REcieve | Amplify | Transmit
RELAY is a digital curation project by REUSS. The aim is to find and showcase outstanding digital art and artists in the NFT realm - presented in small themed Moments in the RELAY World on Foundation
Drop date 19.10.2023 - 17.00 CEST
METABODIES
exploring digital flesh and identity.
This is a handpicked collection of pieces from artists illuminating the complexities of the relation between our physical and digital existence.
The artists are working in a wide array of techniques and expressions - using everything from AI to photo-manipulation and digital collage. But there is an underlying common denominator: The exploration of the malleability of identity and body image in the digital realm and being exponents to how these concepts are depicted, manipulated, and reimagined in digital art.
ARTISTS
Scerbo
“Ungravity Scroll”
"Ungravity scroll" is a photographic work with non-generative glitch interventions.
Using photographs of the same subject from different angles, Scerbo works with deliberately glitched digital brushes, exploiting bugs on the brush settings source code - which he himself has created. From the resulting "holes" on the image he reconstructs the deconstruction. Influenced by the flow of data that shapes our lives, Scerbo is portraying visions that are both fragmented and reassembled by the relentless flood of information.
In this particular piece we see a female figure in water - so defragmented and distorted it’s not only hard to tell the identity of the person, but also to discern the border between the subject and the surroundings. It is all on the same information level. A consequence as well as an observation of how digital dominance has led to a world where material objects have lost their power and meaning, and how we have become increasingly disconnected from the physical world around us. Scerbo’s artworks shows us the reality of the data flow that both feeds our understanding and clouds our perception. The resulting loss of meaning and significance in material objects has led us to this fragmentation of mind and memory.
Iñigo Bilbao
“SELF-SURGERY”
“Self-Surgery” is is a human-guided AI-generated digital render.
The title opens a question: Is this self-surgery on the physical body, or is this surgery on the psychological self? What is interesting about the work of Bilbao is how the images are desaturated and the bodies assume an almost artifical chromed surface expression, whilst depicting gruesome deformations, decay and injury. It makes us initially accept the image as something aesthetically pleasing - but then the real content is revealed to us upon closer inspection, speaking to the alienation stemming from - and numbness to - the endless stream of information thrown at us every day.
To Bilbao working with AI feels like walking through the sewers of the collective unconscious, searching among the waste for pieces for his work. The aim being that the viewer should be able to recognize something in the image to connect with it, something to hold on to. The idea is to tighten the rope that separates the recognizable from the unrecognizable, the real from the fantastic, the beautiful from the horrible, as much as possible in order to achieve the necessary impact: To disconcert, disturb and fascinate
AbHominal
“Life Is Beautiful”
“Life Is Beautiful” is a human-guided AI-generated digital render.
In this piece Abhominal is exploring possible future posthuman forms as a result of the convergence of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. We are confronted with a contorted lumpy mass of flesh - definitively a female nude figure, but grotesquely stretched and tumorous. She is put on display for us to behold. Propped up on impossibly small supports, exhibited rather than hidden away.
Humans have altered the genomes of species to improve our hunting and farming techniques for thousands of years through artificial selection. At the start of the twenty-first century science mapped the entire human genome and so began humanity’s journey to genetically modify ourselves.
To modify nature is our nature. Abhominal aims to highlight questions about our species' future - where does a path of ever-increasing technology lead us, and ultimately, what will it mean for the human condition?
Life is beautiful - but is the future?
Savka
“Action”
“Action” is a photographic / digitally collaged piece.
In Savka’s piece we are presented with a male figure caught in an upwards motion - his body interfered by rectangular forms, sheets of paper or maybe rudimentary screens. These abstract geometric intersections interrupting the figure and it’s attempt to reach something ahead and above can be seen as an expression of the interruptions we all are marked by. The experiences we gain, the events of our lives, the trials we go through. They leave their mark.
Through the symbolism and surreal images Savka wants to acquaint you with his sense of the world using his visual language. Smooth lines, geometry, technology and natural forms are part inspiration and an integral part of his artworks. Savka aims to depict what is difficult to express in words or reproduce in the real world, providing a means to highlight our individuality and inner experiences through visual language. The ideal here is to prompt the viewer to contemplate and feel sensations that can be shared by all of us, blurring the boundaries between reality and imagination and unveil the mysterious world of the contemporary soul, but does so through animistic symbols, mythology, and the present, creating new images of modern gods.