Latest news with #Beeple
AU Financial Review
10-07-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
These art collectors have lost $250k on NFTs. They still love them
Bitcoin? At record levels. Artificial intelligence? Yes, please. Data centres? The hottest thing going. And NFTs, the art industry's entree to the world of the future? Eh, not so much. Four years since the world was awash with images of cartoon apes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and non-fungible tokens were being inserted into everything from handbags to diamonds, the dream is struggling along. Here are some shocking numbers. One cryptocurrency trader outlaid $US69.3 million ($106 million) for a single piece of NFT, a piece known as Everydays: The First 5000 Days, by American artist Mike Winkelmann, or Beeple. That was March 2021, and the piece was the first NFT artwork ever to be offered by a major auction house, on this occasion Christie's. The total value of NFT transactions reached $US57 billion in 2022.
New York Times
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
It's Still South by Southwest, but This Time It's in London
The artist known as Beeple set a record in 2021 when a work of his — a collage of 5,000 images that existed only as a digital file — sold for $69.3 million in a Christie's auction. Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, is one of the artists participating in the inaugural edition of South by Southwest London, the music, film and tech festival. This time, he is presenting 'The Tree of Knowledge,' a critique of the human addiction to smartphones. 'People don't fully recognize how much their phone is stressing them out,' and how much they're 'dialing up the noise,' Beeple said in a phone interview. 'They could make the choice to dial down the noise, and just put their phone down, and exist in a much more calm state in which technology still exists.' The work is a refrigerator-size box containing a giant tree (recreated via projection mapping), with screens on all sides, and a large dial. When viewers turn the dial, the box is covered with live news, stock prices and data, illustrating the information overload faced by humanity. 'The Tree of Knowledge' encapsulates the spirit of South by Southwest London, which begins on Monday and runs through June 7. The event will feature a diverse group of speakers, including the ABBA singer-songwriter Bjorn Ulvaeus, the actor Idris Elba, the wellness and meditation expert Deepak Chopra, the primatologist Jane Goodall and the comedian Katherine Ryan. There will also be voices from the technology world, including Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google's DeepMind lab and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; and Alex Kendall, the chief executive of Wayve, a developer of artificial intelligence systems for self-driving cars. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Japan Forward
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Forward
'MACHINE LOVE': Where AI Meets Art on the 53rd Floor
The Mori Art Museum at Roppongi Hills is holding an exhibition titled MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art , until June 8, 2025. The exhibition showcases artwork that utilizes artificial intelligence, generative AI, virtual reality, and game engine technology that is reshaping the commercial and social world. The artists employ this cutting-edge technology to create new forms of aesthetics while dealing with such issues as gender, diversity, the environmental crisis, and historical interpretation. MACHINE LOVE is a curious title. The most common assumed interpretation is likely a "love for gaming." The more technically minded might see "love" in terms of the reward (love) and punishment (tough love) dynamic of reinforcement learning theory that drives generative AI. According to the curators, however, "machine" is simply meant as a general term for computing and hardware technology, while "love" represents the full range of emotions directed towards games and machines, from affection to jealousy, fear to exhilaration. "Love" further questions whether future generations of sophisticated AI, robots, androids, and cyborgs could possess their own consciences and emotions. MACHINE LOVE comprises the work of 11 individual artists and one artistic team. Many of the exhibits are digital, but non-digital artworks such as paintings and sculptures are included. An additional feature is interactive games that include German-American artist, Diemut's, El Turco/Living Theater (2024) , in which visitors are invited to debate with AI characters. Three Approaches to Synthetic Entities, 2025. AI installation. Dimensions variable. Technical collaboration with Georgia Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, and University of Utah. Production support: Anthropic The artwork within the exhibition is preceded by a wall display of relevant terms and expressions with which visitors may not be familiar, including the following. Metaverse: A virtual space on the internet where people can interact with others and enjoy various services. Avatar: A digital character that represents a user's "alter ego." Afrofuturism: A cultural and artistic movement that explores African diaspora culture at the interaction of technology, science, cosmology, and futuristic themes. The initial exhibit is Beeple's HUMAN ONE (2021) , which is a representation of the first human born in the metaverse. In this hypnotic work, a figure in a cuboid space walks endlessly through an ever-changing digital landscape. The shape of the exhibit creates a three-dimensional sense that is uncommon in digital artwork. Beeple. HUMAN ONE, 2021. Four video screens (16k resolution), polished aluminum metal, mahogany wood frame, media server, and endless video with corresponding dynamic nonfungible token 220 x 114.8 x 114.8 cm. Installation view: Beeple: HUMAN ONE, M+, Hong Kong, 2022-2023. Photo: Lok Cheng Beeple is the moniker of Mike Winkelman, an American digital artist, graphic designer, and animator. He became famous in 2021 when his long-term digital project, EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS (2021) was sold at auction for an extraordinary $69 million USD. This triggered broad awareness of the concept of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). An NFT is a unique digital identifier that is recorded on a blockchain and is used to certify ownership and authenticity of digital content. An artwork inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic is Delivery Dancers Sphere , by South Korean artist Kim Aoyong. The pandemic was a time when an increased volume of deliveries was carried out by an army of delivery workers who moved through less crowded streets. As the reception of the packages was largely impersonal, the delivery workers were invisible presences within cities. In Kim's 25-minute video, female delivery workers strive to complete their deliveries in the shortest times through the streets of urban Seoul. It