Nfts
The Sigg Foundation, TAEX and Tezos team up to showcase NFTs at the Digital Art Mile in Basel
The Sigg Art Foundation, Digital Art Mile, TAEX and Tezos are all in Basel this year to present NFT with the aim of highlighting the growing role of digital art in the global art ecosystem.
The Digital Art Mile, an innovative digital art market organized alongside one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious art fairs, Art Basel, held its first edition this year, marking the official evening of outing for NFT-minded artists, collectors and curators in the exclusive Swiss Enclave setting.
The event transformed Rebgasse, a stone’s throw from Basel’s Messeplatz, into a dynamic showcase of contemporary and historical digital art. It included several internationally renowned galleries, platforms and NFT artists, all invited to come together to showcase their collections across multiple exhibition venues, creating a dynamic intersection of traditional and digital art forms throughout the week.
The first Digital Art Mile, which took place from June 10 to 16, brought together a number of renowned exhibitors such as Objkt, fx(hash), Fellowship, MakersPlace, Cinello, RCM Galerie, ArtXCode, Office Impart, TAEX, Danae, Sigg. Art Foundation, GENAP Collection and Blackdove.
On the stand of Sigg Art Foundationitself founded in 2020 by longtime art collector Pierre Sigg, curated an exhibition featuring pioneering digital artists Grégory Chatonsky, Justin Aversano, Ben Elliot and Bernar Venet.
Venet’s work was presented in conjunction with Sotheby’s: EVENT, showcasing a collection of 500 algorithmic artworks, a key theme that shines through many of the other digital offerings on display.
Chatonsky, a pioneer in the integration of AI in contemporary art, presented a new version of his installation, “TerreSecond”. Initially exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in 2019, this installation is generated from millions of data points (images, texts and sounds) from the Internet, offering a dynamic and modular structure that reinvents our planet in a form that is both familiar and distinct. unique.
Complementing Chatonsky’s AI-based approach, American artist Justin Aversano, fresh off a world tour that saw him travel the globe in search of human stories, brought to Basel some of his most unique works, including photographs of twins that he compiled from all over the world. .
Justin Aversano, “Twin Flames,” in the Sigg Foundation exhibition at the Digital Art Mile in Basel, Switzerland. June 12, 2024.
To further enrich the foundation’s showcase, Elliot presented a work entitled “Metaone”, an ambitious virtual reality project produced by VIVE Arts with the support of the Esther Schipper Gallery in Berlin. “Metaone” plunges into a futuristic virtual paradise where history, nature, technology and science merge, offering a visionary perspective on the evolution of creative spaces.
Meanwhile, the Tezos Foundation introduces two main platforms in its ecosystem: Objkt and fx(hash), which explore physical representations of digital art by fostering dialogue and experimenting with journeys through revolutionary curation in the generative art space.
@HOXID_ collaborated with digital art platform @tesserart_xyz to feature a rotation of Tezos artists in “The Frame.”
The Swiss platform Objkt also hosted the “Matter & Data” exhibition, which presents the works of 17 international artists. Additionally, Objkt presented its collaboration with Analivia Cordeiro, a Brazilian inventor of cybernetic choreography, to present an interactive exhibition in which visitors can transform their movement patterns into generative NFTs on the Tezos blockchain.
Regina, Silveira, Auriea Harvey, ThankYouX, Oona, Leander Herzog, Zancan and Qubibi are among the other artists represented at the booth, which was supported by Tezos’ new art lead in its Trilitech division, Aleksandra Artamonovskaja.
fx(hash), a generative art platform, curates code-based artworks that demonstrate the cultural and technological connections between digital and physical formats and proposes to rethink them in light of contemporary and historical emergencies. In collaboration with OFFICE IMPART, the platform presented “Bit Operations,” a visual examination of the foundations of computing through bit transfer operations, by Swedish artist Jonas Lund. Lund’s project included a long-form generative collection that collectors can access online via fx(hash), as well as limited edition tangible works combined with the generative production presented during the fair.
Also among the exhibitors, the digital art platform and agency TAEX, presented a captivating digital Zen landscape from Krista Kim’s Continuum project. Created in response to the distractions of technology, Kim’s work transforms digital screens into spaces of mindfulness and contemplation.
The collection, comprised of 10 unique NFTs derived from the entire Continuum artwork, invites collectors to engage with meditative visuals that subtly evolve over time. These pieces reflect Kim’s inspiration from the serene garden of Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, with the aim of reconnecting viewers to tranquility through digital interfaces.
Meanwhile, Fellowship carried out what was perhaps the most ambitious work of the Digital Art Mile, a nearly 300 square meter event space, to provide a pioneering study of the growth of AI in recent history art. The exhibition “Collaborations with the artificial self”. pays homage to Harold Cohen, the original father of artificial intelligence in art, and includes the only self-portrait ever created by his painting machine Aaron.
The first work inspired in 2015 by Elman Mansinov’s AlignDraw algorithm, at the origin of text-image AI, was the precursor to DALL-E and Stable Diffusion.
Works by other artists, including Botto, Mario Klingemann, Helena Sarin and Robbie Barrat, demonstrate how quickly this famous technology has revolutionized the digital art environment over the past decade. TAEX also hosted a conference where speakers such as Refik Anadol and Sasha Stiles presented their work.
In addition to the exhibitions in Rebgasse 25 and 31, the Kult.Kino Camera also organized various conferences daily during the art fair, where topics such as generative art, blockchain as an artistic medium and integration of Web3 by museums, gave rise to contemplative discussions around the role of digital art in the canon of art history.
The European premiere of the documentary film “What the Punk!” One of the highlights of the week took place as part of a speaking program hosted by Yuga Labs and Rug Radio, while the digital-focused events were complemented by a video exploring the extraordinary story of Matt Hall and John Watkinson, two Canadian software engineers who revolutionized the world. world with the Cryptopunks and sparked a new cultural movement.