Lana's Sun
Quote from CohentheWriter on 13. June 2022, 3:34Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0x41a322b28d0ff354040e2cbc676f0320d8c8850d&token=617&page=3
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork/lana%27s-sun-617
Date Minted: August 23, 2018
Artist Description: Style and the LanaCoin logo, I created this beauty by accident. I was intending for a more "traditional" symmetric piece, but I'd choosen the LanaCoin logo in advance to integrate into an artwork, as I found it interesting (though I had no idea about it's story). Whe n I created a couple of more or less symmetric pieces, Deep Style had other ideas, and added the touch of red. I found it looked superb with that little touch in it, so here we are ! Apparently, LanaCoin is a copy-paste coin that was created by Lana's father as a gift for her 10th birthday... pretty strange gift, but apparently Lana likes math so I suppose she might have found it interesting to have a coin named after her, with her dad taking care of maintaining it's network. In any case, I really like how this one turned out ! Here's the design post I published: https://steemit.com/slothicorn/@pbock/my-newest-cryptoartwork-lanas-sun
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
With a Superrare oeuvre clocking in at a preposterous 266 piece, crypto art OG Peter Bock is one of the most prolific artists I’ve come across in terms of overall output. The sheer largesse of his collected works, coupled with his placing a description of his processes and motivations beside each piece, makes Bock one of the more approachable generative artists in the space, his works almost always being given some nearby context, his impulses on display, the style easily-observable as one scans through his works. They aren’t always as lengthy and intricate as the description which accompanies this piece, Lana’s Sun, but perhaps not all of his pieces stem from such an interesting place. As Bock himself tells it, Lana’s Sun was “Created using Gimp, Weavesilk, Deep Style and the LanaCoin logo, I created this beauty by accident. I was intending for a more "traditional" symmetric piece, but I'd choosen the LanaCoin logo in advance to integrate into an artwork, as I found it interesting (though I had no idea about it's story). When I created a couple of more or less symmetric pieces, Deep Style had other ideas, and added the touch of red. I found it looked superb with that little touch in it, so here we are ! Apparently, LanaCoin is a copy-paste coin that was created by Lana's father as a gift for her 10th birthday... pretty strange gift, but apparently Lana likes math so I suppose she might have found it interesting to have a coin named after her, with her dad taking care of maintaining it's network. In any case, I really like how this one turned out !”
One of the difficulties, in my estimation, that a lot of people have when confronting generative or AI art is that it’s oftentimes quite tough to pinpoint the presence of the artist within each piece. Like, if we know that the artist is responsible for the overarching composition of the piece but not the individual choices therein, I think we sometimes lose the artist altogether, or rather, the artist loses us. This is very much a “now” problem, the likely result of generative art’s renaissance bringing it to many people for the first time. And yet, Bock has found a pretty simple way of predominating his piece with his presence. He simply declares himself present within it! He uses his Artist Descriptions to say, “Look! I’m right here, here, and here.” He says this color is this way for this reason, this piece evolved out of this mindset, and here’s exactly where I end but the AI begins. You can feel Bock within his pieces. He glazes the pieces themselves with his own texture.
But that’s perhaps outside the purview of the pieces themselves, pieces like Lana’s Sun, this motley sunburst of red and yellow and green. We can forgo discussing the motivations that Bock already elucidated above and focus in on the actual composition of the piece itself. The central diamond shape, a golden glowing whirlpool that draws the eyes towards it. It flares outwards in bright lines of sharp yellow, lines which puncture tiles of red and orange and beige. Maybe implying that there’s separation between the colors is disingenuous; there are very few totally cohesive sections of color here. Those flaring lines of yellow, others of turquoise, some of green, sure. And patches of bright red. But most of this piece is characterized by blended colors plugged into half-formed shapes, as if we’re seeing different dyes disseminating outward in a pool of liquid. In the very center of the piece, there’s a stylized drawing of a sun. If you zoom in, you can see that the AI responsible for crafting this piece did so while applying a canvas-like texture underneath the color.
Often, if not always, Bock’s pieces are composed around a central totem or mandala, some shape that sits in the very middle of his pieces and which act as the (no pun intended) sun for each work’s internal gravity. These symbols are also quite often presented as closed-off from the rest of each piece, like here where the stylized sun, and the colors immediately surrounding it, are imprisoned behind the yellow diamond, thus bifurcating this piece into the part within the walls and the part outside of it.
Thanks to Bock’s lengthy Artist Description, we can stop at this point of examination and know with unusual certainty how exactly the piece evolved in this way, which parts of it were of the artist’s origination and which were of the AI’s. Bock himself says he “created a couple of more or less symmetric pieces, [but] Deep Style had other ideas.” That kind of language, the personification of the algorithm, reminds me of an interview I once conducted with generative artist Refik Anadol, who spoke of his AI’s as collaborators and not mere tools. I get the same sense from Bock’s pieces, Lana’s Sun especially. The way he speaks of his AI programs here, one gets the sense that he’s not directing a phantom paintbrush but watching a child work, providing pointers, providing gentle guidelines, but allowing for ample coloring outside the lines, so to speak, and ample personality. The result is a piece that isn’t quite as esoteric as other generative pieces, that can be appreciated as any piece of abstract or expressionist art, and that doesn’t seem to revolve around the unique capabilities of a GAN art as much as it celebrates how the AI crafts something which might otherwise seem human. Tell me truthfully, if you didn’t know that Peter Bock was an AI artist, would you know he hadn’t created this piece by his own hand? What would tip you off? Because it’s not the presence of the person that’s hidden here, it’s curiously, strangely, uniquely the presence of the computer which I can’t seem to locate.
