Solo exhibition · Fulda · October 2023

Minds of
the Machine

The first AI art exhibition in Fulda, and BASD-ART’s first solo show. It opened on 4 October 2023.

Opening
4 October 2023, 7 pm
When
5–14 October 2023
Free admission
Where
U1, KARL Konzeptkaufhaus, Fulda
On show
Prints, two installations, sound, text and a scent
With
NETHINKS · 43einhalb · ART BRÜT

From the exhibition text, 2023

Creative human approaches meet algorithmic intelligence.

Every artwork and every medium in this exhibition came out of a close collaboration between a person and a machine. Mario steers the image generator Midjourney with precise commands, a process known as prompting. He then curates the results in a workflow of his own and refines them in dialogue with the AI.

Some of the works are visibly not perfect yet. The artist deliberately turned these supposed flaws into design elements: people who look like German shepherds, lobsters melting into sorbet, fingers stuck to a face. Next to them hang portraits that could pass for photographs.

The room

A basement level, concrete walls, wire racks and blue light.

Photo: Mark Mattingly

The series

A selection of the works on show.

Hubba Bubba

3 prints · ultraHD photo print behind acrylic glass · 60 × 80 cm

People merge with abstract masks made of something like gum. Acrylic glass and loud colours push the bubblegum effect further. One motif became the poster.

Sorbet

4 prints · Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl · 60 × 60 cm · edition of 20

It began with an Instagram challenge: a scorpion on a sorbet. However precise the prompt, Midjourney never produced a scorpion, always some kind of crustacean. The failed attempts became the series.

Cherry Lady

4 prints · Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl · 50 × 70 cm · edition of 20

A pastel spring day: mouths picked from the tree like cherries, and cherries that look like mouths. Inspired by the mouths of pop art.

Snapshot Safari Vol. 1

7 prints · Fuji Crystal DP II · 50 × 70 cm · edition of 20

Selected favourites with no shared theme: funny, cool, sometimes disturbing. Hung on the wire racks.

Close Up

3 prints · Canson Baryta Prestige II · 50 × 70 cm · edition of 20

Inspired by iconic black-and-white portrait photography. Visitors wondered what the series was doing in the exhibition. They had not realised the portraits were AI.

Two installations and a fake

ai_am_jesus

This is where it started. An altar behind pink curtains, with the scent EAU MY GOD by the Frankfurt collective ART BRÜT and a poem developed with ChatGPT, read by an AI voice. Concept, image and poem by BASD-ART and Nikolina Micic.

Visit the project ↗

The Family Wall

A woman’s life told in family photos, from a happy childhood to starting a family of her own. Every picture is AI-generated. Many visitors walked past it at first; once they noticed, it sparked long conversations and a lingering sense of the uncanny.

The pictures were printed small, some at home and some as drugstore prints, then aged with black tea and put into old frames. Almost the cheapest work in the show.

Studio IVO

Among the flyers on the table lay one for a furniture studio in Fulda, showroom opening 2024. The studio never existed, and its chairs are AI images. Nobody asked, and plenty of visitors took the flyer home.

Opening night

4 October 2023

Photo: Mark Mattingly

Posters & postcards

Three poster motifs and a set of postcards, all designed for the show.

Thanks

The biggest thank-you goes to my wife Nina, who carried this exhibition from start to finish.

Thanks also to Johannes Ruppel for the exhibition space, to NETHINKS, 43einhalb, ART BRÜT and KARL Konzeptkaufhaus, and to Mark Mattingly for the photos.

Contact

hi@basd-art.de← Back to BASD-ART