NFT Paris 2023 -thoughts about mystic Ai and Memes

Inspiration. Sometimes it strikes when we are alone, as an internal mystery. Sometimes it strikes as a result of external stimulation. When Europe’s web3 creatives gather under one roof, both paths are bound to occur. First I will explain why I was in Paris last week: I was premiering at the Superchief Gallery’s booth a selection of Ai images from a 550 piece collection based on a historic init image my grandfather photographed with Dali, and simultaneously dropping the same collection as a blind mint on Foundation.(Press release here: https://www.halsman.xyz/other-nft-projects Drop here: https://foundation.app/collection/phmmm ). In a strange coincidence, a few months earlier during Paris Photo, under the exact same roof of the Grand Palais Grand Palais Éphémère , I was there speaking on a post photography and Ai panel discussion, and representing the estate of my grandfather, whose photo of Steichen jumping was the main image of the fair. So there I was, back in Paris, same building, but quite different vibe. It was another honor to have the large center screen of the exhibit, and share it with none other than the Ai legend Claire Silver (who also co-curated the kaleidoscopic Art x Ai 00003 show). This was my first NFT irl exhibition, and it’s quite something to see a digital image on a large screen, which I am used to observing on a phone size or computer size screen, being appreciated by fair attendees. Most digital artists create in seclusion, and we only ever experience others engaging with our work as social media avatar hearts, or comments on posts.

So that was the black drop of the weekend for me. Giant convention hall, frenetic energy of networking, booths and exhibits to see, old friends to reconnect with, and new friends to meet. It was a bubble of innovative vibrations. A neural network made of humans, exchanging information, and naturally stimulating inspiration. The people in the room were the experts on a very nascent technology which will impact the globe in the near distant future, so it felt like a unique moment to be with others who continue to explore and innovate with these technologies during a bear market (Crypto/blockchain/NFT/Ai/web3). Several ideas connected in my mind as a result of engaging in many conversations about Ai, which I will summarize here:

“Text to image” based Ai is a watershed moment for human creativity, and there are echoes throughout human history that I would like to peel back. There is a magical quality of inputting a string of words, and watching the image the Ai outputs emerge out of the abyss, similar to how a photographer watches a print develop in the tray of chemistry in the darkroom. Photography is Alchemy, and text to image Ai is magic. The prompt is our magical spell.. our Abracadabra. No magician is perfect from the beginning, the spell must be continuously refined to get a result that is truly magical. This whole process got me thinking about Creation in general. I have heard one translation of the Bible say “In the beginning was the Word.” Was this a miss translation? Was “word” supposed to be “vibration”? I’m not sure but it’s interesting that now we are back to creating with the word (in Hindu culture Kali is the dark womb that the matrix of language emerges from as vibration). While discussing this among friends my Eastern mystic mind kicked in and transposed onto “text to image based Ai” the concept of the divine masculine and the divine feminine. We are nature, so what we create is also an extension/reflection of nature. It’s all a fractal with repeating patterns, and the computer is a perfect metaphor for our age to understand deeply esoteric concepts regarding Avatars, and screens of consciousness, Indra’s net, etc (which I have explored in previous texts and films like Organic Cyber Cafe 2015, and Pixel Sutra 2011). But let’s examine the creative act of Ai from a new perspective. In non-dualistic systems; Shiva/Shakti, Yin/Yang (in which duality is nested), The divine feminine is movement/change/energy/color/form/sound/etc., and the divine masculine is consciousness/awareness. It is the union of these two that create time and space, and neither can exist without the other. The text prompt seems to emerge from the mind (divine masculine), and the Ai is the tool which creates the illusion of reality/multiplicity (divine feminine). Perhaps it’s not a perfect metaphor, but mystics strive to see the divine in all things, including technology which is not considered nature by most. Ai is a powerful tool of creation and self awareness, so it is important at this point to consider new ways to perceive and work with it. Art is technology, and Ai is a new tool which teaches us about our own power of manifestation, and how internal thoughts ripple out and affect the external reality we engage with.

The other thought I teased out this weekend was about memes. Walking around Paris you see Mona Lisa everywhere. She is the ultimate meme. It’s a great painting, but the only reason it’s the most recognizable painting in the world is because it’s the most mass produced painting in the world. Pre-Internet, people saw art in person, or reproduced in books/posters/postcards. Now we have social media. So if consensus is based on recognizability then what we think of as great art now in the 2020s may not be what art historians in the future determine as the art that defined our times. You can go to the Frieze art fair and see incredible contemporary art, but if it doesn’t break into popular culture it will wind up getting swirled into all other art of this time. This is not an exercise in discerning the quality of art. You can privately own the most incredible piece of art ever made, but if only a handful of people know it exists, then does it even exist as far as the world is concerned? I have a background as a traditional artist, but I am just trying to pay attention to how different the time we live in is for creators. Warhol understood the idea of repetition. Brillo boxes, Campbell tomato soup cans, Marilyn Monroe portrait, repeated repeated repeated. Basquiat’s Samo crown, Keith Haring’s plump stick figures, were memes. Something simple repeated over and over. Matt Furie’s Pepe is our era’s Mona Lisa, and 4chan is the decentralized Workshop of Furie. I say this tongue and cheek but I also think it’s true ( I know Matt from pre-Pepe days and we had done some fun collabs). If we zoom out and imagine how in 200 years people may look back at this era and say there was an explosion of frogs in visual culture. Everyone was creating and sharing images of a simple frog cast in all different situations. Memes work because they are easily transferable (even thoughts are memes). Memes are the dominant visual language shared by millions of people daily. The most successful memes are visual templates where different content can be plugged in. How many times have we seen the Drake aversion/desire meme? Or the crudely drawn guy in the corner that no one secretly knows who he is. These simple visual/text packets that share information are art, the same way hieroglyphics are art. The creators are mostly anonymous, and the more adaptable a meme is, the more widely it is shared. This is also true on a microscopic level and how DNA uses a small set of proteins to create complex code. As above, so below. We are nature. We are an expression of a higher intelligence, and we re-create fractals of that intelligence with-in our human experience. We are consciousness surfing the Fibonacci spiral of itself. So, back to crypto art/blockchain/NFTs/memes etc. As a human organism we are using technology to create new neural pathways. The speed and quality of how we communicate is increasing so much that even Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame seems too long for our short attention spans (broad strokes here). Questions of ownership arise when the predominant art form is made by iterations of anonymous creators. Is the person who crafts the perfect meme a more legitimate artist than someone who has a MFA from Yale and solo shows around the world but people outside the small art bubble don’t know? (Perhaps we just live in a boiling time of too many bubbles on the surface?) What will be the next Mona Lisa? -We can get into an argument about the value of art and whether or not memes can create a transcendental moment in the viewer (Memes will probably lose). At the end of the day, Art is dramatically changing. The nature of collecting art is changing. Access to collecting art is changing, and those who can afford to collect this new art have their own values and interests, which impact which art is elevated and which is lost in the swirl. This is all food for thought and art historians of the future will get to decide.

There were so many other fascinating conversations we all shared during the fair regarding market places respecting royalties, and other concerns very specific to this crypto art bubble. The exciting part is everyone here is an innovator or wants to support innovators. There are also grifters, and big brands now trying to enter the space because they are realizing the new opportunities of utility and community that blockchain offers. The one thing I know is that things seem to change every few months. It’s a very dynamic space, rippling like a flag in the wind, calling those towards it who wish to participate in the rebirth of something eternal.

-Oliver Halsman Rosenberg Lisbon Airport 2/28/2023