Is tech-based imagery fine art or just an artifact?​

​

In a watershed moment for contemporary art, 'Art in the Age of AI: Evolution or End?' confronts one of the most profound aesthetic dialogues since the advent of photography. This groundbreaking exhibition, featuring thirteen visionary artists, examined how technological innovation extends the centuries-old conversation about human creativity and artistic expression.

As the first quarter of the 21st century comes to a close, these works investigate art's perennial questions through a contemporary lens: What constitutes authentic human expression? How do new tools transform artistic possibility? What remains constant in our quest for meaning through creative expression?
 

While the “paint” is still wet viewers can decide for themselves if this entirely new art form represents a creative breakthrough or a crushing blow. 

The AI and Generative Art pioneers featured human collaborating with code, data, sound, math, AI, AR, and 3D. Tech tools have unique attributes that expand who creates, how they produce, and what they explore.

​

The exhibition's diverse works demonstrated how technological tools are expanding, rather than replacing the artist's palette. In Denial of Service's haunting images of robots at the abyss, we see echoes of Caspar David Friedrich's contemplative figures, reimagined for our digital age. Jessica Jackson's multi-styled approaches to solitude recall Edward Hopper's explorations of modern alienation, while pushing beyond traditional stylistic constraints to probe deeper questions about human identity in an AI-enhanced world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simon Russell's delicate plotter drawings transform invisible natural phenomena—from Amazon rainforest soundscapes to whale songs—into visible art, continuing the modernist tradition of making the unseen visible. These works extend the practices of artists like Wassily Kandinsky, who sought to visualize music, into the realm of environmental consciousness and digital sensing.

Blumquist's provocative "images of familiar things that never happened" spark vital discussions about perception and reality—concerns that have animated artists from Hieronymus Bosch to René Magritte. These AI "hallucinations" will not survive future software upgrades, but for now they offer unexpected insights into how machines see us.

The exhibition demonstrated particular strength in works that bridge science and aesthetics. James Pricer's data portraits and Alba Corral's visualizations of natural algorithms recall the Renaissance integration of art and science, updated for the digital age. E9's sentient digital landscapes achieve what painters from Turner to O'Keeffe pursued: they animate the inanimate, revealing the vital force within seemingly static forms.

 

​​​​Tech-art is still wild and unvetted; and breakout innovations like these are very rare, but when they occur, they create a before-and-after demarcation line in art history. Photography, for example, did more than lay the path to modernism; it changed our understanding of reality. Tools like computers and the internet have already left their mark, and tech-based art is bound to do the same. 

​

Curated to give a wide-angle look at tech-art’s potential, the exhibition gave audiences the opportunity to shape art history with their critical choices and decide  what art’s future should look like.

Currently, there is no agreement about what good generative or AI work is or should be. That said, the pioneering individuals we are featuring are not waiting for answers or approval. Instead, the tools have become their inspiration and guides as they explore the unfamiliar terrain of the digital landscape.

​

Want to join the dialogue and become part of the early collectors of this new art form - inquire about available artwork

​

​Curated by Julia Morton, AI + Art columnist and former director of Generative Art Project, and gallerist Christina Hiltscher of Unchained.Art Contemporary Gallery

​