Represented by our veteran Async artist VansDesign, Async Art has teamed up with artists Jordan Gray, Janessa Robinson, and OoakosiMo from San Francisco-based art and tech collective CODAME to submit a piece to THE GRID: Exposure, a festival gone virtual this year that showcases amazing art + tech organizations in the SF Bay Area.
It’s a privilege to have worked with the bright minds at CODAME on this effort. This talented collective weaves playful projects at the crossroads of art and tech, and in doing so they seek to actively shape the future of creativity itself. They’re just the kind of team we enjoy collaborating with!
Their mission to explore what art can be through tech innovation is one that closely resonates with our work at Async Art in powering programmable art. That said, both CODAME and Async Art are perfect fits for this year's theme for The Grid: Exposure: “Blurring Borders”.
Taking place as part of the wider Ars Electronica 2020 festival, the Exposure expo runs between September 10th-13th and will feature art viewings, talks, workshops, and more. The event’s founders have explained the “Blurring Borders” theme is aimed at creating a “platform for technology to make itself vulnerable to artistic practices rooted in humanism that expose the essence of our digital reality.”
In celebration of the event, VansDesign and our friends over at CODAME are honored to present “The Creation,” a programmable and multi-layered collaboration hosted on the Async platform, for consideration at this year’s Exposure. 25% of the total sales will be donated to Solidarity Grid in support of the organization.
Above is the Master layer of “The Creation,” which was created by the artists as a reimagining of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” using tools like 3d Builder, After Effects, Photoshop, and RunwayML. Yet in this modern rendition it’s not Adam that’s being created, but rather the intangible and indeterminate human space of pure creative impulse. It’s a giving of life -- not to a person, but to the ideas of people.
Powered by Async Art’s Ethereum-based infrastructure, this Master image visually evolves depending on the activated traits of its five Layer tokens. The first of these is the “Background,” which can change the backdrop of “The Creation” to infinite empty space, a glitch version of “The Creation of Adam,” among others.
Next is the “Brain” Layer, which is packed with possibilities thanks to its brilliant colors, abstract brains, a folkloric Chinese peach, and more. Notable here is the visual absence of God, and that absence is strikingly surrounded by modern and technological textures rather than the classical religious imagery found in the paintings of centuries past.
Then there’s the “Human” Layer, which contains three glitched versions of Adam (including a masked one for the times), a reclining Buddha, an Asian peach (a representation of longevity), and further visual references to “The Creation of Adam.”
Another signature Layer is “Deity,” which among its compositions are three colorful remixes, the infamous Kyubey anime deity, a 3D rendered hand, and a digital representation of a modern urban mural. In this Layer, there is good, evil, and neutrality, as well as stark contrasts between traditional and modern conceptions of supreme creators.
Another interesting thematic wrinkle here is how the “Human” and “Deity” Layers can be used to condense Adam and God simply into fingers pointing at one another, a visual having no shortage of symbolic implications.
Lastly, there’s the “Frame” Layer, of which there are five variations a collector can choose from to activate around the Master artwork.
Altogether, “The Creation” is a programmable masterpiece, a series of collectibles that blur the lines between art and technology, high and low art, tangible and digital, and creator and collector. Accordingly, the work is right at home in being unveiled at Exposure, and we couldn’t be happier to finally share it with the world.
To emphasize on the power of the future Layer holders, Codame has decided to make a T-shirt of the final state of the artwork. After the piece is auctioned off on September 18th, they’ll wait a week for the Layer owners to make some tweaks to the artwork and will gift the Master owner the final T-shirt, as well as offer it as featured merchandise on their online store.
As for the Async-hosted auctions, those will be taking place over this week starting with September 14 and ending on September 18 between 8-10am PST in our community Discord. Check out below for the exact schedule.
Be sure to follow us on Discord and Twitter so you can get real-time updates on “The Creation” and all its auctions.
-Async Art