Perhaps Bock and his machines just work in truly uncommon lockstep.
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork/lana%27s-sun-617
Date Minted: August 23, 2018
Artist Description: Style and the LanaCoin logo, I created this beauty by accident. I was intending for a more "traditional" symmetric piece, but I'd choosen the LanaCoin logo in advance to integrate into an artwork, as I found it interesting (though I had no idea about it's story). Whe n I created a couple of more or less symmetric pieces, Deep Style had other ideas, and added the touch of red. I found it looked superb with that little touch in it, so here we are ! Apparently, LanaCoin is a copy-paste coin that was created by Lana's father as a gift for her 10th birthday... pretty strange gift, but apparently Lana likes math so I suppose she might have found it interesting to have a coin named after her, with her dad taking care of maintaining it's network. In any case, I really like how this one turned out ! Here's the design post I published: https://steemit.com/slothicorn/@pbock/my-newest-cryptoartwork-lanas-sun
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
With a Superrare oeuvre clocking in at a preposterous 266 piece, crypto art OG Peter Bock is one of the most prolific artists I’ve come across in terms of overall output. The sheer largesse of his collected works, coupled with his placing a description of his processes and motivations beside each piece, makes Bock one of the more approachable generative artists in the space, his works almost always being given some nearby context, his impulses on display, the style easily-observable as one scans through his works. They aren’t always as lengthy and intricate as the description which accompanies this piece, Lana’s Sun, but perhaps not all of his pieces stem from such an interesting place. As Bock himself tells it, Lana’s Sun was “Created using Gimp, Weavesilk, Deep Style and the LanaCoin logo, I created this beauty by accident. I was intending for a more "traditional" symmetric piece, but I'd choosen the LanaCoin logo in advance to integrate into an artwork, as I found it interesting (though I had no idea about it's story). When I created a couple of more or less symmetric pieces, Deep Style had other ideas, and added the touch of red. I found it looked superb with that little touch in it, so here we are ! Apparently, LanaCoin is a copy-paste coin that was created by Lana's father as a gift for her 10th birthday... pretty strange gift, but apparently Lana likes math so I suppose she might have found it interesting to have a coin named after her, with her dad taking care of maintaining it's network. In any case, I really like how this one turned out !”
One of the difficulties, in my estimation, that a lot of people have when confronting generative or AI art is that it’s oftentimes quite tough to pinpoint the presence of the artist within each piece. Like, if we know that the artist is responsible for the overarching composition of the piece but not the individual choices therein, I think we sometimes lose the artist altogether, or rather, the artist loses us. This is very much a “now” problem, the likely result of generative art’s renaissance bringing it to many people for the first time. And yet, Bock has found a pretty simple way of predominating his piece with his presence. He simply declares himself present within it! He uses his Artist Descriptions to say, “Look! I’m right here, here, and here.” He says this color is this way for this reason, this piece evolved out of this mindset, and here’s exactly where I end but the AI begins. You can feel Bock within his pieces. He glazes the pieces themselves with his own texture.
But that’s perhaps outside the purview of the pieces themselves, pieces like Lana’s Sun, this motley sunburst of red and yellow and green. We can forgo discussing the motivations that Bock already elucidated above and focus in on the actual composition of the piece itself. The central diamond shape, a golden glowing whirlpool that draws the eyes towards it. It flares outwards in bright lines of sharp yellow, lines which puncture tiles of red and orange and beige. Maybe implying that there’s separation between the colors is disingenuous; there are very few totally cohesive sections of color here. Those flaring lines of yellow, others of turquoise, some of green, sure. And patches of bright red. But most of this piece is characterized by blended colors plugged into half-formed shapes, as if we’re seeing different dyes disseminating outward in a pool of liquid. In the very center of the piece, there’s a stylized drawing of a sun. If you zoom in, you can see that the AI responsible for crafting this piece did so while applying a canvas-like texture underneath the color.
Often, if not always, Bock’s pieces are composed around a central totem or mandala, some shape that sits in the very middle of his pieces and which act as the (no pun intended) sun for each work’s internal gravity. These symbols are also quite often presented as closed-off from the rest of each piece, like here where the stylized sun, and the colors immediately surrounding it, are imprisoned behind the yellow diamond, thus bifurcating this piece into the part within the walls and the part outside of it.
Thanks to Bock’s lengthy Artist Description, we can stop at this point of examination and know with unusual certainty how exactly the piece evolved in this way, which parts of it were of the artist’s origination and which were of the AI’s. Bock himself says he “created a couple of more or less symmetric pieces, [but] Deep Style had other ideas.” That kind of language, the personification of the algorithm, reminds me of an interview I once conducted with generative artist Refik Anadol, who spoke of his AI’s as collaborators and not mere tools. I get the same sense from Bock’s pieces, Lana’s Sun especially. The way he speaks of his AI programs here, one gets the sense that he’s not directing a phantom paintbrush but watching a child work, providing pointers, providing gentle guidelines, but allowing for ample coloring outside the lines, so to speak, and ample personality. The result is a piece that isn’t quite as esoteric as other generative pieces, that can be appreciated as any piece of abstract or expressionist art, and that doesn’t seem to revolve around the unique capabilities of a GAN art as much as it celebrates how the AI crafts something which might otherwise seem human. Tell me truthfully, if you didn’t know that Peter Bock was an AI artist, would you know he hadn’t created this piece by his own hand? What would tip you off? Because it’s not the presence of the person that’s hidden here, it’s curiously, strangely, uniquely the presence of the computer which I can’t seem to locate.
Perhaps Bock and his machines just work in truly uncommon lockstep.