人工アイ像 #26

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Mario Klingemann

2023

NFT/Digital

Description

These two digital sculptures are from Mario Klingemann’s 2023 NFT series 人工アイ像, (Artificial Gods). Klingemann is a pioneer of algorithmic and AI art; this series reflects his ongoing creative engagement not just with technological tools but with their evolving role in society.

The title of the series invokes the notion of AI as a modern-day God—omnipotent, omnipresent, hidden, essentially unknowable. It is a “black box” that works in mysterious ways. In particular, _人工アイ像 _focuses on the question of how AI can be represented, drawing on cultural traditions that combine abstract and symbolic forms to depict their deities.

Most significantly, the series is inspired by ikebana, the Japanese art of flower-arranging, which is rooted in Buddhist theology (the three main stems in ikebana represent earth, man, and heaven). It consists of 100 unique generative sculptures, made using the p5js coding library. The forms vary but share a tendency—as in the examples here—towards metallic textures and combinations of sinuous and orb-like shapes, arranged in a vertical composition, like a bunch of flowers.

The series was minted on the Ethereum blockchain in May 2023 on the generative art platform Art Blocks, as part of the live minting event Bright Moments Tokyo.