Another World
Quote from CohentheWriter on 29. September 2022, 16:40Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0x2A46f2fFD99e19a89476E2f62270e0a35bBf0756&token=39554&page=5
Source Link: https://makersplace.com/andreaslilja/another-world-3-of-5-421658/
Date Minted:Â May 25, 2022
Artist Description: Inspired from a game from my childhood, In the ancient world where games was built pixel by pixel 🙂 Another world, lost in a Alien World.. Another World, known as Out of This World in North America. The game tells a story of Lester, a young scientist who, as a result of an experiment gone wrong, finds himself on a dangerous alien world where he is forced to fight for his survival.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Andreas Lilja’s secret ingredient is familiarity. Many AI artists will incidentally happen upon familiar aspects in their works, and so we as observers end up latching onto any traits/individuals/landscapes/objects that we feel are identifiable, and through the lens of those things, we begin to fill in associative gaps about the rest of an abstract artwork. Lilja doesn’t just centralize that familiarity, he makes it the brightest-shining and most-defining aspect of his work. He does this through a variety of creative means. In Dystopia #2 Artificial Terraforming, he supplements apocalyptic graphics with filters over the screen that mimic a faulty camera, plying us with material with which to ground ourselves in a not-immediately-identifiable environment. And here, in the piece before us today, his bizarre and mostly-incomprehensible Another World, Lilja makes sure that we cannot escape the piece’s thrall without his guidance:
“Inspired from a game from my childhood,
In the ancient world where games was built
pixel by pixel 🙂
Another world, lost in a Alien World..
Another World, known as Out of This World in North America.
The game tells a story of Lester, a young scientist who, as a result of an experiment gone wrong, finds himself on a dangerous alien world where he is forced to fight for his survival.”
^^^That’s Lilja’s artist description for Another World. Lest we know not what associations we’re meant to have with his surreal and highly-abstract and somewhat aquatic piece, Lilja directs our thinking. Aliens, scientists, experiments, survival. Games from childhood. Now, thanks to Lilja’s nudging, we can have a communal experience with an abstract art piece, an extremely rare occurrence indeed.Â
And at least in Another World, we’re in dire need of direction. I’ve never seen a piece of AI art as impenetrable as this one, and even within Lilja’s collection, Another World stands as an outlier. Trying to describe it isn’t just a futile endeavor, it’s actively impossible. Nothing within this piece is anything, though these half-nothings nevertheless form into structures, form a composition, fill up the frame. Have you ever read Jeff Vandermeer’s book Annihilation? Or maybe you’ve seen Gareth Edwards’ film adaptation. Regardless, the crux of the story centers around some kind of alien or interdimensional creature that human beings do not have the cognitive capacity to understand; it is literally beyond our comprehension. In the book, it is nevertheless described, or, rather, its effect on the protagonist is described, but the thing itself is beyond language. Does that not describe what we’re looking at here? There is a generally-silver hue to the whole thing, and a blueishness to the items within, a palace of abstract organics that stretches up from the center of the image’s bottom edge and splits wide into dueling ramparts extending towards the right and left side of the frame. One of those ramparts appears to be partly a fish. Vague appendages that seem almost like seaweed, or coral, jut out haphazardly. Dragon scales seem to cover a pillar that runs parallel to the right side of the frame. Hanging, succulent-plant-like vines emerge from the top-left of the piece. In the very center, bubbles rise up from a supposed-dome’s trident-esque tip. I use aquatic imagery to describe what’s here simply because I don’t have anything else to use and because there may be nothing else in the first place. Certain areas of the piece draw our attention for being incongruent. A cave of orange light. A semi-hidden jewel shimmering in iridescent hues.Â
It seems strange to suggest that this piece is less knowable —even with Lilja’s help— than other pieces, by he and by others, that are exclusively abstraction, that are purposefully abstraction, or are purposefully meant to confound. But it is, and that’s because, in Another World, none of the abstraction is clearly composed. The artist’s intention is as hidden behind the corrupted imagery as much as the details of the image itself. I can’t tell if Lilja is seeking to lead us through his dense imagery with some kind of codex, or if that codex only serves —intentionally or otherwise— to confuse and mislead us. Even by applying the aforementioned code-words —Aliens, scientists, experiments, survival— I’m still at a loss to commonly apply them herein. We have reached a truly unprecedented level of abstraction, a kind of ur-abstraction that extends outwards from the piece to the title, to the description, to the nature of our relationship with a theorized artist, the Andreas Lilja who exists in our heads. He himself, and his artistry, are newly obscured behind a waterfall layer of not-quite-high-res digital paint he provides before us. We start to form other, secondary questions, wondering whether things like the low resolution, for instance, are also deliberate.Â
It’s one thing to use one’s artistry to make a piece more abstract, and thus our relationship to it. It’s an entirely different thing to use one’s artistry to make oneself more abstract. I’ve never felt before like I know an artist less for looking at a piece of their art, or for reading what is, by all appearances, a very personal Artist Description. Yet Lilja, in my mind, has become flowing and gaseous. He has expanded to be so many things. A mirror of Another World.Â
Source Link: https://makersplace.com/andreaslilja/another-world-3-of-5-421658/
Date Minted:Â May 25, 2022
Artist Description: Inspired from a game from my childhood, In the ancient world where games was built pixel by pixel 🙂 Another world, lost in a Alien World.. Another World, known as Out of This World in North America. The game tells a story of Lester, a young scientist who, as a result of an experiment gone wrong, finds himself on a dangerous alien world where he is forced to fight for his survival.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Andreas Lilja’s secret ingredient is familiarity. Many AI artists will incidentally happen upon familiar aspects in their works, and so we as observers end up latching onto any traits/individuals/landscapes/objects that we feel are identifiable, and through the lens of those things, we begin to fill in associative gaps about the rest of an abstract artwork. Lilja doesn’t just centralize that familiarity, he makes it the brightest-shining and most-defining aspect of his work. He does this through a variety of creative means. In Dystopia #2 Artificial Terraforming, he supplements apocalyptic graphics with filters over the screen that mimic a faulty camera, plying us with material with which to ground ourselves in a not-immediately-identifiable environment. And here, in the piece before us today, his bizarre and mostly-incomprehensible Another World, Lilja makes sure that we cannot escape the piece’s thrall without his guidance:
“Inspired from a game from my childhood,
In the ancient world where games was built
pixel by pixel 🙂
Another world, lost in a Alien World..