is a love story that has the feel of a video game. The siting of Delivery Dancers Sphere within the 53rd-floor Mori Art Museum adds much to its impact. It is located in an exhibition room that includes a large window that looks out over the central Tokyo skyline and its labyrinth of streets and lanes. The view out the window adds much to the feel of the exhibit, especially at night. Kim Ayoung, Delivery Dancer's Sphere, 2022. Video, 25 min. Kim Ayoung, Delivery Dancer's Sphere, 2022. Video, 25 min. Perhaps the most striking of the works are Shanghai-born Lu Yang's dual video presentations, DOKU the self and DOKU the flow . Yang, a practicing Buddhist, examines how Buddhist wisdom and themes can be explored through new technologies and pop cultural tropes. DOKU refers to the Buddhist phrase " dokusho dokushi " which means "We are born alone, and we die alone." Within Yang's exhibited work, an avatar named DOKU, who is a digital carnation of Yang, journeys through varying dimensions of the Buddhist spiritual world. Lu Yang. Installation view: MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2025. Photo: Takehisa Naoki. Photo courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo On May 11, 1997, the world was shocked when a computer, Deep Blue, defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov. We are presently moving towards an even more significant point in time. It is "singularity," the date when AI surpasses human intelligence. This is predicted to occur around 2045. There is much to both look forward to and fear about singularity. Which jobs will survive? Which will die? Will even the creativity of the human artist be supplanted by the machine? As an exhibition that showcases generative AI during its formative years, MACHINE LOVE generates a host of questions whose answers will arrive in time. But for now, it is perhaps pertinent to remember that the game of chess, in its analog form, continues to thrive. Around three hours would be required to view all of the videos in their entirety, assuming that the visitor managed to arrive at each presentation as it commenced. Sato Ryotaro, Inorganic Friends, 2023. 4K video, 7 min. 37 sec. MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art , therefore, is difficult to fully enjoy during a single visit. A certain degree of time planning is advised, while visitors might also take advantage of a half-price discount for a repeat visit that is available when tickets are bought online. Author: Paul de Vries
Japan Times
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
Online art scene eager to go offline, at least for the moment
Artists who have found internet fame through their digital work are increasingly bringing their art into the physical world, and galleries and museums are opening their doors to them. Digital-first artists began entering the mainstream art scene several years ago. In 2021, Beeple (whose real name is Mike Winkelmann) made history when his creation became the first purely digital piece of art to be sold at auction house Christie's. The appetite for digital art remains strong, as demonstrated by Beeple's participation in the Mori Art Museum's 'Machine Love: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art' exhibition, which opened Feb. 13 and runs through to June 8. His 'Human One' is simultaneously an NFT (non-fungible token) artwork and a physical piece consisting of four screens encased in a 2.2-meter-tall rectangle box, playing an endless video loop of a life-size figure walking inside the enclosed space. It's the most striking work in an exhibition that otherwise leaves much to be desired, both in its tech and content, and avoids any difficult conversations about the role of AI in creating art.
Euronews
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Christie's to host groundbreaking auction featuring only AI art
Kicking off on 20 February and running until 5 March, the 'Augmented Intelligence' sale at Christie's in New York will showcase more than 20 works from AI pioneers like Refik Anadol, Pinar Van Arman, and Claire Silver, spanning everything from early neural network experiments to contemporary creations. This marks the first time a major auction house has hosted an exclusive AI art auction. The collection will include a diverse mix of pieces – some of which are NFTs, while others are physical works such as sculptures, paintings, and prints. Perhaps the most intriguing lot will be 'Emerging Faces' (2017) by Pinar Van Arman, a series of abstract portraits painted by two AI agents. The AI algorithms work together, one generating human faces while the other halts the process once a face is detected. The evocative – even haunting – results are considered among the first to be painted autonomously by neural networks. Another unique feature of the sale is the inclusion of an interactive robot painting. The 3.7-metre-tall (12 feet) robot, created by Alexander Reben, will be on hand at the Rockefeller Center gallery, where it will paint a new section of the canvas in real time as online bids increase. Starting at just $100, bidders can watch the art take shape as the auction progresses. Alongside these works, husband-and-wife duo Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst will present their Embedding Study' (2024) pieces, which were part of the 2024 Whitney Biennial. These works, which feature a character in a bulky spacesuit, are based on Herndon's appearance and made using a text-to-image AI model. Though the majority of the pieces are expected to fetch significant sums, there has been some controversy surrounding the auction. Reid Southern, an illustrator, published an open letter calling on artists not to auction works that may have been created using AI models trained on copyrighted works without permission. 'Many of the works you are planning to put up for auction use AI models trained on copyrighted works,' reads the letter, 'AI models and the companies behind them exploit human artists and use their works without permission or compensation to build commercial AI products that compete with artists.' As of Monday 10 February, the letter had been signed by over 3,400 people, with many citing concerns about the ethics behind using AI in art creation. For its part, Christie's wrote on X that the sale 'challenges us to rethink the limits of artistic agency'. The auction house is optimistic and is expecting the auction to bring in at least $600,000 (€581,000), with cryptocurrency being accepted as payment for most of the lots. Christie's has already made its mark in the digital art world, not least with a landmark non-fungible token (NFT) auction in 2021. On 11 March 2021, the auction house made history by selling Beeple's 'Everydays: The First 5000 Days' for a staggering $69 million €66.8 million) – the first major auction house to bring NFTs to the global stage. In November, Sotheby's New York made waves by selling a painting created by Ai-Da, a humanoid robot powered by AI, for $1,084,800 (€1 million).
