Tag Archives: identity

Carlo Zanni: e-commerce, identity, and the epic of our times

Pau Waelder

An early practitioner of net art, Carlo Zanni is among the first artists to explore the nascent opportunities for the online art market and reflect on how the web would impact on our sense of identity and privacy. With a painter’s vision, he has seen in the development of online platforms and graphical user interfaces a space of visual compositions in which the computer desktop becomes a landscape, and everything in it is a fiction. 

He has also developed new forms of storytelling through web-based projects such as the “data cinema” trilogy: The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success (2006), My Temporary Visiting Position from the Sunset Terrace Bar (2007), and The Fifth Day (2009). In these online films, he combined a pre-defined narrative with data collected in real time from the same users who were watching the film, or from a distant webcam, or from different sources describing the social and political conditions of Egypt. 

Carlo Zanni, The Fifth Day (2009)

Explore Zanni’s data cinema artworks

Open artcast

Embedded in his work as an artist, his research on alternative models to sell digital art has led to pioneering yet unrealized projects such as P€OPLE ¥ROM MAR$ (2012), an online platform dedicated to selling video art and fostering a community of creatives based on shared revenue, or ViBo (2014-2015), a “video book” aimed at facilitating the sale of video art at affordable prices in unlimited series. He collected his experiences with these models in the book Art in the Age of the Cloud (Diorama Editions, 2017).

Niio is proud to present two selections of artworks by Carlo Zanni: Data Cinema Anthology, which brings together the Data Cinema trilogy and an additional artwork, and Save Me for Later, a code-based artwork recently presented at Zanni’s solo exhibition Accept & Decline at OPR Gallery in Milan. In the following interview, the artist discusses the artworks presented in this exhibition, which can be visited until April 28th.

Carlo Zanni, Check Out Paintings, 2022. On view at OPR Gallery, Milan.

In this latest series you have come back to painting as a medium, after a long career focused on web-based art, but you keep exploring the same subjects. Can you take me through the main ideas in the Check-Out Paintings?

This cycle of paintings is part of a long-term investigation of the social and psychological role of eCommerce in our society. It stems from the memories of the eCommerce check-out pages: a final destination we all are funneled to, in every online buying process. The check-out pages of eCommerce sites represent a highly symbolic limbo that precedes the dopamine rush where we all hope to find shelter. A form of addiction, but as shown during the pandemic, also a lifeline. 

“Our identity bounces between the happiness for buying, and the sense of guilt for having bought.”

Buying online is both a sort of pursuit of happiness as we have been taught by our society, both a way to escape reality, procrastinating any possible confrontation with ourselves. Our identity bounces between the happiness for buying, and the sense of guilt for having bought. Between the satisfaction of an increasingly frictionless, user-friendly, fast, and on-time experience; and the anxiety, and also the shame, for what this transient fake happiness often entails on a social, work, and human level for thousands of people: directly (shifts and working conditions, small local businesses), and indirectly (tax evasion of mega-corporations and environmental impact).

Unlike early works such as DTP Icons Paintings (2000), here you do not look for a realistic representation of the interface, but rather create almost abstract compositions, why is that?

True, because here is more about inner feelings than simple representation. It’s not witnessing from the outside but feeling from the inside, then trying to show a glimpse of it, if possible, in the real world.  So the rationalist layout, typical of these pages, fades into memory, it turns into a dreamlike experience, into a psychological post-image, while some details of the transaction, such as measures, prices, and quantities, emerge from the background when one gets closer to the surface of the painting: they bring us back to reality.

The subtle color fields of these paintings make them very difficult to be mediated or “seen” online (e.g. on Instagram, or on a PDF), instead they open up and expand in front of the viewer when experienced for real. While our society continues to demand fast, easily communicable images, these paintings are slow, almost invisible, non-existent images, and they ask for something very precious: our time.

Carlo Zanni, Check Out Paintings, 2022. On view at OPR Gallery, Milan.

How did you achieve this faded effect in the canvases?

The color used in these works is acrylic mixed with water and in some cases acrylic medium. This way tones are soft and they mesh one into the other when seen from a certain distance, vaporizing the memory of the whole picture. I take advantage of the cutting plotter to write numbers and other “technical” details. I cut the letters in vinyl (negative) with a size that allows me to draw inside them with a sharp pencil without touching the vinyl edges. This way the sentences and the lettering look “straight” and “guided” from a distance, and handmade from a closer inspection.

“When you stick your nose onto the canvas, the work transforms from an abstract field into a condensed epic of our times.”

Formally speaking, the style of these paintings was born in response to a period of social isolation due to the pandemic, during which, as a balance, we have tried to mediate all the possible human activities: meetings, purchases, employment, leisure, study, culture… I felt the need to go the other way, working on something that could be only appreciated when seen in person.

If you want to find some roots, these works echo the mature practice of artist Agnes Martin, in the use of pencil and subtle water-based colors, but here all the “modernist” and “minimalist” values of the time are almost gone. So all the pencil details and most of the color fields are only visible when you stick your nose onto the canvas, and the work transforms from an abstract, almost white, field, into a condensed epic of our times touching themes such as anxiety, desire, happiness, fear, gender identity, pandemics, politics, tragedies, wars.

While the paintings look almost abstract, they also contain references to the present, as is frequently found in your web-based artworks, what role do these references play?

The paintings dig into our daily culture and politics, for instance by discreetly showing disclaimers referring to the current Ukraine war. (Since February 2022, many eCommerce added such disclaimers for multiple reasons: from giving updated shipping info to giving their support to the Ukrainians). I see these paintings as a vehicle for meditation, an attempt to temporarily alienate ourselves from this endless moment of upheaval and unrest; while being violently dragged back to reality when we get closer to the surface: they are a way to extract some time from our hectic lives to sense the delicacy and fragility of our body and the transience of happiness while diving into our time.

