From left to right, top row: The MoMA Postcard pixel grid image Silver Convex Stroke, for which the poet Sasha Stiles was the “prompting artist"; Pablo Valbuena's Aura hangs from the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, in London; Refik Anadol, Glacier Dreams (2023), at Art Basel. Middle row: Detail from Daniel Ambrosi's Stourhead (2023); Holly Herndon and Mathew Dryhurst, Classified series of self-portraits. Bottom row: Es Devlin. a work for the Sphere, Nevada Ark (2023). Stephanie Dinkins's #WhenWordsFail (2020-21); Nancy Baker Cahill's CENTO (2023) MoMA Postcard: Courtesy MoMA. Valbuena: London Design Festival. Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Photograph: © Ed Reeve. Anadol: © Refik Anadol Studio. Ambrosi: © Daniel Ambrosi. Herndon and Dryhurst: Courtesy the artists. Devlin: Amiee Stubbs/imageSPACE/Sipa USA. Credit: Sipa USA/Alamy Stock Photo; Dinkins: Courtesy of the Guggenheim; Baker Cahill: Courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
A is for a year of getting to grips with artificial intelligence (AI) for artists—as for everyone else.
B is for contracts on the blockchain for physical art, promoted by the platforms Arcual, Artclear and Fairchain.
C is for the late Harold Cohen, the AI art pioneer with a show at the Whitney Museum, New York, in 2024.
D is for DALL-E, the all-encompassing image generator from OpenAI (see also S is for Sam Altman).
A work, depicting the state of Nevada's 250 most endangered species, by the artist and stage designer Es Devlin, who co-organised the moving image art programme for the U2 concerts that opened the Sphere, Nevada Ark (2023)—a $2.3bn entertainment venue designed by Populous to look like a gigantic mirror ball—in collaboration with the band's creative director Willie Williams Photo: Amiee Stubbs/imageSPACE/Sipa USA. Credit: Sipa USA/Alamy Stock Photo
E is for Es Devlin, whose giant video Nevada Ark wowed at The Sphere, Las Vegas (see also U is for U2).
F is for FTX. New York’s Met gave back a $550,000 donation from the now-bankrupt crypto exchange.
G is for Gabriel Massan, Brazilian digital artist and breakout star with Madonna and at Serpentine Galleries.
The artist Holly Herndon and her partner Mathew Dryhurst created the Classified series of self-portraits (above) to explore the “classification” of data on “Holly Herndon” in OpenAI’s CLIP neural network. Herndon made the series to “get to know” that neural network as well as it knows “Holly Herndon” Courtesy the artists
H is for Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, AI art thought leaders and creators of Have I Been Trained?
I is for Instagram, compelled by European law to show how and why it has “shadowbanned” artists.
J is for the jobs under threat, of illustrators and photographers, from the spread of AI-generated art.
K is for Agnieszka Kurant, one of 13 artists who had NFTs acquired by the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Stephanie Dinkins's #WhenWordsFail (2020-21) Courtesy of the Guggenheim
L is for the first LG Guggenheim Award, given in May to the New York AI art pioneer Stephanie Dinkins.
M is for MoMA, home to the MoMA Postcard NFT project (see also R for Refik Anadol).
Nancy Baker Cahill's giant augmented reality creature CENTO (2023), a site-specific augmented reality (AR) work commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
N is for Nancy Baker Cahill, who flew her feathered augmented reality creature, CENTO, over Manhattan.
O is for Outernet, the giant 360-degree London screen that hosted Marco Brambilla’s video Heaven’s Gate.
Pablo Valbuena's Aura was hung from the oculus at the top of the inner dome of St Paul's Cathedral, in London, during the London Design Festival in September 2023 London Design Festival. Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Photograph: © Ed Reeve
P is for Pablo Valbuena, whose St Paul’s Cathedral light piece, Aura, shone at the London Design Festival.
Q is for quantum art: art and quantum mechanics combined at particle level. The next (very small) thing?
Refik Anadol created Glacier Dreams (2023), a large-scale projection, by processing more than 100 million images © Refik Anadol Studio
R is for the AI artist Refik Anadol, whose installations drew queues at Art Dubai, Art Basel and MoMA.
S is for Sam Altman, and his shock dismissal (then return) as head of the all-conquering OpenAI (see also D for DALL-E).
T is for TikTok, and how Sotheby’s went viral on the platform with its Freddie Mercury rock-star sale.
U is for U2. The band launched the 160,000 sq. ft wraparound screen at the $2.3bn Sphere, in Las Vegas.
V is for Vesuvius Challenge for using AI to read ancient documents from the Villa dei Papiri (see also X for X-ray).
Daniel Ambrosi's Blenheim (2023). His 16ft wide backlit prints on fabric look hyper-real at a distance © Daniel Ambrosi
W is for William Holman Hunt, channelled by Daniel Ambrosi in his AI-enhanced photo Dreamscapes.
X is for X-ray spectroscopy,used to scan inside carbonised scrolls from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum.
Y is for layoffs at Yuga Labs, creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
Z is the middle letter in Tezos, the ubiquitous art-world blockchain.
