Expanded.art

🟦 Gottfried Jäger: PHOTO 111110.4, 2011

WHAT IS IT: This is the second NFT by Gottfried Jäger. It is the first to be minted through the artist’s wallet and released with a print: 40 x 40 cm, Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl 285, hand-signed.

WHY IT‘S WORTH COLLECTING: Under the influence of Max Bense and Herbert W. Franke, Gottfried Jäger devised a radicalised form of the image, which he first called GENERATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY in 1968 at a joint exhibition with Kilian Breier, Pierre Cordier and Hein Gravenhorst at the Kunsthaus Bielefeld.

WHAT THE ARTIST SAYS: "The term GENERATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY was introduced in 1968 with the intention of conceiving and establishing the photographic process as an image-generating 'generative system.'"

HOW IT WAS CREATED: "The PHOTO series is based on the application of the computer program Adobe Photoshop®. However, unlike usual, it does not start with a photo as the source motif; instead, the program produces its own images. It essentially plays with itself. Original formal potentials emerge without being 'disturbed' by an external image motif. What is visible is solely the syntax of the program: brightness, contrast, colors, textures, etc. Neither images (icons) nor symbols are created, but rather pure form images (indices, symptoms) formalism." – Gottfried Jäger

CURATOR: Anika Meier
COLLABORATOR: Photo Edition Berlin

🟦 Visit EXPANDED.ART to learn more about Gottfried Jäger and PHOTO.

✨ EXPANDED BEST OF 2024: NFTs

COGNITIVE CHAOS by the Japanese artist Emi Kusano is a series of 33 AI-generated images that venture into the nostalgia of a future once imagined, where brains are directly connected to devices—a concept familiar from science fiction but now echoing with new significance.

COGNITIVE CHAOS juxtaposes Japan’s 1970s obsession with the supernatural—UFOs, ghosts, and psychics—with today’s AI and brain-tech impacts. It questions how these advances blur truth and heighten distraction, urging a reevaluation of our senses in a tech-saturated world.

Kusano encourages introspection on the interplay between our changing perceptions and the evolving digital landscape, advocating for a mindful engagement with the world around us.

🟦 Visit EXPANDED.ART to learn more about Emi Kusano and her sold out collection.

✨ EXPANDED BEST OF 2024: NFTs

IN UTERO by Kevin Esherick

What is it like to be an AI? How might it see the world? What would it mean for it to be conscious? With IN UTERO, the American artist Kevin Esherick explores these questions through a series of 53 of what he calls „latent paintings“: images captured from inside the „mind“ of an AI image model. 

Society is at a point where AI attaining consciousness is a possibility in the future. This development will shape the future of humanity. What is not discussed enough in the conversation around AI is that AI beings could feel pain and suffer and experience happiness and joy, just as humans do. What might this look like?

IN UTERO provides a peek into the inner workings of an AI model’s cognitive processes and how they appear. It also serves as a metaphor for the progression of AI systems towards potential consciousness. The images were generated using „single-step diffusion,“ a technique Esherick developed to halt the AI model’s creation of images as they are just starting to take shape. Exploring the inner workings of AI models can show how such consciousness might develop and what it might look like when it arises. Trained on immeasurable quantities of data, these models contain the sum of human knowledge—not just facts, but also the myths, stories, and experiences that define human lives.

Examining the way AI models see the world can not only tell us more about humankind but also paint a portrait of the human story that captures the shared beauty of universal experiences

🟦 Visit EXPANDED.ART to learn more about Kevin Esherick and his sold out collection IN UTERO.