While they are very different artworks, I would point out to Average Shoveler (2004) as having a similar approach in terms of its meditative aspect and the connection to real life events. In that work, which was commissioned by Rhizome, I created an online video game in which the player controls a man who has to shovel the snow falling on the streets of New York. Each time he does, several images taken from CNN and other news outlets in real time pop up and disappear. Additionally, some non-player characters stop and speak out news headlines. The main character invariably ends up dying of exhaustion, unable to shovel the incessant amount of snow. But the game also includes some secret spaces meant for the player to relax and just observe the scene, distanced from the gameplay. In a way, these paintings also provide that distanced space of observation while having these subtle hooks to reality.

Carlo Zanni, Average Shoveler (2004)

Talking about hooks, you describe some elements in the paintings as “clickbait,” can you elaborate on that?

Yes, the dark dots and solid-colored shapes (lines, rectangles, circles) that appear in some of the paintings are what I call “clickbaits” for one’s eyes. Seen from afar these canvases look pretty white and empty, but these dots stand out and catch your attention. They work similarly to how advertising plays with colors, double meanings, and impressive images to stand out in a visually saturated landscape.

They also remind of the so-called “dark patterns”, which are interface design strategies quite common in e-commerce pages, that are meant to fool the user into doing what the vendor wants them to do, such as sign up for a newsletter, add an extra service, or choose the most expensive option among several choices. In my paintings, the shapes intend to lure you into looking closely at the painting and finding what it is actually about. However, I would say that while clickbait is content that over-promises and under-delivers, in my paintings I under-promise and over-deliver 🙂

Carlo Zanni, Save Me for Later (2022)

Save me for later (2022) is also an intriguing artwork in the sense that it is not what it appears to be, and it connects with a concept you have explored over the years, which is the computer screen as a landscape

“Save me for later” is actually a bot browsing Amazon.com, continuously adding products to the cart that is visible in the right sidebar. When the cart reaches its limit, it automatically moves products to the “saved for later list”, making room for the new freshly added ones. The bot embeds a floating window with the webcam stream framing me while performing. This repetitive and almost hypnotic performance, with apparently no beginning and no end, speaks of the type of procrastination we all carry out while browsing e-commerce sites, looking for products that will bring us happiness and make our lives better.

As with the paintings, the experience of isolation during the pandemic was key to conceiving this artwork, in which the computer screen becomes a landscape, a place of escapism and daydreaming. The performance is consciously slow and cryptic, and as it is playing out in real time, in the real Amazon website, the items that appear reflect our present time just as the subtle writings on the paintings take us back to the world we are living in. For instance, when I first ran the program, the bot frequently picked up COVID-19 self-tests, which at some point were very much in demand and right now are almost forgotten. 

“This repetitive and almost hypnotic performance speaks of the type of procrastination we all carry out while browsing e-commerce sites, looking for products that will bring us happiness and make our lives better”

I see this project also as a vehicle for meditation, an attempt to alienate ourselves momentarily from our daily lives and our anxieties (so the title “Save me for later”). And behind the activity itself, what you see on the screen that is apparently me browsing the Amazon site but is in fact an automated process carried out by a computer program, is an interesting exchange of data. Data collected by the Amazon site about this meaningless routine (constantly adding items to the cart without ever checking out), data displayed by Amazon about the articles on sale, data that is processed by Amazon’s algorithm to display new items related to previously selected products. 

See a two-hour excerpt of Zanni’s endless automated performance on Amazon

Open artcast

Data is for me what gravity probably was for Bas Jan Ader. “The artist’s body as gravity makes itself its master.” These mysterious words were used by Bas Jan Ader to describe his short films Falling I (Los Angeles) and Falling II (Amsterdam) when he showed them in Düsseldorf in 1971. He was playing with gravity, he was becoming gravity, accepting its outcome: failures, fragilities, spiritualism, poetry, meditation, ascension. 

I feel that I use data in a sort of similar way, accepting the fact that most of my works will cease to exist quite soon after their birth. By using data from media outlets such as CNN, tools from Google, data collected from users, and so on, I consciously open my work to a vulnerability as the price to pay for creating a work that is always connected to the present and fed by data that circulates online. Then, an API is changed, a tool is discontinued, and the artwork cannot exist anymore. Sometimes you can fix them, sometimes you just don’t want to do it. 

Other times you start again from scratch as recently I did with Cookie Portrait (2002-2022), a work about online identity and privacy that had to be rewritten when it was launched at OPR Gallery last year, 20 years after it was first created. This work is based on the same cookie technology that is used – for instance – for the internal session management of an eCommerce site and more generally for user profiling and marketing activities. This work reminds us that, in our online existence, we are made of data. The body is thus the sum total of your data, the artwork is a temporary and transient experience of something elusive, like our own existence is.

Expanding formats: NFTs at Art Brussels

Pau Waelder

The 38th edition of the Art Brussels art fair, which took place between the 20th and 23rd April, featured for the first time a dedicated space to NFTs and a selection of works sold as non-fungible tokens by participating galleries. This was made possible through a partnership with Parallel, a production and advisory platform dedicated to contemporary art and Web3 technologies. Parallel worked with the galleries to showcase a selection of the NFTs hosted on the online space JPG, a platform that has developed a curatorial protocol for the presentation of this type of artworks. Additionally, Parallel built a booth that served as an information desk, a meeting point for guided visits, and also hosted an augmented reality artwork. To complement this educational task at the art fair, the team also organized a series of talks about NFTs in collaboration with iMAL, the leading New Media Art Center in Brussels. 

As a guest to both the talks and the visits to the galleries, I had the opportunity to observe the different forms of presentation of the artworks, some combining an online and physical presence, and to discuss with gallerists and visitors the options that NFTs and blockchain technologies present to collectors of contemporary art. 

