CONVERGENCE Aa
Quote from CohentheWriter on 27. April 2022, 6:27Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/permanent-collection?collection=0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0&token=11306&page=2
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/convergence-aa-11306
Date Minted: June 23, 2020
Artist Description: Lawrence Lee, acclaimed Contemporary Southwestern artist, and Bård Ionson, coder with a keen eye and an artistic bent, have begun a fascinating journey of collaboration that melds paintings with modern artificial intelligence technology. Lee’s “magic people” inhabit a separate reality that seems to be of another world--a multidimensional one. By combining one of the original human creative outlets, painting, and advanced math with new technologies, a multitude of mages, seers, shamans and sages has been born. This is a creation built on a lifetime of Lee’s creations at the easel. Bård used over 250 Lee paintings to train a machine learning / artificial intelligence system and used his own creative skills to perfect the output of the software and to curate results. Lee then worked to identify the best of the generated images and used his digital painting skills and immense creativity to improve on what Bård produced. The goal was to expand the creative palette like a hallucinatory dream. Controlled by Bård with training selections, the AI produced a googleplex of possible random outcomes. Lawrence and Bård have hand-selected the best of each production run from the machine, and Lawrence has worked to unearth these new shamans and the landscapes they inhabit by enhancing them further and augmenting their otherworldly qualities in an attempt to better understand their roots and to release their powers. The winning bidder will have the option to redeem an exclusive 1 of 1 , 10" X 10" inch print valued at $250 created by Lawrence in his Arizona studio. Coupon code will expire after two months if not redeemed.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Sometimes the artists say it best, and that’s certainly the case in CONVERGENCE Aa, part of a collaborative series between “acclaimed Contemporary Southwestern artist” Lawrence Lee and Bård Ionson, a “coder with a keen eye and an artistic bent.” The lengthy but incredibly helpful Artist Description describes how both “have begun a fascinating journey of collaboration that melds paintings with modern artificial intelligence technology. Lee’s ‘magic people’ inhabit a separate reality that seems to be of another world--a multidimensional one. By combining one of the original human creative outlets, painting, and advanced math with new technologies, a multitude of mages, seers, shamans and sages has been born. This is a creation built on a lifetime of Lee’s creations at the easel. Bård used over 250 Lee paintings to train a machine learning / artificial intelligence system and used his own creative skills to perfect the output of the software and to curate results. Lee then worked to identify the best of the generated images and used his digital painting skills and immense creativity to improve on what Bård produced. The goal was to expand the creative palette like a hallucinatory dream. Controlled by Bård with training selections, the AI produced a googleplex of possible random outcomes. Lawrence and Bård have hand-selected the best of each production run from the machine, and Lawrence has worked to unearth these new shamans and the landscapes they inhabit by enhancing them further and augmenting their otherworldly qualities in an attempt to better understand their roots and to release their powers.”
Most impressively, and I’d argue effectively, within this piece is the aspect of anachronism which anchors it, that interplay between the most ancient of arts, painting, and the absolute most contemporary version of them, algorithmic generation, only possible now that computers are sufficiently advanced enough to mimic with their output an immense human input. The result of this within the piece is rather obvious: CONVERGENCE Aa itself is split, almost at the direct midsection, between the ancient and the ultra-modern. Lee’s original drawing, the Native American gentleman pictured, dominates the top half of the piece (and really, all of it) with an intense glare directly into the eyes of the viewer. This is the past personified, not just the past as it relates to painting techniques, but a past era of American history, the hegemony of the Native American people before centuries of brutal (ongoing) genocide stripped them of that power. But not of their dignity. And dignified is perhaps the best way to describe this gentleman, outsized of personality if not of size. He has gold earrings. He has jet black hair. He has two long feathers protruding from his scalp, both leaning to the left as if blown in the breeze. The bottom half of the piece is unmistakable modern, however, controlled entirely by concentric circles of unambiguously abstract design. A black blob explodes outward, nominally the Native American man’s body. Within the black mass is a red and blue, but ultimately unclear, medallion of sorts, or it may be a representation of traditional clothing a la the algorithm which so clearly crafted it. What is clear however, is that there is no antagonism between the two halves of this image. There seems to be a deep respect between the two parts of this image, with each building off of the other, each the other side of the original’s coin.
