Is art human? Exploring artist collaboration with AI and Algorithms at the Seattle NFT Museum

Opening at the Seattle NFT Museum on June 4, 2022

Today, the Seattle NFT Museum announced the fourth exhibition this year, titled “Artist and the Machine,” which will open on June 4th. The paintbrush of digital art has unlimited potential, from 3d renderings to live motion, but perhaps nothing could have prepared us for the impact of algorithms and AI. In this exhibit you will see the wild interactivity between artists and their machines, generating powerful, emotional displays.

“We want to showcase the incredibly rich world of generative art, exploring the endless creative possibilities of the genre and beginning a conversation about the deeply human and aesthetic impact it demonstrates as a medium. Generative art is rapidly gaining recognition as fine art. In this exhibition, we are showing a multitude of outcomes, results, and rich nuances found in the practices of such representative artists,” Joana Kawahara Lino, Curator in Residence at the Seattle NFT Museum

Ticket now on sale: Exhibition Opening Event, June 4th 7:00pm - 10:00pm PT

Seattle NFT Museum is hosting an opening event to launch the new exhibition. Attendees have the opportunity to hear directly from several of the artists on display, learning more about their work and inspiration and meeting them to ask questions. Tickets are on sale now for the exhibition opening on Saturday, April 16th, 7:00pm-10:00pm. Purchase tickets here - https://www.seattlenftmuseum.com/visit

Featured Artists:

Pindar Van Arman

Pindar Van Arman is an American artist and roboticist who designs painting robots that explore the differences between human and computational creativity. Since his first system in 2005 he has built multiple artificially creative robots earning multiple accolades including a TEDx Talk, making the Shortlist at Barbican’s DevArt Competition, and First Prize in the Robot Art 2018.

Aaron Penne

Seattle based, Aaron Penne is a renowned artist and engineer making generative artwork with code since 2018. His work has been sold at Sotheby’s, shown internationally at galleries and museums, and is collected by hundreds of individuals. He is the Director of Engineering at Art Blocks, helping to build the future of generative art as a medium in the NFT space. In 2021 he was one of the top 50 NFT artists globally.

Phil Bosua

Seattle based and Australian born, Phil Bosua is an artist who believes that the human/AI collaboration is the next great art movement. Since art is fundamental in communicating thoughts and feelings, artificial intelligence represents the next frontier for developing a novel approach to artistic expression. Phil is a part of the AIM collective, an award-winning inventor, and is CEO of Seattle-based Know Labs, Inc.

"AI can turn anyone into a world class painter, as long as you have something to say. Story, philosophy and an awareness of mind are now the only tools you need." Phil Bosua

Botto

Botto is a decentralized artist that generates art based on community feedback. Every week, Botto presents 350 art pieces to the community, who then vote on their favorite artwork. Botto uses these votes to train its algorithm, changing the art it creates over time. Each week, one final artwork is minted as an NFT and put to auction on SuperRare.

Ben Mauro

Ben Mauro is the creator of HUXLEY, a fully-fledged graphic novel series which reveals an immersive creative universe, a decade in the making. Previously, his work made a powerful impact on the gaming world, as senior concept designer and art director for first-person-shooting dynasties Halo and Call of Duty. Ben crafts the characters, weaponry, machinery and gamescapes that these franchises house-hold names for two decades. His visions graced the big screen in Elysium, Chappie, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Ben made his first entré into the NFT space through some sci-fi 1/1 pieces on SuperRare and a series of limited edition trading cards entitled, Evolution.

"I'm excited to be a part of the Seattle NFT Museum's 'Artist and the Machine' show to share the world of Huxley and my love of science fiction design with the local NFT community" Ben Mauro

Manoloide

Manoloide, aka Manolo Gamboa Naon, is an Argentinean visual artist and creative programmer whose main interests are in generative visual aesthetics and plastic experimentation with code. In the scope of generativity and process art, his work explores the possibilities of programming as an expressive language. He explores the possible relationships between chaos and order, organic and artificial, randomness and control using images and video. He approaches the digital surface as a plastic space using the code as artistic materiality, based on the experimentation with basic geometric shapes, lines, and colors.

“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." - Manolo Gamboa Naon

Eponym

More than 3,000 different artists were involved in the creation of the Eponym collection, but thanks to Eyal Fisher, the generative art expert turned artist, who developed the underlying technology that powers Eponym, who made this unique collection possible. Eyal started working on AI Art in 2018. He was one of the first people to train a Generative Adversarial Network for the purpose of making art. In 2019 he co-founded the largest gallery for AI generated art. Eyal is an AI engineer by training and made several technological developments in the field. His piece "10 days in the metaverse" was recently sold as part of ASH 2.

Zach Lieberman

Zachary Lieberman is an artist, researcher, and educator with a simple goal: he wants you surprised. In his work, he creates performances and installations that take human gesture as input and amplify them in different ways -- making drawings come to life, imagining what the voice might look like if we could see it, transforming people's silhouettes into music. He's been listed as one of Fast Company's Most Creative People and his projects have won the Golden Nica from Ars Electronica, Interactive Design of the Year from Design Museum London as well as listed in Time Magazine's Best Inventions of the Year. He creates artwork through writing software and is a co-creator of openFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding and helped co-found the School for Poetic Computation, a school examining the lyrical possibilities of code. He is a professor at MIT Media Lab, where he helps run the Future Sketches group.

Licia He

Licia He is a generative artist and a human-computer interaction researcher. Through her research and artworks, she explores ways to record and present information around her. She entered the world of generative art to connect her passion for art and technology. Since her first encounter with a drawing robot, Licia has been focusing on bridging her digital and physical painting practices through plotters.

yungwknd

yungwknd is an artist and smart contract creator from Seattle, WA. His art ranges in style from generative on-chain abstract art to performative blockchain art, to realistic drawings made with code. He’s passionate about telling stories and creating projects that can only be done using the blockchain.

“I am thrilled to participate in this exhibition that highlights the relationship between man and machine. I've always been intrigued by the way in which the physical world can manifest itself in a digital form. The Seattle NFT Museum is a pioneer in bringing the digital to the physical, and it is my great honor to show my art in a hometown museum,” said yungwknd about this upcoming exhibit.

Seattle NFT Museum Permanent Collection:

The launch of this exhibition will feature the first look of Seattle NFT Museum’s early permanent collection. The purpose of the permanent collection is to showcase and support as many artists as possible. The collection will be continually updated and always available to see online, with a select few on rotation at the physical museum. The first NFT on show was created by the Seattle-based team, NFT Worlds (https://www.nftworlds.com/). NFT Worlds was created to be the most powerful, cross-platform (computers/consoles), community-driven & developed metaverse platform of its kind.

Ticketing Information

Seattle NFT Museum is open to the public 1PM - 6PM Monday and Wednesday, 12PM - 5PM Thursday, 12PM - 6:30PM Friday through Sunday. Daily tickets are available for purchase by visiting www.seattlenftmuseum.com. Admission is $15 for all visitors. Ticket proceeds directly contribute to the operating costs of the museum.

About Seattle NFT Museum

As a center for supporting the NFT creator and collector community, the Seattle NFT Museum is a physical space designed to explore the boundaries of digital art. Exhibits include featured artists, notable private collections, and educational displays. The museum hosts ticketed events, private showings, live mintings, and is open to the public for a suggested donation during business hours. Also available for booking private corporate events.