Parallel NFT Touchpoint booth at Art Brussels

The galleries

It might be expected that NFTs are mainly sold by young galleries, or those already focused on digital art, but actually the galleries participating in the collaboration between Art Brussels and Parallel are quite different from each other. Veteran galleries with an outstanding record in the contemporary art market Michael Janssen (Berlin) and Nagel Draxler (Cologne, Berlin, Munich), have integrated sales of artworks minted as NFTs, alongside the younger contemporary art galleries The Hole (New York), Plus One (Antwerp), and Office Impart (Berlin), as well as others with a particular focus on local and national art scenes, such as Anca Poterasu (Bucharest), Sapar Contemporary (New York), and Green on Red (Dublin). An exceptional case among them is Galerie Charlot (Paris, Tel Aviv), which has been dedicated to digital art for more than a decade, and consequently presented the booth that most seamlessly integrated the languages of digital and contemporary art. 

There were interesting connections and similarities between the different artistic projects presented at the galleries, and for this reason I will focus on these connections rather than list the artworks displayed on each booth. 

Sabrina Ratté, Winter Garden (2016)

The lightness and solidity of 3D worlds

Artists Sabrina Ratté (Charlot) and Theo Triantafyllidis (Nagel Draxler) are known for their particular approach to building 3D worlds, the former creating architectural spaces that blend natural and artificial forms bordering abstraction, the latter fully appropriating video game environments and characters to create immersive scenes, some of which are dominated by the presence of a brawny female ork, the artist’s iconic avatar. Their works find a physical presence, in the case of Ratté, in prints that depict a selected view of her imagined worlds, and in Triantafyllidis’ work as an hologram that underscores the illusory aspect of the digital image. Artists Frederik Heyman (Plus One) and Louis-Paul Caron (Charlot), on the other hand, build their virtual worlds with a particular attention to the textures and physical qualities of each element, and while Caron emphasizes the artificiality of his compositions, Heyman skillfully reproduces every detail. Their works, by contrast, have no physical output: they live as images on a screen.

Antoine Schmitt, UkraineWar2022 (2022)

Generative art, back to the roots

In the current NFT market, generative art has become a favorite among artists and collectors due to the possibility of launching a series of works from a single program, each instance of the program being minted as a unique NFT. This allows artists, on the one hand, to create large series that are automatically generated from a single program, and collectors, on the other hand, to own a piece that is unique while also belonging to a series. However, generative art has also been about the artwork being a single program that constantly generates new compositions, ad infinitum. Since the pioneering work of algorithmic artists, this idea has been adopted by numerous artists in very different ways, sometimes as an autopoietic process and others fed by external data. The Net Art Generator (1997), a seminal web-based piece by Cornelia Sollfrank (Office Impart) offers a peculiar example, as it allows users to create a visual composition from a simple query on a search engine. Appropriating the outputs of anonymous users, the artist has minted a series of NFTs from collages of Andy Warhol’s silkscreen prints found online and recomposed by her net art generator program. In a similar vein, Thomas Israël (Charlot) creates an homage to the Dada movement through a collage based on a work by László Moholy-Nagy that is populated by visual elements resulting from automated queries for the term “dada” in an online search engine.

In contrast to Sollfrank’s and Israël’s additive practice, Antoine Schmitt (Charlot) and LIA (Office Impart) create generative artworks that are fully based on the elements of a visual language of their own. Schmitt presents a generative piece based on his War series (2015) that depicts the struggle of Ukrainian forces resisting the invasion of the Russian army. The subject of the artwork is made more inspiring by the fact that the pixels are actually elements following a set of instructions that lead them to perform the scripted action endlessly. LIA’s drawing machine develops a previously written program from which she has generated a series of 100 NFTs that illustrate the vast possibilities of visual composition with minimalistic elements and a set of instructions. 

Sarah Friend, Life Forms (2022)

Rules and smart contracts

NFTs are minted through smart contracts, which are sets of agreements or instructions that self-execute on certain actions or when certain conditions are met. For instance, a smart contract will automatically transfer a 10% commission of the sale of an NFT on the secondary market to the artist who created it. But smart contracts can be used for many other purposes, and artists are also exploring the possibilities they bring, alongside generative software, to establish interactions between the artworks and their collectors. Sarah Friend (Nagel Draxler) has created in Life Forms a series of digital entities linked to NFTs. The entities, as designed by the artist, require new caretakers every 90 days, and therefore a collector must transfer the NFT to a new owner before this period has passed in order to keep the entity alive. The artwork thus plays with the tendency to “flip” NFTs that is prevalent among speculators and translates it into a caring, rather than profiting, activity. Artists Kim Asendorf and Jonas Lund (Office Impart) also play with generative pieces that integrate the activity of their collectors. Asendorf has created a series of NFTs and an editor, allowing the owner of the editor to “sabotage” the compositions owned by other collectors. Lund updates a previous web-based artwork which displays the browser window sizes of all users who have accessed it and turns it into a generative abstract piece in which each collector can create their own style and color, and mint their piece until the limited series of 128 has been completed.

David O’Reilly, 4004 (2021)

Lingua arcana

An interesting aspect of NFTs and blockchain and cryptocurrency artworks is that they bring back the arcane qualities associated with digital technologies that had been dissipated by our frequent use of user-friendly devices and interfaces. Kevin Abosch (Nagel Draxler), one of the artists who addressed blockchain technology in his work some years before the NFT boom, presents a series of artworks that use cryptography to hide information in plain sight and extract from the combinations of letters and numbers a certain compositional quality. Eduardo Kac (Charlot) mints an animation based on a form of writing of his own, inspired by his influential bioart project GFP Bunny (2000). Here, the strings of indecipherable characters run wildly across the space, in a way that reminds of the constant activity on blockchains and seems fit for an NFT. Artist and filmmaker David O’Reilly (Green on Red) explores another aspect of the arcane in computer science by digging out one of the few remaining Intel 4004 CPUs, the first microcontroller to put a full computer in a single chip. This relic of the digital age is placed by the artist inside a block of solid resin, creating a sculpture that brings to mind the aesthetic of classic science fiction films such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odissey (1968). The sculpture is sold alongside a video of the piece rotating, minted as an NFT and therefore permanently stored in the same digital environment that the chip contributed to create.

