Terrain.art, a blockchain-powered online platform that focuses on art from South Asia, is exploring the relationship between artificial intelligence and creativity with India’s first AI NFT Art Exhibition titled, ‘Intertwined Intelligences’. Featuring six global artists pioneering AI — Pindar Van Arman, David Young, Scott Eaton, Harshit Agrawal, Sofia Crespo and Feileacan McCormick from Entangled Others Studio — this exhibition has opened on the platform.

Curated by Harshit Agrawal, Intertwined Intelligences marks the first step in Terrain.art’s commitment to building an ecosystem for artists practicing newer forms of art, including generative art, neural art, machine-learning, AI-assisted art and aims to serve as a stimulant for engaging with critical questions about the kind of future the world of art ought to create via such technologies. The artworks on view until August 20, symbolise the essence of a natively digital future, one in which our natural selves are intricately intertwined with a human-machine imagined and constructed realm of the digital.

Aparajita Jain, Founder at Terrain.art and Co-Director at Nature Morte, showcased India’s first Al show at Nature Morte in August 2018 in Delhi, titled ‘Gradient Descent’, where all the artworks featured were made by Al in collaboration with artists.

Three years on, Intertwined Intelligences on Terrain.art has introduced another layer by presenting works that have physical and digital counterparts that are secured on blockchain using NFTs. Jain exclaims, “AI has evolved exponentially since the show in 2018. We are proud to follow the journeys of the Artificial Intelligences as well as these supremely gifted artists. I am in awe of the sophistication in the works and I love the potential of how interactive they can be! We are presenting 3D creatures that resemble life forms but generated through algorithms, and the Augmented Reality feature allows viewers to truly engage with these digitally native creatures. We are even exhibiting portraits that have been painted by trained robots. It goes to show the limitlessness of artistic creativity.” The art produced is digital in nature, and is available as NFTs and physical works.

“Human existence and digital technologies are no longer separable. Our lives are deeply intertwined within a web of technology, which itself is rapidly cultivating an intelligence of its own, seeded by human intelligence and mined data. As we transition to a world of digitally native beings, all aspects of our lived experience are transforming,” notes Harshit Agrawal, the curator of the show. He goes on to add, “Each artist uses AI to imagine alternate realities of common natural subjects, themes that might be considered passe in mainstream art today, but here re-imagined and re-interpreted through the lens of AI. It is as if they are building a new, digital reality through these essential genres, asking the viewer to balance their own deep rooted understanding of the natural world and the uncanny departures introduced by AI.”

Intertwined Intelligences is on view until August 20 on Terrain.art.