Sigg Foundation, TAEX and Tezos combine to showcase NFTs at the Digital Art Mile in Basel

Sigg Art Foundation, Digital Art Mile, TAEX and Tezos are in Basel this year to present NFTs to highlight the expanding role of digital art in the global art ecosystem.

Digital Art Mile, an innovative digital art market held alongside Art Basel, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious art fairs, held its first edition this year as its official launch party was organized specifically for NFT-minded artists, collectors and curators. Swiss enclave.

The event transformed Rebgasse, a stone’s throw from Basel’s Messeplatz, into a vibrant showcase of contemporary and historical digital art. This event featured many internationally renowned galleries, NFT platforms and artists who were invited to come together to present their collections in various exhibition venues throughout the week, creating a dynamic intersection of traditional and digital art forms.

The first Digital Art Mile, held between June 10-16, included many well-known participants such as Objkt, fx(hash), Fellowship, MakersPlace, Cinello, RCM Galerie, ArtXCode, Office Impart, TAEX, Danae, Sigg. Art Foundation, GENAP Collection and Karagüvercin.

The booth of the Sigg Art Foundation, founded in 2020 by long-time art collector Pierre Sigg, held an exhibition featuring pioneering digital artists Grégory Chatonsky, Justin Aversano, Ben Elliot and Bernar Venet.

Venet’s work was presented in conjunction with Sotheby’s: EVENT, showcasing a collection of 500 algorithmic works of art; this was a key theme used in many of the other digital presentations on display.

Chatonsky, a pioneer in incorporating artificial intelligence into contemporary art, introduced the new version of his installation “Terre Seconde”. First exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in 2019, this installation is generated from millions of data points – images, text and audio – retrieved from the internet, presenting a dynamic, modular structure that re-imagines our planet in a familiar yet distinctive way. matchless.

Complementing Chatonsky’s AI-focused approach, American artist Justin Aversano, fresh off a world tour in which he traveled the world in search of human stories, brought some of his most unique works to Basel, including photographs of twins he compiled from around the world. .

Justin Aversano, “Twin Flames,” part of the Sigg Foundation’s exhibition at the Digital Art Mile in Basel, Switzerland. June 12, 2024.

Further enhancing the foundation’s showcase, Elliot exhibited his work “Metaone,” an ambitious virtual reality project produced by VIVE Arts with support from Esther Schipper Gallery in Berlin. “Metaone” explores a futuristic virtual paradise where history, nature, technology and science converge, offering a visionary perspective on the evolution of creative fields.

Meanwhile, the Tezos Foundation has introduced two major platforms in its ecosystem: Objkt and fx(hash), which explore physical representations of digital art by encouraging dialogue and experiencing journeys through revolutionary curation in the field of generative art.

@HOXID_ collaborated with digital art platform @tesserart_xyz to highlight a rotation of Tezos artists in ‘The Frame’.

Swiss platform Objkt also hosted the “Matter and Data” exhibition, which featured the works of 17 international artists. Additionally, Objkt showcased its collaboration with Brazilian cybernetic choreography innovator Analivia Cordeiro to present an interactive exhibition where visitors can transform their movement patterns into productive NFTs on the Tezos blockchain.

Regina, Silveira, Auriea Harvey, ThankYouX, Oona, Leander Herzog, Zancan and Qubibi are among other artists represented at the booth, supported by Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, the newest head of art at Tezos’ Trilitech division.

fx(hash), a generative art platform, curates code-based artworks that demonstrate the cultural and technological connections between digital and physical formats and proposes to rethink them in light of contemporary and historical emergencies. In collaboration with OFFICE IMPART, the platform presented ‘Bit Operations’, a visual exploration of computing fundamentals through bit-shifting operations by Swedish artist Jonas Lund. Lund’s project included a long-form generative collection that collectors can access online through fx(hash), as well as a curated limited edition of concrete works combined with generative outputs shown during the fair.

Also among the attendees were digital art platform and agency TAEX, who presented a fascinating digital Zen landscape from Krista Kim’s Continuum project. Created in response to the distractions of technology, Kim’s works transform digital screens into spaces of mindfulness and contemplation.

Consisting of 10 unique NFTs derived from all Continuum artwork, the collection invites collectors to interact with meditation images that subtly evolve over time. These pieces reflect Kim’s inspiration from the tranquil Ryoanji Temple Garden in Kyoto and aim to reconnect viewers with tranquility through digital interfaces.

Meanwhile, the Fellowship has taken on perhaps the most ambitious work at the Digital Art Mile, an almost 300 square meter event space, to provide a pioneering exploration of the growth of artificial intelligence in recent art history. “Collaborations with the Artificial Self” exhibition. It honors Harold Cohen, the original father of artificial intelligence in art, and includes the only self-portrait created by painting machine Aaron.

The first works inspired by the AlignDraw algorithm of Elman Mansinov, the creator of text-to-image artificial intelligence, in 2015 were the precursors of DALL-E and Stable Diffusion.

Works by other artists, including Botto, Mario Klingemann, Helena Sarin and Robbie Barrat, show how quickly this famous technology has revolutionized the digital art landscape in the last decade. TAEX also held a conference where speakers such as Refik Anadol and Sasha Stiles presented their work.

In addition to the exhibitions at Rebgasse 25 and 31, Kult.Kino Camera also hosted various conferences daily during the art fair, with topics such as generative art, blockchain as an art medium, and museums incorporating Web3. , sparked profound debates about the role of digital art within the canon of art history.

The European premiere of the documentary film “What the Punk!” It was one of the highlights of the week, taking place as part of a conference program organized by Yuga Labs and Rug Radio; There was also a video exploring the extraordinary story of Matt Hall and John Watkinson, two Canadian software engineers who completed digitally focused events. The world with Cryptopunks and sparked a new cultural movement.