Margret Eicher, POSTMODERN DANCE OF DEATH (2017)

Weaving the digital

Computing and industrial weaving find a common ancestor in Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s programmable loom from the early 1800s, which inspired mathematician Charles Babbage’s design of the Analytical Engine, a conceptual model for the modern computer, of which fellow mathematician Ada Lovelace was the first programmer. Nowadays, artists who create tapestries usually work on a digital image that is weaved by computer assisted machines evolved from the original Jacquard loom. This direct yet often overlooked connection between computing and weaving gives the resulting artworks a distinct quality, particularly when the tapestry does not intend to imitate a traditional, hand-woven textile, but replicate the complexities of a digital image. Megan Dominescu (Anca Poterasu), Ry David Bradley (The Hole), and Margret Eicher (Michael Janssen) present their work as tapestries that faithfully reproduce their particular visual styles, from Dominescu’s apparently naïve drawings, to Bailey’s deconstructed portraits, and Eicher’s elaborate compositions combining references to art history, the decorative arts, and popular digital culture. Here, the “original” work, akin to the cartoon, is a digital file, and hence minting it as an NFT offers collectors the ownership of the image as it was created by the artist before the production of the tapestry. Some artists may even decide not to produce the tapestry, which in this case would leave the digital image as the only output. In this manner, the NFT points to the origin of the artwork and to the fact that it exists even prior to its materialization in a physical format.

Jonas Lund, What You Get Is What You See (2022)

One format to encompass them all

The accelerated growth of the NFT market and the possibilities that minting on a blockchain gives to artists and creatives have understandably led to a growing interest in translating artworks in other formats into images than can be assigned a non-fungible token. Artists Victor Verhelst and Beni Bischof (Plus One), Chun Hua Catherine Dong (Charlot), Stepan Ryabchenko and WAONE (Sapar Contemporary), whose work is respectively linked to graphic design, collage, performance, video installation, and mural painting, but who, as most artists nowadays, also work primarily with digital images, have integrated NFTs into their practice. The minted artworks become in this case an extension of a work that exists in other formats but finds a way to be distributed and collected online. 

A look at the NFT offerings in the context of the galleries participating in Art Brussels provides a telling picture of the progressive integration of NFTs in the regular operations of the contemporary art market. Certainly, they are still a curiosity for most visitors and they raise many doubts, but the way in which they have become part of the work of some artists, one year into the NFT boom, indicates that the creators and their galleries have understood the possibilities provided by non-fungible tokens. As standalone digital artworks or combined with physical objects, NFTs in the context of professional contemporary art galleries seem on track to overcome the hype and contribute to expanding the forms of collecting digital art.

Mihai Grecu: Exploring Alternate Realities

Interviewed by Roxanne Vardi & Pau Waelder

NEO PYONGYANG I, 2021 a video work by Mihai Grecu is featured in our recent artcast Anticlimactic, a selection of works from the eco-friendly NFT art community a\terHEN. Born in Romania during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s last decade of dictatorship, Grecu’s works deal with investigations of catastrophes, both political and environmental, and the exploration of mysterious and subconscious beginnings through new technologies. Grecu’s visual and poetic trips mix several techniques and may be seen as propositions for a new dream oriented technology.


In your films and VR animations you create dream-like worlds that are simulated with precise realism, how do you balance the interplay between fantasy and reality and what does it bring to the narratives you intend to create?

I have always seen my art as glimpses of alternate realities, so realistic simulations are very important to me. The illusion must be perfect, the whole weight of the metaphor relies on the intertwinement between the real and the simulated.

Your work has developed from an attention to the behavior of materials and substances, introducing surreal visual effects, to an interest in building a narrative that speaks of climate disasters, the futility of war, and the insanity of the powerful. What drove you to address these subjects? How does using computer animation techniques help you speak about them?

I am specialized in representing chaotic phenomena such as smoke, dust, particles, using 3d digital simulations. I always thought of these simulations as the canvases for a new painting. They are part of my artistic language. I use them to create a digital moving canvas full of complex visual metaphors. Some are more politically oriented, others more poetical. My background drove me to work on these images: I grew up during the last years of Ceausescu’s dictatorship in Romania, when his personality cult was reaching its extremes.

Mihai Grecu, The Reflection of Power (2015)

The infamous photoshopped image of a missile launch test distributed by the Iranian government back in 2008 showed how image editing technologies had become central to political and media discourses, both increasingly sophisticated but also accessible to almost everyone. Nowadays, we tend to doubt all images while also trusting them as proof of a fact. How does your work on political allegories play with the perception of images as fakes?

Some of my works are centered around the concept of “post-truth”. The interest in post-truth comes from the idea of rewriting history, especially because we live in a world where post-reality has become at least as important as reality. We live in a world where fake news influence people at least as much as “real” news, so the question is: if there are more people who are ready to accept a false fact as “reality” than people who are willing to check the information from scientific sources, does that make the “fake” as “real” as a certified fact? New media makes it even easier, thanks to new technical achievements, like “neural networks” or thanks to collective human work, like “russian facebook trolls.”

My idea is that “post truth” is not an artist statement already by default, but it’s a media in itself, and I am willing to use this media in creating artworks. In the history of “happening”, performance art or documentary filmmaking, there are examples carrying already the “germs” of this post truth that we are living right now, the difference is that nowadays it has become so big that it’s taking over a big part of society and it’s not directly related to artistic creation. 

Coming back to the first idea, I’m interested in post truth because I think it has become easier to manipulate and rewrite history: maybe in 50 years some of this “fake news” that we have now will become historical facts.

