Latest news with #MikeWinkelmann
New York Times
3 days ago
- 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 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.
