Generative art is proving to be Web3’s creative anchor in the traditional art world. Last month, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York made headlines by acquiring Refik Anadol’s “Unsupervised — Machine Hallucinations” (2022) alongside an edition of Ian Cheng’s last year’s “3FACE” project. These two mark the first additions of artificial intelligence (ai) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to MoMA’s collection, which already houses relics such as Andy Warhol’s soup cans and Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”
The landmark acquisitions also complement MoMA’s long-standing legacy of pioneering exhibitions at the intersection of technology and art, from its 1968 show “The Machine Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age” to “Signals: How Video Transformed the world” this year.
MoMA’s announcement came alongside a rundown of the institution’s digital art programming for the upcoming fall and winter seasons, including the debut of video artist Leslie Thornton’s latest work, “HANDMADE” (2023), and an exhibition at line with Feral File that will open early next year. year. Weeks earlier, MoMA had also announced its Postcard chain project.
“These new initiatives underscore MoMA’s long-standing commitment to supporting artists who experiment with emerging technologies to expand their visual vocabulary and creative exploration, increase the impact of their work, and help us understand and navigate transformative change in the world.” , says the Museum’s statement about its acquisitions. state.
“I am very proud to be included,” Cheng told Cointelegraph. “MoMA had previously acquired my ‘Emissaries’ simulation trilogy in 2017. Their openness and enthusiasm for acquiring dynamic digital art is rare for an institution.”
Unsupervised
It is the screensaver heard around the world. Whether you’re enamored or suspicious of the prolific and fascinating machine learning abstractions of this former Google artist-in-residence, chances are he’s seen them. Anadol designed this particular one with the help of Nvidia. It feeds 138,151 pieces of visual metadata from MoMA’s collection to an algorithm that produces an ai imagining of art history through Anadol’s signature undulations.
Since its release in November 2022, “Unsupervised” has been reviewed by critics at Vulture, Artforum, and more. The time it took to write those reviews says more than anything about the importance of the work. Jerry Saltz’s half-hearted hot takes don’t detract from the mental energy his writing requires. Haters alone have not made Anadol famous: he has dozens of devoted fans, if not collectors. MoMA chose to expand the display of the 24-foot-tall work several times. It just dropped on October 29, but visitors who coined their Proof of Attendance Protocol, or POAP, from the posted QR code still have a piece of the show.
Prominent nft collector and 1 OF 1 club founder Ryan Zurrer made the acquisition of the work possible, along with the “RFC Collection,” led by Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile and Desiree Casoni.
“I take my hat off to the people at MoMA for understanding the cultural zeitgeist of the moment,” Zurrer said. ARTnews. “The unmonitored value increased two weeks before ChatGPT went public. ai is the defining topic of the moment and MoMA captured it. I am excited to donate this work to MoMA. But I must recognize that this is not only a donation from me and (from the collector) Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile, but from Refik. He is bringing the servers, the screens and the other components. The nft is a part of this piece of conceptual art that now belongs to MoMA.”
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While the Museum could not clarify whether Anadol directly donated the hardware that allowed “Unsupervised” to be exhibited, we can assume that is the case. Their release said that Thornton’s “HANDMADE” will be seen in the same Gund Lobby where they showed “Unsupervised” on a screen of the same size, “designed and realized thanks to Refik Anadol Studio.”
3face
Meanwhile, Cheng evades the mark. A permanent exploration of psychology through cutting-edge technologies defines its practice more than any aesthetic. In fact, there are 4,096 unique editions of “3FACE,” and none of them were explicitly designed by Cheng’s hand. The works of the generative project represent adaptive and continuous visual portraits of their owners, drawn from data extracted from their wallets at a given moment. MoMA calls it his “most ambitious experimental artwork to date to explore blockchain technologies and data decentralization,” expanding “the artist’s interest in the ability of humans to engage with change.”
In his efforts to represent and shape the ephemeral mind, Cheng said ai-unlock-the-unconscious” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>Right click Save last year believes that “art can play a role in improving the unconscious response we have to complexity.” “3FACE” honors the deepest part of each person and, because it is dynamic, their ability to change.
nft platform Outland Art donated its “3FACE” to the MoMA collection. “Jason Li and Chris Lew provided a lot of advice and helped develop the team to turn the idea into reality,” Cheng told Cointelegraph. “I wouldn’t have done ‘3FACE’ without Outland.”
The jobs public entrance on the MoMA website it does not indicate which number of the entire series it is or which wallet it belongs to. MoMA did not respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment, but based on the way “3FACE” works and the fact that MoMA just started collecting works of art on a chain, this could be the interpretation of “3FACE” from an open wallet populated solely by Anadol. “Unsupervised”.
Another chapter in art history.
Generative art, carrying the torch for old pioneering and controversial art forms like photography, has forced this generation of artists to re-evaluate what exactly makes art valuable.
“The ultimate goal of generative ai tools is a new immediacy between thought and visual articulation,” Cheng reflected on the future of art with ai. “We are accustomed to the immediacy between thought and written or verbal expression. A writer, without intermediary help, can construct a novel. Imagine if you, without the help of intermediaries, could construct a movie. Just as when writing fiction, the filmmaker is only limited by his own imagination, his taste, the quality of his questions, his courage to pursue gray truths, and his understanding of human behavior.
technology will continually evolve, but it is the evolution of artists’ abilities to use it that separates what is merely eye-catching from what is impactful. Not that those two are mutually exclusive: Although MoMA’s acquisition of Anadol is akin to the institution purchasing a Louis Vuitton bag, what society calls luxury is history in itself.
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Anadol and Cheng work predominantly with data while creating art with ai. The emergent properties of your processes have implications. “Unsupervised” begs the question: What is art history? – a tense topic that traditional art historians argue about without even addressing the painting itself. By virtue of its premise, “3FACE” asks its participants how they would quantify a twisted human psyche. It is one of the few projects that uses the ledger as more than just a way to conduct transactions.
Museums like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Pompidou Center began collecting NFTs in the boom days. MoMA’s decision to credit this type of work now marks a new milestone.
“Right now we pinch our noses at the ‘art of ai‘ because the first experiments look like experiments, but they fade away in 10 years,” Cheng said. “The ease of producing visually refined expressions will unlock greater artistic capacity from a greater plurality of people, and this is a good thing.”
