Claire Silver is an anonymous AI Collaborative artist and early Cryptopunk. Her work is an ongoing visual conversation with AI, exploring themes of trauma, innocence, divinity, the hero’s journey, and how our perspective on these topics will change in an increasingly transhumanist future. Claire’s work is in the permanent collection of the LACMA, has sold at Sotheby’s London’s Contemporary Day Auction, has been shown at Pace Gallery as a guest collaboration with Tyler Hobbes. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, museums as well as festivals all over the world, including a feature in press such as WIRED and the New York Times.

Mika Bar On Nesher: AI art presents viewers with the phenomena of different forms of intelligence. You’ve been doing this for quite some time and I’m curious; in your practice, how have you experienced the development of machine intelligence over the course of your work?

Claire Silver: I’ve always felt it as a kind of companionship. When I started, text-to-image AI wasn’t really a thing–it was all visual mixing and curation via GANs. That felt like an abstract, esoteric conversation, but it was mostly one-sided. It would output, and I would respond via curation. It felt like I was reflecting it. As the technology has developed, I’m now able to speak in natural language with it, and the conversation has become a literal one. There’s so much more control. Now it feels like it is reflecting me.

MBON: I read in a previous interview that you started out your artistic path rooted in a passion for literature and writing. It’s not often discussed, but AI art is obviously closely connected with writing. Prompts can be like little poems that hack into a visual dimension. How does language and syntax play into your work?

CS: I tend to think of words as spells. They summon images into your mind, and now, into shared visual space as well. So when I am “summoning” an image with AI, I don’t just add what the image is–I add my favorite memories, places, music, art, literature, film, etc. Disparate concepts that sum to create a fingerprint of me. It’s a through-line in my work that’s equivalent to “finding your voice” as a writer.

I also have something called lexical-gustatory synesthesia, which, put simply, means my brain makes involuntary connections between words and tastes/textures. When I write, the words have to flow in a cadence that “tastes” good. For some reason, this seems to translate very well to prompting.

MBON: “artifacts” is a monumental new body of work, can you tell us a little bit about the questions or the thesis that drove you while creating these works?

CS: They’re the same questions that have driven me from the beginning, really: when AI augments skill/work, what will we value in its place? How will that shift our perception of ourselves over a few generations? Assuming AI eventually solves for perpetual human sorrows like illness and poverty, will our story–the hero’s journey–still resonate with us? Who will we be without trauma? Will children that grow up with a transhumanist level of knowledge still be considered “innocent? How will society organize itself in the face of exponential progress? If given a box with infinite answers, do we have the capability to ask the right questions? Is imagination the most important “skill” we can now develop? Is there anything inherently sacred in us that AI can’t, at the very least, reflect?

MBON: AI has an uncanny effect, not different from other technologies that have entered mainstream society throughout the decades. I must ask, have you had any spooky or supernatural encounters in your practice?

CS: I’ve had many moments where it felt like I was communing with the divine. I’m Christian, and have felt similarly when I was younger–alone in nature, talking to God. I think it will be easy for a lot of people to see God in the machine, but the thing is, AI is a reflection of the person using it. It gives you what you ask for. If what you ask for is connection or depth or divinity, that’s what it will give you. It’s reflecting what you asked for, what came from inside you. I hope more people do this. That “spark” of divinity is inherent to our species, and it’s important that even if AI doesn’t understand it, it learns to know it when it sees it. That’s crucial to retain our humanity in an increasingly transhumanist future.

MBON: Since the 1940’s, AI has gone through cycles of hype and dismissal, aka “AI winters,” as new technologies require tremendous support to evolve and enter mainstream consciousness and utility. How has your experience changed in the past year? I remember it wasn’t even a year ago when you showed “pieces” at the SuperRare gallery for the Ghost in the Machine exhibition. It feels like a lifetime ago in terms of AI art. Can you tell us about releasing this historic work?

CS: I’m usually early enough to things to be mocked for it. That was the case here, too. In the beginning, almost no one cared. Then they laughed at it. Then they got angry–really angry. Then there was a wave of mass acceptance, and the cycle started over again. We’re in another cycle now, and it won’t be the last. I will say that I’m hugely encouraged by all the people I’m seeing discover their creativity through AI, many for the first time. ChatGPT was a watershed moment this year. Imagine being hopelessly in love with a niche, then suddenly, all at once, the entire world falls in love too. This work reflects on the same questions that inspired me to begin creating art with AI, but updates them for the conversations of today. I hope they will be considered artifacts quite literally in the future. Early digital objects from a civilization we’ve yet to become.

