligence and machine learning as a creative medium, the rest you could say was history. Fast forward three years and AI is Sarin’s medium of choice.
Sarin’s reputation within the AI art space is one of an innovator and pioneer. Her work is a unique combination of analog and generative, seamlessly taking the GAN medium where it’s never gone before by injecting a dose of her own personality and style into these generative art creations. Sarin takes a classical approach to this new medium, using still lifes of flowers, fruits and bottles as inspiration and models to construct these extremely contemporary creations. Sarin’s work highlights the creative possibilities of new technologies while paying homage and celebrating timeless techniques and aesthetics.
Sarin’s work, particularly in her latest art book, sets itself apart with a clear component of humor and visual/verbal punning that is notable in each artwork. Titles act as an integral part of each creation, rather than simply acting as descriptors, they effectively add another dimension or layer to the piece. Her work is abstracted by nature, with deep rooted elements of story telling and undeniable sense of self and intimacy in each of her GAN creations.
GANcommedia Erudita
Helena Sarin will be releasing her book of GANesis artworks, GANcommedia Erudita, on MakersPlace in collaboration with Kate Vass Galerie. This book is one of the first of its kinds, in which all images were generated by AI models trained on the artists’ own sketches. GANcommedia Erudita was debuted to the world as part of Nvidia GTC conference’s inaugural AI Art Gallery opening.
A playful new form of expression dubbed, 21st-century AItalian art, this art book is an accumulation of Sarin’s mesmerizing GAN-creations and clever visual puns and result of over 3 years of curated ideation. It is a crucial piece of digital literature that highlights the brevity and potential of this movement as told from this particular moment in time.
Editions: Ten
Pricing: 2.15/ETH
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'A Celebration of the Woman': new online show to launch at #womensupportingwomen community page.
Kate Vass Galerie is proudly introducing the #womensupportingwomen initiative!
This project is debuting with a unique exhibition “A Celebration of the Woman”; feat. selected female generative and crypto artists, who have created unique works for this particular purpose: Sofia Crespo, Maria Garcia, Lulu xXX, Helena Sarin, Angie Taylor, Sarah Zucker.
We invite you to visit the online show here and join the #wsw community page at this link. or Twitter @empowering_in_art
The initiative is launched on the occasion of Vancouver Biennale 2020 within ArtProject.io. From November 11th to 15th, the Vancouver Biennale will host #ArtProject2020, a virtual art and technology expo exploring digital art and the newest technologies shifting the art world. This event is free to attend and those without previous exposure to the field will benefit most – everyone is welcome.
#ArtProject2020 will be the Vancouver Biennale’s first display of tokenized art, which is powered by blockchain technology and has redefined digital artwork ownership.
“Gender equality is not only a basic human right, but its achievement has enormous socio-economic ramifications. Empowering women fuels thriving economies, spurring productivity and growth.” - UN Women
With this mission in our minds, through different projects, we want to take action and move forward to a more gender inclusive and sustainable world. Women who are empowered to take action often have a positive influence on the lives of other women.
One of the things we find most inspiring is women openly supporting and lifting each other up. With so many obstacles on the road to gender equality, we don't need to create another one by getting in our own way — despite our culture's nasty habit of trying to put us against each other.
Kate Vass Galerie opens this gate to female artists of all kind: digital, performance, painting, photography or generative art, to create a special project that can live on our community page.
Selected works from the exhibition will be also presented as unique NFTs on the new Ephimera platform.
Ephimera is the world’s first marketplace of tokenized art focused on photography and video art. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, it allows creators to publish their work as unique, non-fungible tokens and offer these for auction to collectors.
If you wish to register to pre-reserve a work you’d like to buy, please contact us: info@katevassgalerie.com.
We invite you to join our community.
Any female artist can join us, every woman or man can contribute and benefit from #womensupportingwomen from various industries and sectors.
To apply with your work: ar@katevassgalerie.com
To contribute to the project: info@katevassgalerie.com
#ArtProject2020 | Vancouver Biennale 11TH-15TH NoVEMBER 2020
Kate Vass Galerie is glad to participate at ArtProject.io within Vancouver Biennale 2020.
From November 11th to 15th, the Vancouver Biennale will host #ArtProject2020, a virtual art and technology expo exploring digital art and the newest technologies shifting the art world. This event is free to attend and those without previous exposure to the field will benefit most – everyone is welcome.
#ArtProject2020 will be the Vancouver Biennale’s first display of tokenized art, which is powered by blockchain technology and has redefined digital artwork ownership. This fun-filled, educational, hands-on expo will feature panel discussions, workshops, and gamified activities including a crypt-puzzle, digital art battle live, and virtual gallery tours. To reserve a spot and see the complete speaker list and schedule, visit www.artproject.io.
Trilingual programming in English, Spanish, and Chinese will be available.
Kate Vass Galerie will join the following chats and panels, register for free here and join us!
Finding the Diamond in the Rough: What Drives Collector Decisions?
