Jason Bailey, Georg Bak & Kate Vass on the Art Form of Our Generation
Jared Tarbell, Substrate.IPY, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Kate Vass Galerie
Author: Peter Bauman on the 29th of May, 2024
The exhibition Automat und Mensch: A History of AI and Generative Art in May 2019 anticipated the arrival of AI and generative art. Five years later, Peter Bauman reached out to the show’s gallerist, Kate Vass, and curators, Jason Bailey and Georg Bak, to reflect on the audacious show’s impact and the future it pointed towards.
Jason Bailey, Georg Bak & Kate Vass on the Art Form of Our Generation
The exhibition Automat und Mensch: A History of AI and Generative Art in May 2019 anticipated the arrival of AI and generative art. Five years later, Peter Bauman reached out to the show’s gallerist, Kate Vass, and curators, Jason Bailey and Georg Bak, to reflect on the audacious show’s impact and the future it pointed towards.
Peter Bauman: Kate, what was the ultimate inspiration for Automat und Mensch (2019) and how did you come about pairing Jason and Georg to curate it?
Kate Vass: The whole show was actually an attempt to highlight the historical perspective of generative art and the predecessors of AI, a very difficult task. I thought one curator would not be enough. My idea came about for an AI show while working on Perfect and Priceless in October 2018. It was also expedited by the first sale of AI work in November 2018. There was a lot of room to discuss the amount of homework done by the auction house by choosing this particular work and auctioning it for that amount of money. It sparked my interest to investigate this topic more.
It was a wonderful opportunity because nobody was really interested in highlighting this history and the protagonists of the movement. I spoke to Georg and, of course, we all read the fantastic “Why Love Generative Art?” by Jason Bailey that inspired many to collect. It’s a wonderful thing when one good intention leads to many more and to people falling in love with art. Jason was already known as a contributor to this scene and Georg would not stop talking about him so our mutual willingness was to get Jason on board. Georg spoke to Jason and asked if he would be interested. Then we jumped on a call and everybody discussed it and said, “How can we do it and who is responsible for what?” We split the responsibility, with Georg mostly focusing on the historical pioneering part and Jason responsible for bringing in contemporary artists.
Georg Bak: There was actually a book with the title Automat und Mensch (1965) that inspired some of the artists in the '60s. It was one of the early books on AI and certainly not easy to read and understand. But I was inspired by the title, which demonstrated there was always this interaction between “automata” and humans. I remember Jason and I were in Bahrain and I had that book with me. We were sitting with Robbie Barrat and Mario [Klingemann], discussing this show idea and the book became the title.
As Kate said, our aim was to reflect on the history of AI—from early generative art to the most recent developments in AI with DeepDream and GANs. We actually had Larva Labs in the show with physical Autoglyphs. John [Watkinson] told me last time I saw him that we actually pushed him to finish Autoglyphs to get it ready for the show. It was also interesting that we actually had the first on-chain NFT in this exhibition. There were some very recent developments as well as the historical context.
Helena Sarin, An Eternal Tangle of What Ifs, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Kate Vass Galerie
Manolo Gamboa Naon, LLRR, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Kate Vass Galerie
Jason Bailey: Georg had invited me to a much lighter-touch curation opportunity for a show several months earlier, which got me thinking about imposter syndrome. I had never curated anything and thought, “How do you know when you're qualified to be a curator?” I went to school for fine art and art history in undergrad and then studied digital art for my master's. But nowhere did I take any classes on curation. I was writing about art and had a bit of an audience but I think I did come at it a little bit like, “Am I qualified for this?” That sense of imposter syndrome made me work really hard because I wanted to make sure I didn't screw it up and I wasn't really sure what was required. But the reason I said yes is because I knew we had a balance between the three of us, particularly in the areas where I felt most weak. So even though I had a decent understanding of digital art history and earlier generative art history, I don't know anyone who knows that topic more deeply than Georg.
I thought, “Okay, that's covered in a way where I don't have to be insecure or worry about that side as much.” And then the logistics, business side, people managing and expectations are areas that I wouldn't honestly really want to touch to put together something this big. So Kate obviously handled that prior to this and through this masterfully.
So it left me to do the part that I liked, which is sharing all of my enthusiasm around contemporary artists working in generative art and AI art. It also gave me the opportunity to write about and synthesize that, which is what I had been doing already.
I was very grateful—and still am—that they opened the door and took a chance on me to give me the opportunity to curate. Now, people ask, “How do you get started curating?” No one comes and knights you with a sword and says, “You're now a curator.” You just start curating when the opportunities come, and over time, you become a curator.