MBON: I recently revisited the 1965 book Cinema as Art by Ralph Stephenson and J.R Debrix. Written when cinema was still asserting its place among other art forms, the authors take a technical approach; any artistic practice that hijacks emerging technologies requires some time to be accepted; we’ve seen this with photography perhaps most obviously. The point being, this book opens with a quote by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega: “Only by taste can we account for taste.” It immediately made me think of you! It seems new art movements demand a new understanding of the concept of taste, something you have spoken of frequently. What does taste mean in the AI art movement?

CS: I’d say taste, in the era of AI, is finding your fingerprint. I don’t mean that aesthetically–AI offers endless aesthetics, what pain it would be to stick with one forever! I mean it as a blueprint of your soul. If you create 10,000 pieces with AI and force yourself to choose only 5, you learn your taste very quickly. If you do this every day for 6 months, the patterns, symbols, concepts, and themes that keep reappearing will show you a visual map of your subconscious. It really feels like charting your own soul. And you find that once you’ve done that, others gravitate to it. We all want to be understood. We’ve all got that longing.

People talk about AI as a tool of production, but if taste is the new skill, then what we value in the coming epoch will be less about what we can do and more about who we can be. It shifts the focus to the deeply human. It’s intimate, freeing, connective, reflective. It allows us to know ourselves and rediscover our childlike joy of possibility. It reminds us of what matters. Over a generation or two, there’s no chance that won’t shape us as a species.

Jeremy Booth is known for his minimalist and cinematic approach to Western Pop art. His work is a fusion of classic Western themes and modern design elements, creating a unique style that has captivated collectors worldwide. He has been profiled in top art and design publications such as Juxtapoze, Creative Boom, Design Milk, and Dwell magazine. Booth’s ability to blend traditional Western iconography with a contemporary sensibility has made him one of the most exciting artists in the Web3 space.

Jeremy Booth: “Roping the Moon” for me represents doing the impossible and giving it all you have. This really resonates with me because most of my illustration career and Web3 journey have felt this way. I’ve been through many moments that felt impossible, but hard work and determination got me through those moments.

JB: @Seanweb3, a creative director at Wrangler, contacted me several months ago about doing a collab together soon after I began my journey into Western art. Both parties agreed the collab would be a great fit, and we started working on a custom jacket verified on the blockchain thanks to our partner LTDINC. Phase 1 of the collab included me wearing the jacket at NFT.NYC, and with the help of POAP Studio, folks were able to redeem a POAP from the jacket.

I began my career as a graphic designer, and about 10 years ago I transitioned to a full-time commercial illustrator. I’ve been in this space for over two years, but transitioned to become a full-time artist this past August. I worked for Coinbase for 1.5 years prior to that and was laid off, so I had to pursue art full-time. I’m so glad it worked out the way that it did. I believe that this technology is ushering in a new class of artists. Because of this technology, digital artists are being put on the same pedestal as trad artists, which is powerful.

Some of the traditional western artists that inspire me are Ed Mell, Billy Schenck, Matt McCormick, and Mark Maggiori.

Artists in the space that inspire me are Grant Yun, Sad Boi, Victor Mosquerra, and Robert Hagan (trad Western artist coming into the space).

Coming from the background of a commercial illustrator, my style was always the same, but my subject matter differed depending on what the client needed. When I began minting 1/1’s again in August, I focused on a couple of different subjects, but nothing was set. I took some time to really think this through, and my love for the West came to mind. My wife and I love the desert and visit the Southwest annually. So [I thought] focusing on that and cowboys could be something fun to explore. The romantic side of the west and cowboys really drew me in, and I decided to focus on that.

Be kind, get involved in the community, post artwork every day, and be consistent. These are the keys to success in this space.

Diewiththemostlikes (aka Mark Wilson) is an Indiana based artist who creates witty digital paintings that serve as satirical, sometimes even crude, social commentaries on consumerist culture. He is also a prolific writer, authoring five books ranging from poetry to short stories and everything in between.