Time: 10:00 - 10:35 AM PST | 1:00 - 1:35 PM EST | 7:00 - 7:35 PM CET , WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 11TH
Format: Panel Discussion (35 Min)
Speakers: Jake Bruckman, La Virgen del Crypto, Jason Bailey, Fanny Lakoubay
Moderator: Kate Vass
As 2020 approaches its conclusion having observed sales records broken numerous times, the panel discusses what features collectors look for, or should look for, when purchasing a tokenized artwork. From pure aesthetic and admiration of the artist to sales histories and market data; why do collectors select the pieces they do?
Curating in the Age of Digital Art: Defining Quality and Value
Time: 9:00 - 9:20 AM PST | 12:00 - 12:20 PM EST | 6:00 - 6:20 PM CET , FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH
Format: Kick off - Morning Coffee (20 Min)
Speakers: Kate Vass, Tanya Boyarkina, Serena Tabacchi, Natalia Lebedinskaia
Curators from the traditional art market and the tokenized art market shed light on their selection processes. How does one identify talented up-and-coming artists? What are the best metrics to assess an artwork’s true value? How does curation in the tokenized art space differ from that of the traditional art world? All of these questions and more are addressed in this round-table discussion.
Women Leading the Art and Tech Movement
Time: 9:00 - 9:20 AM PST | 12:00 - 12:20 PM EST | 6:00 - 6:20 PM CET , SUNDAY NOVEMBER 15TH
Format: Kick off - Morning Coffee (20 Min)
Speakers: Kate Vass, Sarah Zucker, Angie Taylor
In this conversation we gain insights from women pushing boundaries at the intersection of art and technology. Each bringing a couple questions to the group, this dynamic discussion features Kate Vass, Head at the Kate Vass Gallery, which curates and exhibits art in both the traditional and tokenized art space. Sarah Zucker is a visual artist and author, and the first artist to exhibit GIFs at the Brooklyn Museum. Angie Taylor is a VR Artist, Sculptor, animator & creative technologist whose work often champions the misfits of society & the geeks.
Additionally, in this exciting context KVG is proudly presenting the #womensupportingwomen initiative!
“Gender equality is not only a basic human right, but its achievement has enormous socio-economic ramifications. Empowering women fuels thriving economies, spurring productivity and growth.” - UN Women
With this mission in our minds, through different projects, we want to take action and move forward to a more gender inclusive and sustainable world. Women who are empowered to take action often have a positive influence on the lives of other women.
One of the things we find most inspiring is women openly supporting and lifting each other up. With so many obstacles on the road to gender equality, we don't need to create another one by getting in our own way — despite our culture's nasty habit of trying to put us against each other.
Kate Vass Galerie opens this gate to female artists of all kind: digital, performance, painting, photography or generative art, to create a special project that can live on this community page.
This initiative will debut with a unique exhibition under the curatorial program “A Celebration of the Woman”;
selected female generative and crypto artists have created special works for this particular purpose: Sofia Crespo, Maria Garcia, Lulu xXX, Helena Sarin, Angie Taylor, Sarah Zucker.
Selected works from the exhibition will be also presented as unique NFTs on the new Ephimera platform.
Ephimera is the world’s first marketplace of tokenized art focused on photography and video art. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, it allows creators to publish their work as unique, non-fungible tokens and offer these for auction to collectors.
Enjoy the #wsw online exhibition ‘A Celebration of the Woman’ here and if you wish to register to pre-reserve the work to buy, please contact us info@katevassgalerie.com
We invite you to join our community.
Any female artist can join us, every woman or man can contribute and benefit from #womensupportingwomen from various industries and sectors.
To apply with your work: ar@katevassgalerie.com
To contribute to the project: info@katevassgalerie
'The Game of Life': Exclusive interview with Kjetil Golid by Jason Bailey
We are very pleased to share this great interview with Kjetil Golid as part of our current online exhibition ‘The Game of Life’!
Kjetil is a generative artist and system developer from Norway, with a keen interest in algorithms and data structures.
It was this interest that kickstarted his endeavours within generative art, originally using visualization as a tool for understanding various algorithms. These visualization exercises gradually shifted their focus from being pure, "correct" implementations of well-known algorithms, into a more esoteric realm where the underlying structures mostly serve the purpose of making intricate and aesthetic visuals.
Today, Kjetil's projects are often initiated by the question "What would it look like if ..."; an unfinished idea of a home-grown algorithm together with a visual translation, where it is unclear how the result will look.
Kjetil wants to share his mindset that programming is a wonderful platform for creative expression and, as such, large parts of his code is open for anyone to explore and manipulate. In addition to making static pieces, he also makes interactive tools for generating visuals without the prerequisite of knowing how to code.
“Kjetil Golid embodies the generative art ethos. Golid open sources all his code for other artists to learn from. Further, he has built an amazing set of free tools on his website that makes it easy and fun for anyone to manipulate his algorithms producing brilliant visuals and opening the door to generative art.” - Artnome
Here you can read the full interview on Artnome.
anonymous-warhol_flowers@Aug_31_23.55.30_2018
Computer-generated with the help of the net.art generator (http://net.art-generator.com)
Digital Print on paper
60 x 60 cm
Unique
Exhibited at “Automat und Mensch” show, Zürich, Kate Vass Galerie, 2019