Generating the Art of the Future
VK Authors Project Exhibition

For this year’s edition of the project, Erarta Museum and VK Authors community reached out to the broad audience of beginner and amateur artists, inviting them to take a closer look at their profile page and zero in on their sources of creative inspiration. Seeking to avoid a gush of simplistic tributes to Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, and Andy Warhol, we stressed the importance of an interdisciplinary approach. Our task – or, to put it in AI terms, prompt – for community members read:

Envision yourself as a generative neural network. Adopt its creative approach by mixing various styles and techniques and adding unusual elements. For example, try fusing the visions invoked by the favourite tracks on your playlist with the most iconic imagery produced by the global culture.

Although the exhibition features a wide variety of experiments, most of the artworks on show were not AI-generated. Artificial intelligence could only assist in editing the original creative output – for example, a photograph or a drawing.

Having absorbed and processed their past aesthetic experience as reflected in their social media profile pages, and using the combinatorial approach typical of the creative talents at the turn of the 21st century, participating artists demonstrate that sooner or later the process of ‘generating’ art will evolve into true creation.