For me, the fake news and post-truth somehow blend with the concepts of propaganda and one-sided history that have reached their climax in totalitarian regimes (like stalinism, or North Korea), just that now it has become global and multi-facetted. It is the perfect time to include these techniques into artworks.

How does the immersive quality of VR films such as Saturnism help you tell a story? What would you point out as the main appeal of using VR in your work?  

Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” is another image that has been haunting me for a long time. This particular work comes from my wish to make a virtual reality recreation of an “old masters” painting, so naturally I chose “Saturn”. I spent several months face to face with its reproduction. I tried to go beyond every layer of it and imagine what is going on in this space of the painting. Even if it looks like a very different work from what I usually do, I think it’s connected to my other projects on the conceptual side. Nevertheless I wanted to use the Virtual Reality medium as it should be used: as a direct environment to the viewer’s perception: I wanted it to be a raw and unsettling physical experience.

NEO PYONGYANG I is an excerpt from the film The Reflection of Power. Can you tell us a bit more about this project, and specifically what captured your interest in the North Korean regime? How do you conceive the idea of a flood, as opposed to other possible environmental catastrophes?   

The NFT piece is not technically an excerpt: format and speed of the image are different from the film. The first “media ” images that I was in contact with consisted basically of 99 percent Ceausecu. Furthermore, he was hanging out with his “friends”, for example Mobutu or Gaddafi. Another state leader who had an important role in my memories of the time was Kim Il Sung, the contemporary Kim’s grandfather. After most of this stalinst type of propaganda personality cult imagery disappeared and was erased with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, I found myself attentively following what’s happening in North Korea, and getting more and more astonished that it keeps going on. It is like a “conceptual island” of the past that I remember from my early childhood, therefore I have a fascination for the Kim dynasty’s propaganda imagery and self-imagery. These aesthetics related to stalinist type propaganda are just a continuation of my previous works, as I want to create something like a complex universe with multiple pieces that are interconnected.

“we live in a world where post-reality has become at least as important as reality.”

How would you describe your experience in the NFT space and why did you choose to exhibit your work on alterHEN?

I decided to do NFTs because of my experience as a digital creator: I have realized that it’s a unique opportunity for creators to distribute and get rewarded for their art. I have extensive experience with festivals, art galleries, curators etc, and I know that for digital creators it was extremely difficult to sell and to show their work, and even if that happened, there would have been several intermediary parties which would take their own share in a more or less fair way. With NFTs, the creator is confronted directly to their audience and collectors, that’s why I decided to join in.

alterHEN is a collective initiative from many Tezos artists, started by Patrick Tresset and Diane Drubay. As part of this initiative, I want to say that alterHEN is working hard on bringing more and more people from the “traditional” art world into Tezos cryptoart, by inviting museums, collectors, artists etc. Big thanks to alterHEN for creating this! Besides these great initiatives, all the artists from the collective are amazing and each and one of them has their unique style!



Diane Drubay: Reconnecting with Nature

Interviewed by Roxanne Vardi & Pau Waelder

As Video Artist and Photographer, Diane Drubay investigates transcendental and psychoactive experiences exposed in representations of nature that expand the idea of the sublime. Drubay’s works draw attention to the climate emergency, extended realities, and community engagement. Ignis II, created in 2021, is featured in our recent artcast Anticlimactic, a selection of works from the eco-friendly NFT art community a\terHEN, in which four artists create a series of landscapes that depict the pressing reality and possible futures of our planet.

Explore Anticlimactic, a selection of NFT artworks from a\terHEN about climate change.

Open artcast

Your work is characterized by a very specific aesthetic in which the documentation of natural landscapes and atmospheric phenomena progressively give way to stylized, almost abstract compositions dominated by color fields and geometric shapes. What drove this progression and was it a conscious decision to evolve your work in this direction?

For years I have been using what I capture in nature, especially landscapes where the sun plays a central role in an emotional narrative. Whether through colors, geometric shapes or visual compositions, each scene is an emotion in progress or in motion. For example, the circle has harmonizing and soothing qualities, and the ocean, which can look like a gently moving rectangle, calls for benevolent transformation. Combining different colors creates a strong emotional story that is totally subconscious.

In each of my series, I use natural elements to write sensory stories that resonate through different emotions. This is also why I quickly moved on to video art, and now to gif. Each piece is a chapter in a book accompanying the viewer through a transcendental transformation.

Diane Drubay, Animae, (2018).


The concept of the Sublime is naturally present in your work; do you purposely introduce this notion as a deeper reading of what could superficially be understood as a soothing and contemplative scene?

The Sublime is indeed at the heart of my art. I am still as overwhelmed by the romantic artworks of the early 19th century, as by the spectacle that Nature offers us. Being able to embrace emotions and sensations, swaying between Ecstasy and Agony, is such a transformative experience.

Just as the Romantics appeared after the Enlightenment, I am part of this new movement of modern romantics committed to the environment and better futures. It is by valuing and reconnecting with Nature that we can respect it more and hope for a more harmonious future.

“For years I have been using what I capture in nature, especially landscapes where the sun plays a central role in an emotional narrative… It is by valuing and reconnecting with Nature that we can respect it more and hope for a more harmonious future.”

Some of your works have a painterly quality, in that sense, how much weight do you put on the artwork as a visual composition that stands on its own as such?

The composition is entirely part of the narration. You don’t tell the same story if each element is placed differently, or have another tonality. It could seem easy to (re)compose landscapes but it takes me such a long time to be able to express the right emotion.

Addressing climate change and the possible outcomes of our exploitation of natural resources can be a difficult and uncomfortable task. How do you think art can tackle this subject and possibly induce, if not action, at least reflection?

We need to reconnect with what surrounds us on a daily basis in order to better understand and respect it. Having grown up in the middle of nature but having lived in the city for the last 20 years, the only element that has allowed me to feel connected to the grandeur and sublime of nature is the sun. I, therefore, assumed that if everyone could reconnect with the sun in a subconscious and transcendental way, a new relationship between humans and nature could be sparked.