The algorithm allows Lee’s character to be larger than he is originally, to be reborn, in a way, in a new age, in a form that both places it unrequitedly in our time but which, at the same time, honors the timeless beauty of the original piece. That applies, I’d argue, to both the subject and to the technical style itself. Often, traditional painting seems to go by the wayside in Crypto Art, which makes sense considering the dominance painting has had over the visual art sphere for many hundreds of years, and how Crypto Artists, armed with new perspectives and new attitudes and new technology, constantly seek to find newness, or modern ways of communing with that past. Rarely, however, are they so reverent towards the past they choose to speak with. Irreverence is the common tone of Crypto Art, but CONVERGENCE Aa never allows its subject nor its traditional style to go unexalted. We see this in the bare background, not one filled up by technological imagery. We see this in the austerity the Native American man’s head is presented with, having been provided with the space to be examined and overpowering.
Ionson’s technologically-advanced aspects of the piece really serve to call attention to Lee’s more traditional style. The colors Ionson has used and chosen are not gaudy. There is not an immense amount of material to look at. Ionson is wisely deliberate about the small amount of detail he uses, choosing to only include generative aspects which enhance or extend from the piece’s hand-painted part. If anything, the colors Ionson has chosen are ones that are pulled from the Native American gentleman’s paint: the same black of his hair, the same gold of his earrings. It’s the aforementioned medallion, a complete abstraction which might represent a heart and not a brooch, which captures our attention when examining the image’s lower half, and which truly duels with Lee’s character. Duets is a better word perhaps. The medallion is a detail made in harmony with a machine, as opposed to Lee’s section, which is more in line with traditional artistry, a detail made in harmony with some abstract creative spirit. Both are represented here, neither more important than the other, and both proving adequate avenues to high expression. There is no gauged superiority between the traditional and the futuristic. There is no need. They reveal themselves, both beautiful, both borne of the same spirit, and both filled fully by the presence of their opposite.
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/convergence-aa-11306
Date Minted: June 23, 2020
Artist Description: Lawrence Lee, acclaimed Contemporary Southwestern artist, and Bård Ionson, coder with a keen eye and an artistic bent, have begun a fascinating journey of collaboration that melds paintings with modern artificial intelligence technology. Lee’s “magic people” inhabit a separate reality that seems to be of another world--a multidimensional one. By combining one of the original human creative outlets, painting, and advanced math with new technologies, a multitude of mages, seers, shamans and sages has been born. This is a creation built on a lifetime of Lee’s creations at the easel. Bård used over 250 Lee paintings to train a machine learning / artificial intelligence system and used his own creative skills to perfect the output of the software and to curate results. Lee then worked to identify the best of the generated images and used his digital painting skills and immense creativity to improve on what Bård produced. The goal was to expand the creative palette like a hallucinatory dream. Controlled by Bård with training selections, the AI produced a googleplex of possible random outcomes. Lawrence and Bård have hand-selected the best of each production run from the machine, and Lawrence has worked to unearth these new shamans and the landscapes they inhabit by enhancing them further and augmenting their otherworldly qualities in an attempt to better understand their roots and to release their powers. The winning bidder will have the option to redeem an exclusive 1 of 1 , 10" X 10" inch print valued at $250 created by Lawrence in his Arizona studio. Coupon code will expire after two months if not redeemed.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Sometimes the artists say it best, and that’s certainly the case in CONVERGENCE Aa, part of a collaborative series between “acclaimed Contemporary Southwestern artist” Lawrence Lee and Bård Ionson, a “coder with a keen eye and an artistic bent.” The lengthy but incredibly helpful Artist Description describes how both “have begun a fascinating journey of collaboration that melds paintings with modern artificial intelligence technology. Lee’s ‘magic people’ inhabit a separate reality that seems to be of another world--a multidimensional one. By combining one of the original human creative outlets, painting, and advanced math with new technologies, a multitude of mages, seers, shamans and sages has been born. This is a creation built on a lifetime of Lee’s creations at the easel. Bård used over 250 Lee paintings to train a machine learning / artificial intelligence system and used his own creative skills to perfect the output of the software and to curate results. Lee then worked to identify the best of the generated images and used his digital painting skills and immense creativity to improve on what Bård produced. The goal was to expand the creative palette like a hallucinatory dream. Controlled by Bård with training selections, the AI produced a googleplex of possible random outcomes. Lawrence and Bård have hand-selected the best of each production run from the machine, and Lawrence has worked to unearth these new shamans and the landscapes they inhabit by enhancing them further and augmenting their otherworldly qualities in an attempt to better understand their roots and to release their powers.”