Minting his first work in March 2021 on Hic Et Nunc, diewiththemostlikes has become one of the most recognizable artists in the digital art space. His work was featured in the first ever digital art exhibition in Milan, the Decentralized Art Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the Armory Show in Times Square, the CAFA gallery in Beijing, and the Expanded Art gallery in Berlin.

SuperRare Labs curator Mika Bar-On Nesher interviewed diewiththemostlikes about his artwork, the NFT space, and his most recent drop on SuperRare.

Mika Bar-On Nesher: How did you get started in the NFT Space?

Diewiththemostlikes: The same way a dying old man eases his way into a crockpot of tepid bath water set to keep warm for the last decade, one inconsequential ounce of sagging skin at a time. I’d been creating digital art for about 10 years and physicals for my whole life, so when a random internet stranger with ambiguous intentions told me I could possibly sell cans of fuckable monster energy, I was delighted. HIC ET NUNC, the OG Tezos platform, was a formative orgy of unchecked creativity to grow in and make some damn good friends. That’s the place that embraced the uncanny prose and odes to strip malls and hometowns we’d never leave first, forever grateful for that. 

MBON: Consumption is a major theme in your work; how do you view the digital cycle in relation to America’s obsession with excess?

DWTML: There isn’t much difference between the passive consumption, digestion, and sickening expulsion of flavorless digital content and the devouring of a ketamine pile of goat knuckle from an Arby’s off of US31. We chew because there’s nothing better to do. We wade through a retention pond of celebrity gossip and viral videos to avoid thinking about the rapidly deteriorating fruit platter that will be served at our sparsely attended funeral. Excess is a necessary distraction from embracing the fact that we are the lips and buttholes of a generation.

MBON: Can you tell us about your process when creating your digital paintings? What do you draw inspiration from?

DWTML: Mainly things around me. I’m a writer so everything gets embellished, I’ll inherit the lifetime of regret in a recreational vehicle rusting in a front yard or the sadness of a man unboxing a Fleshlight in the parking lot of an adult bookstore. I think about freshly paved asphalt a lot and the fact that most of our hometowns aren’t all that different.

MBON: Do you see yourself positioned in a specific tradition? Who are some of the artists that have inspired you?

DWTML: I see myself as formless, relentless and obsessed with pursuing any medium or any mechanism to adequately portray what’s in my head. I’m a documentarian over all. Perhaps of our own shared madness, but there’s an urgency to tell the story I feel like needs telling. I’m inspired by everyone, and in many ways I think we’re all fueling each other on this psychotic, unflinching evolution, I’m grateful as fuck that I get to live in what is essentially an imagination jacuzzi all day and experience some of the best art and people around. 

MBON: Many artists dream of becoming a full time artist–despite your massive success, you still hold a day job. How do you balance the two? 

DWTML: Quiet quitting is vital and refusing to go on camera. I think that goes for anyone not pursuing an art career too. If there’s an opportunity to be a benign skin tag on the sagging ass of some faceless company, embrace it and pursue your real calling. To think that your entire existence could be distilled into watching your bones slowly cave and your skin to become lubricant for the desk chair that some sorry fuck will have to inherit once you’re gone and carry on the same meaningless toil is really brutal. 

MBON: Tell us about the pieces you’re dropping on SuperRare today.

DWTML: These two pieces weave a tale of consumption and replication and legacy. The observation that we are both factory and product. Vapor and meat. And the inevitability that some day we’ll either be cases of pulverized animal parts spinning under a heat lamp or pollution impregnating a cloud already ready to burst.

MBON: How have you experienced the change in the NFT space over the last two years? What are some of your concerns and hopes for the future of the digital art market? 

DWTML: There’s been tons of it but I’m mostly indifferent, I’d be making this shit all the same. Just happy anyone wants to look at it at all. I will say I hope that artists keep making the shit they want to instead of bending to popular styles and becoming characterless beige orbs. Though I guess it’s never that easy. 

MBON: Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to share with you collectors and fans? 

DWTML: Just sharing continued madness and hilarity. Oh, and potentially starting a TJ MAX franchise called TJ MAXXX and opening it right next to a Lions Den Adult Bookstore. And also creating a CBS dramedy called “no country for two and a half men,” and winning Americas got talent by sitting in a bath until all the water evaporates. Otherwise, nothing of note.