Anne Spalter

United States of America

Anne Spalter is a visual artist, educator, author, and collector. Her visionary art takes viewers on an abstract sci-fi voyage, employing media from digital video, AI, and crypto art, to drawing, painting, weaving, and giant inflatables. Spalter’s distinctive dystopian vision of the modern landscape is inspired by travel, sci-fi novels, movies, and the writings of Carl Jung. In her immersive installations, viewers wander through apocalyptic streetscapes with towering waves, crashed spaceships, and raging fires, all depicted with acid hues and vibrating patterns. Spalter has created, curated, and collected digital work for decades, founding the first digital fine arts courses at Brown University and RISD in the 1990s, and authoring the internationally taught textbook, The Computer in the Visual Arts. With Michael Spalter, she stewards Spalter Digital, one of the largest private collections of early computer art work.


She recently completed an alumni residency at MAss MoCA, was featured as one of the 50 most important crypto artists in Rizzoli’s CryptoArt Begins, and participated in the SPRING/BREAK Art show NYC, as well as the CADAF Art Fair (Nov 11-13). Her 557-piece NFT project RABBIT TAKEOVER sold out in five minutes this December, and she is currently working on her contribution to the Superrare RarePass Project. Also in December, the Buffalo AKG Museum acquired her surrealist-inspired 20-minute NFT video work, The Bell Machine. Spalter’s art is in numerous private collections and museums such as the Victoria and Albert, the AKG Buffalo Art Museum; the RISD Museum, and The Museum of CryptoArt. Her NFTs have been auctioned by Sotheby’s and Phillips, and featured in the New York Times. She continues to lecture on digital art practice, theory, and the market.


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Quarantine Cruise

Quarantine_Cruise_Anne_Spalter_AI.mp4

Lost at Sea: AI Ships in the Time of Quarantine

Building on a residency at MASS MoCA in which I developed a series of oil paintings based on AI-generated imagery of salvation and armageddon (which led to a sold-out show at SPRING/BREAK Art Show NYC 2020), I have continued to use AI image creation as a basis for new compositions, this time to create imagery and video about ships trapped out at sea in the time of quarantine. The images combine ghostly ever-morphing forms and the ships seem to move but end up going nowhere. All the ship forms and background colors are generated with AI algorithms.

Theoretically, the work draws on philosophies of Carl Jung and Arthur Schopenhaeur as a conceptual framework for the exploration of artificial intelligence (AI) in image generation. I am interested in the concept of representation as discussed by Schopnehauer (e.g., “objects are representations”) in the context of generating this seascape imagery with various AI GAN processes. In particular, how do these objects exist distinctly from perception by a subject (i.e., when only “seen” by a machine)? And how does this “perception,” when divorced from human senses, result in an “understanding” of an object or landscape/seascape? During the AI algorithm’s “learning” process, it often develops shapes and compositions that do not resemble anything exactly familiar or that we have seen before.

The AI image results worked with in these series draw on an image set that I supplied (combining container ships and luxury yachts) that is visually meaningful to me, so it is perhaps not entirely surprising that the newly born compositions are often inspirational, serving as what is functionally a machine-created unconscious that could be the subject of Jung’s quote: “In addition to memories from a long-distant conscious past, completely new thoughts and creative ideas can… present themselves from the unconscious – thoughts and ideas that have never been conscious before.” (With “unconscious” replaced by “AI algorithm;” the AI algorithm is functioning in a way analogous to the human unconscious).

technique

ai

format

landscape

duration

02:43

year

2020

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More from Anne Spalter

More on digital art

Generative art
Generative art refers to a way of creating artworks using an autonomous system. In digital art, these are usually generated from code and algorithms created by the artist, often with certain predefined parameters or systems. Although these parameters guide the final outcome of the work, generative art is generally a surprising way to create artworks, as the results are often unexpected and the number of possible outcomes can be infinite.
AI
AI art is a branch of generative art that uses artificial intelligence. Unlike other generative artworks, AI artworks use specific complex algorithms and models derived from machine learning. The most common methods for creating AI art today are GANs (generative adversarial networks) or proprietary prompting platforms such as ChatGPT, Sora, Midjourney, or Dall-e.
3D
3D art uses 3D software such as Blender, Cinema4D, Houdini, or video game software such as Unity to create works of art. In 3D works, artists can either arrange assets (the 'objects' in a 3D artwork or world) that they have created themselves or purchased from other creators to create elaborate environments and scenes (an approach to 3D art called 'set dressing'), or specialize in sculpting, which involves creating their own objects and assets.
Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry is a specialized 3D technique that allows 3D objects to be created from numerous photographs taken of an object or scene from multiple angles. These photos are then compiled to determine the specific positioning, shape, and dimensions of the object in space, and then converted into a 3D model. Initially developed for engineering and urban planning, photogrammetry has become a way for artists to produce extremely accurate 3D models from real-life images.
Collage
An extension of the traditional, plastic approach to collage, digital collage involves searching for and cutting out multiple images, extracting them from their original context, and recomposing them in a new arrangement to create a work of art. Artists can use their own photographs or find images on the internet.
Illustration
Digital illustrations are created using software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or Procreate. As with drawing on paper, the artist uses a stylus to sketch a figure or object, usually on a tablet, to construct a scene or artistic universe. Unlike traditional drawing methods, digital illustration is much more forgiving, as mistakes can be easily corrected and drawn elements and objects can be easily moved around within a scene.
Video
Video artworks primarily use a recording camera, but may sometimes include additional post-processing or editing to distort, modify or add additional elements to the image. Some artists use state-of-the-art recording equipment to create macro zoom-ins or time lapses, privileging fidelity to the subject matter. Others use additional softwares to significantly modify or warp the video, creating an alternative perspective on the world that surrounds us.

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