The Journey Within
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The Journey Within
An NFT collection made of visions found inside Barabeke's art, magnified and enhanced with the help of AI.
There is a great talk today about AI-generated art, met in part with hostility and seen as a threat to artists. I saw it as an opportunity. After several months of experimentation, I developed a technique in which I use AI as a tool to add value to my art, if not to multiply it, while keeping the vision of the artist central.
My visual art is characterized by its extreme digital glitches, forming plenty of suggestive details that can only be appreciated in hi-res (the standard resolution of my works is 16.78 megapixels, up to the whooping 6.7 gigapixels of my Giant Kahuna, among the largest digital artworks ever created).
I have basically started to use AI to magnify, enhance, denoise, and sharpen the glitchy details that can be found within my art, to an extent that I could spend the rest of my life finding visions of artistic value within just one of my artworks.
This mysterious preview that seems coming from an alien world will give you an idea of what I am talking about…
The Future Historian
All the images you saw above were found inside The Future Historian, which marks an evolution in my style. Starting from it, my prime digital art will be high-res infinite loop animated gifs, released as 1/1 NFT art.
If any gallery or venue is interested in featuring my art, my requirement is that it is always paired with the 2kTenCom (Ten Commandments for the Digital Millennium), as my main mission as an artist is to foster a new humanist and liberal tradition that can keep us free and dignified in this century and beyond.
So you’ll need at least 2 square screens. The rest I can provide.
The Journey Within
The Journey Within is the title of a series, which is also an NFT collection, made of visions found inside my art (starting from The Future Historian you saw above)
With the aid of AI, I managed to go deep inside my art up to reaching an image whose surface is 277 billion times smaller than the original artwork (which means that it would correspond to less than 1 pixel of the original artwork and therefore can’t be found in it. But by approaching those depths progressively through AI, new glitches and forms emerge, opening a realm of possibilities that is infinite and come into existence through my vision and intention).
I always conceived my art as a shamanic journey in digital glitchy lands, often starting from photos I take, images of reality that I use as portals to different dimensions. Sometimes I use ancient paintings, for example those of Leonardo da Vinci (visible in the exhibition Barabeke’s Leonardo). My way of using AI is an extension of my creative process, I see it almost as a form of divination that I deeply enjoy practicing, based on my art and bearing its DNA even if the deeper I go the bigger the role of AI.
In the series The Journey Within I treat the visions found inside my works as fine art black and white photography, each with a special handwritten frame, and each a single edition NFT. The image below explains the format better than many words.
As mentioned, my main mission as an artist is to create a new humanist and liberal tradition. It’s not working well in real life, but a cultural transformation is obviously hard to trigger, it requires time, generations, and luck that is beyond my control. The best I can do is to push my stuff out (there is still more to come…). I may not be the hero of the story but there is a story. The title The Future Historian is a hint at that... I won’t be revealing more for now, but you will hear news from this Odd Gospel substack. Subscribe to receive updates, it’s free.
Blessings,
Barabeke
Odd Gospel’s foundational texts
🦞 “A moral innovation for this digital age”. Where the seed of a new humanist and liberal tradition based on the 2kTenCom is planted.
🤖 Neo Genesis. The cosmological foundation of the 2kTenCom.
Barabeke’s community service
☯️ Intuitive consultation with Barabeke. No-fee/free crypto offering based.
Support Barabeke
🗿 Collect Barabeke’s NFTs to help him keep going. Visit Barabeke’s Art Sanctuary to experience his art and philosophy in 3D.
🙏Be generous or at least fair with your offering after the intuitive consultation.
💲Support the Odd Gospel substack with a paid subscription.
💲Tip Barabeke with ETH or BTC on Twitter.
Connect
💬 Reach out to Barabeke via Twitter or Telegram.
🪦 The Catacombs Telegram group, the initial gathering place for supporters.
📣 Goodwillers United Telegram channel (updates only).