“Having grown up in the middle of nature but having lived in the city for the last 20 years, the only element that has allowed me to feel connected to the grandeur and sublime of nature is the sun.”

Scientific concepts play an important role in your work. How do you conceive of the relationship between art and science in your practice? Do you think that art can help in understanding scientific research, or should it be a way to build, as Roger Malina once stated, “a better science”?

No one can predict the future, but we can feel what a certain future story tells us. I use scientific stories to develop my emotional journeys so that emotion can be used as a lever for reflection. I am a huge fan of science-fiction from the 70s and the 80s, but I realized that only fact-based social science fiction literature created a lasting impact on me. Being able to base your art on science also provides a next step for the viewer after discovering the art, it is a door towards knowledge, and hopefully action.


How would you describe your experience in the NFT space? What drove you to become one of the founders of alterHEN?

I have been active in the NFT world for a year now and it has considerably changed my artistic practice. Hic et nunc appeared in March 2021, with all its values of disruption, openness, inclusion and commitment to the environment. Before that, I had already started to explore immersive works and 3D worlds to add a new narrative layer to my landscapes. But arriving in this community pushed me to explore even more and experiment with new formats. Since then, I have produced animated 3D objects and gifs and now find it hard to go back to 2D seeing how much the story is amplified. alterHEN was created very naturally. We followed our desire, without the pressure of time or ambitions. We wanted to experiment more, together. It is now a unique space where 20 artists invite other artists or cultural institutions to explore a new world.

Kelly Richardson: creating potential futures

Interview by Pau Waelder

Taking cues from 19th-century landscape painting, 20th-century cinema, and 21st-century planetary research, Kelly Richardson (b. 1972, Canada) crafts video installations and digital prints that offer imaginative glimpses of the future that prompt a careful consideration of the present. Her work HALO I (2021), part of a trilogy in which a pleasant summer moon becomes an unsettling reminder of the consequences of climate change, is featured in our recent artcast Anticlimactic, a selection of works from the eco-friendly NFT art community a\terHEN.

How can art address the climate emergency in a way that inspires, if not action, at least reflection?

It is not an easy subject, but it’s necessary to speak to it if we have any hope of addressing it. Until this point, on this precipice, we’ve allowed terrifying futures to be ushered in despite the predictions of so many. Perhaps we have allowed this in part because we couldn’t visualize or understand these futures from an experiential point of view. I try to offer this window of understanding through my work. I create potential futures for people to experience, to encourage reflection on current priorities and where those are leading us as a species. Hindsight is 20/20.

Art can help to connect the head and the heart. When emotions are triggered, change is possible. Most of us would react to ensure our survival if faced with an immediate threat. The response to climate change needs to mirror this. Reading a text for an exhibition that I’m in later this summer, curator Jessie Demers writes “artists and activists are both adept at [the] practice of observing the world, responding emotionally, forming a vision and expressing it through action, with no guaranteed outcome. This is how new worlds are built.” Great art allows us to see and understand the world differently. Through that shift in consciousness, hope lives.

You have described some of your works as “collapsed narratives in a singular landscape” that allow viewers to draw their own conclusions. How do you decide which elements to put forward, how to play with ambiguity?

I refer to this as “calculated ambiguity”. The works don’t offer a completely open narrative. Rather, they offer enough information that viewers can unpack and make sense of depending on their outlook. There are always multiple ways to read them. One reading or understanding of what you’re looking at might be quite terrifying in its implications, while other readings are less so. This is deliberate, to allow for viewers to personalize their experience with and understanding of the work to a point. 

When thinking through ideas, image construction, colors used (some of which act as indicators, the purple sky in Embers and the Giants, for instance), sound, etc… it’s always a juggling act of including enough information that leads interpretations towards this set of potential explanations. “How” I arrive at the right elements to juggle for each work is a little trickier to answer. Each work is a puzzle for me, in some sense. I consider every aspect of each work with regards to what it’s doing, or needs to do to support the narratives or push the overall feeling of it towards the unnerving end, or towards the beautiful.

Kelly Richardson, Embers and Giants (2019). Installation view.

The aesthetics and ideals of Romanticism seem to inspire some of your work, in terms of the notion of beauty and the Sublime, as well as a sense of “beautiful tragedy.” Which role do beauty and tragedy play in your work?

Yes, it’s apocalyptic sublime for the 21st century, at the other end/side of large-scale unchecked industry, and the initial fears expressed by painters and poets in the late 18th and early 19th centuries about the potential fallout of the Industrial Revolution. I use beauty as a vehicle for the delivery of deep concerns about where we’re heading as a species. Beauty invites viewers to engage with otherwise very difficult subject. Tragedy in the work is located in the truth of what we’ve wrought, the conditions within which we now find ourselves, and the urgent call for us to collectively face it in order to address it. After decades of scientific warnings riddled with predictions of what life might be like in the future, our path hasn’t changed course. We’re already experiencing extreme weather events associated with climate change. The future is now and the window to act, to avoid the worst of what will come, is quickly closing.

“Art can help to connect the head and the heart. When emotions are triggered, change is possible.”

We find several layers of reality and fiction, of video footage and digital animation in your work. For instance, in The Great Destroyer you have not altered the original footage, while in Leviathan you add digital effects to the video, and then in Mariner 9 you create a fully digital landscape, with real elements reproduced in painstaking detail. What determines this relationship between reality and fiction? 

This is such a great question, mainly because I’m still working through it myself. With The Great Destroyer, footage of the forest itself was enough. Any extra visual intervention on my end seemed unnecessary. For Leviathan, the location itself is important historically regarding our relationship to fossil fuels and its many associated environmental catastrophes. Using actual footage of the site, then, points to this truth directly. Caddo Lake, where it was filmed, is the site for the first through water oil exploration in human history. Simultaneously, the cypress forest is so stunning that I could never do it justice – particularly at that time in terms of software capability – if I attempted to recreate it in 3D. The effects, in this case, necessarily shifted viewers’ focus from the stunning landscape to questioning what was happening in the water. 