Most impressively, and I’d argue effectively, within this piece is the aspect of anachronism which anchors it, that interplay between the most ancient of arts, painting, and the absolute most contemporary version of them, algorithmic generation, only possible now that computers are sufficiently advanced enough to mimic with their output an immense human input. The result of this within the piece is rather obvious: CONVERGENCE Aa itself is split, almost at the direct midsection, between the ancient and the ultra-modern. Lee’s original drawing, the Native American gentleman pictured, dominates the top half of the piece (and really, all of it) with an intense glare directly into the eyes of the viewer. This is the past personified, not just the past as it relates to painting techniques, but a past era of American history, the hegemony of the Native American people before centuries of brutal (ongoing) genocide stripped them of that power. But not of their dignity. And dignified is perhaps the best way to describe this gentleman, outsized of personality if not of size. He has gold earrings. He has jet black hair. He has two long feathers protruding from his scalp, both leaning to the left as if blown in the breeze. The bottom half of the piece is unmistakable modern, however, controlled entirely by concentric circles of unambiguously abstract design. A black blob explodes outward, nominally the Native American man’s body. Within the black mass is a red and blue, but ultimately unclear, medallion of sorts, or it may be a representation of traditional clothing a la the algorithm which so clearly crafted it. What is clear however, is that there is no antagonism between the two halves of this image. There seems to be a deep respect between the two parts of this image, with each building off of the other, each the other side of the original’s coin.
The algorithm allows Lee’s character to be larger than he is originally, to be reborn, in a way, in a new age, in a form that both places it unrequitedly in our time but which, at the same time, honors the timeless beauty of the original piece. That applies, I’d argue, to both the subject and to the technical style itself. Often, traditional painting seems to go by the wayside in Crypto Art, which makes sense considering the dominance painting has had over the visual art sphere for many hundreds of years, and how Crypto Artists, armed with new perspectives and new attitudes and new technology, constantly seek to find newness, or modern ways of communing with that past. Rarely, however, are they so reverent towards the past they choose to speak with. Irreverence is the common tone of Crypto Art, but CONVERGENCE Aa never allows its subject nor its traditional style to go unexalted. We see this in the bare background, not one filled up by technological imagery. We see this in the austerity the Native American man’s head is presented with, having been provided with the space to be examined and overpowering.
Ionson’s technologically-advanced aspects of the piece really serve to call attention to Lee’s more traditional style. The colors Ionson has used and chosen are not gaudy. There is not an immense amount of material to look at. Ionson is wisely deliberate about the small amount of detail he uses, choosing to only include generative aspects which enhance or extend from the piece’s hand-painted part. If anything, the colors Ionson has chosen are ones that are pulled from the Native American gentleman’s paint: the same black of his hair, the same gold of his earrings. It’s the aforementioned medallion, a complete abstraction which might represent a heart and not a brooch, which captures our attention when examining the image’s lower half, and which truly duels with Lee’s character. Duets is a better word perhaps. The medallion is a detail made in harmony with a machine, as opposed to Lee’s section, which is more in line with traditional artistry, a detail made in harmony with some abstract creative spirit. Both are represented here, neither more important than the other, and both proving adequate avenues to high expression. There is no gauged superiority between the traditional and the futuristic. There is no need. They reveal themselves, both beautiful, both borne of the same spirit, and both filled fully by the presence of their opposite.