Another World, known as Out of This World in North America.
The game tells a story of Lester, a young scientist who, as a result of an experiment gone wrong, finds himself on a dangerous alien world where he is forced to fight for his survival.”
^^^That’s Lilja’s artist description for Another World. Lest we know not what associations we’re meant to have with his surreal and highly-abstract and somewhat aquatic piece, Lilja directs our thinking. Aliens, scientists, experiments, survival. Games from childhood. Now, thanks to Lilja’s nudging, we can have a communal experience with an abstract art piece, an extremely rare occurrence indeed.Â
And at least in Another World, we’re in dire need of direction. I’ve never seen a piece of AI art as impenetrable as this one, and even within Lilja’s collection, Another World stands as an outlier. Trying to describe it isn’t just a futile endeavor, it’s actively impossible. Nothing within this piece is anything, though these half-nothings nevertheless form into structures, form a composition, fill up the frame. Have you ever read Jeff Vandermeer’s book Annihilation? Or maybe you’ve seen Gareth Edwards’ film adaptation. Regardless, the crux of the story centers around some kind of alien or interdimensional creature that human beings do not have the cognitive capacity to understand; it is literally beyond our comprehension. In the book, it is nevertheless described, or, rather, its effect on the protagonist is described, but the thing itself is beyond language. Does that not describe what we’re looking at here? There is a generally-silver hue to the whole thing, and a blueishness to the items within, a palace of abstract organics that stretches up from the center of the image’s bottom edge and splits wide into dueling ramparts extending towards the right and left side of the frame. One of those ramparts appears to be partly a fish. Vague appendages that seem almost like seaweed, or coral, jut out haphazardly. Dragon scales seem to cover a pillar that runs parallel to the right side of the frame. Hanging, succulent-plant-like vines emerge from the top-left of the piece. In the very center, bubbles rise up from a supposed-dome’s trident-esque tip. I use aquatic imagery to describe what’s here simply because I don’t have anything else to use and because there may be nothing else in the first place. Certain areas of the piece draw our attention for being incongruent. A cave of orange light. A semi-hidden jewel shimmering in iridescent hues.Â
It seems strange to suggest that this piece is less knowable —even with Lilja’s help— than other pieces, by he and by others, that are exclusively abstraction, that are purposefully abstraction, or are purposefully meant to confound. But it is, and that’s because, in Another World, none of the abstraction is clearly composed. The artist’s intention is as hidden behind the corrupted imagery as much as the details of the image itself. I can’t tell if Lilja is seeking to lead us through his dense imagery with some kind of codex, or if that codex only serves —intentionally or otherwise— to confuse and mislead us. Even by applying the aforementioned code-words —Aliens, scientists, experiments, survival— I’m still at a loss to commonly apply them herein. We have reached a truly unprecedented level of abstraction, a kind of ur-abstraction that extends outwards from the piece to the title, to the description, to the nature of our relationship with a theorized artist, the Andreas Lilja who exists in our heads. He himself, and his artistry, are newly obscured behind a waterfall layer of not-quite-high-res digital paint he provides before us. We start to form other, secondary questions, wondering whether things like the low resolution, for instance, are also deliberate.Â
It’s one thing to use one’s artistry to make a piece more abstract, and thus our relationship to it. It’s an entirely different thing to use one’s artistry to make oneself more abstract. I’ve never felt before like I know an artist less for looking at a piece of their art, or for reading what is, by all appearances, a very personal Artist Description. Yet Lilja, in my mind, has become flowing and gaseous. He has expanded to be so many things. A mirror of Another World.Â