In other cases, as you’ve mentioned, creating everything in 3D was needed. For instance, in Mariner 9 I wasn’t able to film on Mars, but I could set out to create a realistic experience of Mars in 3D using topographical data from the planet, which is what I set out to do. Making that work, I also rather enjoyed not having to play by elements outside of my control, such as weather or sun location. A blend of physical limitation, the realization that I could offer a realistic experience of Mars on this planet and the value of that, and on a practical level, having complete control over the landscape. How I approach each work then is largely determined by the idea itself and what I feel best serves it.

Kelly Richardson, Mariner 9 (2012). Installation view. Photo: Paola Bernardelli.

Further, much earlier in my practice, I spoke of this more than in recent years, but I’ve always been concerned with our understanding and by extension, our appreciation of the natural world in relation to constructed environments where truth is often difficult to locate. For decades, we’ve “understood” the world through screens which offer a complete disconnect from our relationship to the natural systems which sustain us. I have serious concerns that over time, we’re diluting our appreciation through this rupture, further amplifying generational amnesia when we desperately need to be moving in the opposite direction. The situation globally is now so dire and yet, I’m not sure how much of the public truly understands how grave it is. 

Quoting Lyn Richards in a recent review of my work, “Richardson courts irony by turning the same digital media that potently enables our detachment from the natural world into a powerful tool for examining the myth of endless growth driving humanity’s misguided labors toward a catastrophic future.” I deliberately communicate these concerns through the digital hoping to redirect the focus of our detached gaze towards the physical planet. 

“I use beauty as a vehicle for the delivery of deep concerns about where we’re heading as a species.”

HALO is an updated version of one of your earlier works from 1998. Do you think that something has changed in the message behind this work, or the need to communicate it? Would you say that the tools you have now allowed you to create a more compelling image?

It’s a sequel to CAMP which was a work which presented a rather idyllic and clichéd summer moment in Canada: heat rising from a campfire, distorting a full moon overhead with the sound of popcorn popping on the fire. In just a couple of decades, it feels like everything has changed. Campfires are now banned during the summer in British Columbia, where I now live, due to extended droughts and the threat of wildfires. Last year we experienced our 3rd worst wildfire season on record, all 3 of which occurred in the last 5 years. 1,610 fires burned 868,203 hectares across the province. Within months, the fires were followed by unprecedented flooding.

The color of the moon in HALO will be familiar to many living out here, as the smoke from these fires often creates vibrant, stunning pink, orange or red moons. The sun too reflects similar colors and can be stared at easily with the smoke offering a sufficient hazy filter. Summers now bring a mix of joy for its promised, remaining riches and genuine fear associated with what else they will bring. I now look out my windows towards a tree-covered mountain and think, “that’s a lot of fuel”.

The image and sound quality of CAMP certainly reflects the time that the work was produced, along with the capabilities of consumer video cameras at the time. It was also one of my earliest moving image works where the moment seemed more important to capture than its fidelity. Now that I’m able to control images with a certain level of precision, I’m equipped to create works that are increasingly freed of the limitations of technological capabilities (and their associated impact). I can create with a more painterly lens, in a sense, which has clear benefits on the quality and overall construction of the image.

Your work draws inspiration from science fiction to portray potential futures. Which subjects do you expect to address in your work? Which potential futures would you like to explore?

The situation we’re in and the futures we now face result from all crises, really. They are all connected. One drives another, and so on. For us to evolve as a species in order to usher in a different future, we need to address the connections between all of these crises and what drives us towards them.

How would you describe your experience in the NFT space? Why did you choose to exhibit your work on alterHEN?

I originally entered the NFT space in opposition to the harmful emissions associated with the energy use of PoW. 30 artists, many of which are digital art pioneers, contributed to The FEN, a coordinated NFT drop on hic et nunc (the first NFT platform on PoS), initiated by Joanie Lemercier and curator Juliette Bibasse to encourage artists and collectors within the space to switch to using a significantly less harmful platform and blockchain which uses a tiny fraction of the energy of PoW. On PoS, minting an NFT requires energy use equivalent to a social media post such as a Tweet, for instance. Over the last year, I’ve maintained advocating for this harm reduction and will continue to for as long as I am part of this space.

Both founders of a\terHEN, Diane Drubay and Patrick Tresset were part of The FEN so we connected there. Additionally, at the time that a\terHEN was conceived, there was a frenzied pace of production within the space where artists were minting several times a week. Between the pace and the associated hype, it felt like the ability to slow down to appreciate the work itself was nonexistent. a\terHEN set out to offer a space to slow down consumption, to give work the time it often needs to be fully appreciated. This really appealed to me both from a production point of view (as I tend to labor over my work) and an experiential one. I want my work to have impact and for that, it requires my time and that of those that consider it.

“For decades, we’ve “understood” the world through screens which offer a complete disconnect from our relationship to the natural systems which sustain us”

Through a\terHEN and other platforms which focus on the artworks, such as TEIA and Versum, I’ve connected with an inspiring community of artists and collectors, many of whom are new to me. It has allowed me to expand on the reach of my work in a significant way, with new audiences, which is invaluable when I concern myself with affecting the consciousness of people (particularly, as previously mentioned, within a screen based space). Additionally, for the first time in 25+ years making moving image works, I have been able to acquire works from 250+ artists who I’ve admired for many years along with artists who I was previously unaware of. It’s groundbreaking in that sense and it’s a joy to be a part of.

Kelly Richardson, HALO I, II, III  (2021). Installation view.

Exploring The Impact Of Digital Art In The “Travel Is Back” Era

By Natalie Stone

Artwork: Flower by Guilhem Moreau.
Location: The Mondrian Seoul Itaewon

As we celebrate the return of travel, the hospitality sector is working hard to create amazing guest experiences to entice guests back and accommodate their changing needs.

The evolving digital landscape is offering up original, exciting, and engaging opportunities, including new types of art installations from augmented reality to immersive art and AI, all contributing to the explosion of digital art, being adopted in workspaces, public places, homes, and hotels across the world. 

In a special webinar by commercial interior design publication Hospitality Design, executives from Accor, Marriott, Samsung, ICRAVE and Niio joined to discuss the new trends, changing guests’ needs, and emerging technologies that pose a reality of continuous evolution for hospitality experience. Together they explored the transformational power of digital art, how accessible it has become, and its effectiveness in realizing the ambitious visions of hotel owners and designers globally.

Artwork: Flower by Guilhem Moreau.
Location: The Mondrian Seoul Itaewon

What Are the Types of Installation Art in Hospitality?

Digital art is a major player in a changing landscape. With a flood of new, cutting-edge tools on the market, public and private hospitality spaces are an exciting platform for the world’s leading talent to display their work. The rising and intensified conversation around NFTs is cementing that digital art is here to stay and showcased in locations it has never been before.

“Video art is about the storytelling, the community that you can build, and the opportunity for people to have a platform, whether they’re professional artists or not, to tell their stories individually,” said Lionel Ohayon, Founder and CEO of ICRAVE, on how digital art is a new and exciting platform for artists.

The powerful impact of art in hospitality spaces has been felt in recent years and now, post-pandemic, these experiences are embodying the storytelling from public spaces into private rooms, ensuring continuity throughout the hotel and creating a meaningful connection with guests and brand affinity.

“We’re reimagining the way that art is experienced in a digital age,” said Rob Anders, co-founder and CEO of Niio. “Usually, screen means noise and information and advertising. We’re looking at how these black screens that are all around us become canvases of inspiration. And this can be any type of screen.”

Elevating Black Screen Void with Art

Niio partnered with The Mondrian Hotel in Seoul to transform its lobby with a collection of digital works which subtly switch the ambiance seasonally, creating a strong connection between the local culture and international visitors.

“When you have this massive (art) element, you can see guests talking to each other about this,” explained Damien Perrot, Global Senior Vice President, Design & Innovation, Accor. “And it creates connectivity, a connection between people. And it is also a very good way to interact between employees and guests.”

For Mondrian, integrating digital art is not just for the enticing guest experience, but also to solve a design pain point. “Most of the time we try to hide TV today, but when you put digital arts, you don’t need to hide it because they’re on the TV, it’s not a screen anymore. It’s not a TV anymore. It’s a live art. It’s really a big change.”

An Instagram-Worthy Destination in a Click: A Digital Art Installation Example

Marriott’s Aloft offers a fresh kind of hotel experience across 225 global Aloft hotels, which brings people together through immersive design and technology. With Niio’s curatorial team, they have created a bespoke curated art program using Niio’s tools for displaying and managing carefully selected artworks with the central management tool to rotate artworks in their hotels anywhere in the world at any time. 

Marriott’s Brian Jaymont, Senior Director & Global Brand Leader at Aloft Hotels & Moxy Hotels, shared why guest engagement was the driving force behind this project.

“Feedback from guests has been great,” he said. “I see it on our social media more than I’ve ever seen a framed piece of art. Somebody standing in front of it, really excited to see it. It’s really cool that we’re able to just click and give them something new in the blink of an eye.”

Creating the buzz-worthy experience isn’t necessarily tied with high costs, and is more aligned with the growing need of innovation-on-a-dime.

“From an approachability standpoint, the cost is extremely satisfactory. I think one of the biggest feedback pieces that we get is that it’s literally plug-and-play. And now that we’ve really scaled this, we’re getting further ahead in development. So we’re getting these in actually earlier in project designs and getting them installed before our openings of hotels.” said Jaymont.

Anders added another advantage: “One of the key things for the hospitality industry is the commercial rights. No one needs to worry anymore about the rights. It’s all one integrated environment and ecosystem (inside Niio), which deals with all of licensing.”

With seamless, low maintenance technology and endless creative potential, utilizing existing screens and infrastructure and adopting digital art is an achievable strategy for hotels looking to stay at the hub of travel trends.

Where Creativity Meets Tech

Samsung is seizing on the digital art potential through a strategic global partnership with Niio to display high-quality moving image art and to transform displays with inspiring and unique experiences.

This partnership celebrates the combination of Samsung’s best-in-class displays, Niio’s innovation and the surge of interest in digital art. With the right technology in place, it’s easier to access leading or emerging artists from around the world, who relish the opportunity to display their work, from video to interactive art.

Shawn O’Connell, Head of Hospitality at Samsung Electronics, described his point of view when building the tech solution for hotels. “(hotel) owners and brands are trying to digitally transform their guest experience from day to night. And I don’t want to say they’re turning their lobby into a nightclub, but they want something a little bit different on the walls at night versus day.”

The flexibility of digital art has the advantage of easily catering to diverse needs. “The consistency of what the guest experience is, from starting point to the endpoint, is also relevant. Whether you’re a large casino or cruise line that has a massive outdoor LED wall, or you’ve got something, a smaller display behind the front desk, or something in the elevator, or all the way to the guest room, you want to harmonize what that guest experience looks like and what it is, so that the brand is maintained and it’s on message,” said O’Connell.

As a vision for the future of digital art in hospitality spaces, Anders painted his own view: “We have to remember the technology’s the enabler. Ultimately, the technology has now got to a place that makes it very seamless. (..) Digital canvas can be as creative as you want. It can be a monitor, it can be a projection, it can be a triangle. It doesn’t really matter. We can turn anything into a canvas, especially when we’re seamlessly working with people like Samsung.”

Curious about how to incorporate digital art into your interior design projects?