GANs (AI) are a tool with huge implications for art and culture, akin to the smart-phone.

For the first time in history, we can use algorithms as an art tool to visualize complex ideas from our creative minds beyond abstract art and at scale.

UKW uses AI to create a collection (and homage) of 1875 unique portraits which would have taken several lifetimes to complete. It is a project that exists for, and because of, this revolutionary new tool.

The enduring art of portraiture and a new technology (GANs) unite to bridge our past with the fast-evolving present.

The past addressed here are the lives of women through history. The collection imagines what some of these women may have looked like, and through opulent imagery, elevates them and their historically overlooked work.

Although women throughout history had distinct experiences, they are largely united across cultures and time by the shared responsibility of home and family. This common thread is reflected in all the images through their intricate backgrounds, distinct from other NFT collections.

Wasabi's art has always been drawn to the intersection of human spiritual adaptation and the now - the period of rapid technological progress through which we are living.

As technology progresses at exponential rates (DNA sequencing, computing power, speed of communication etc) it pushes us to adapt. It also gives us more time to think and to strive for Maslow's pinnacle: self-actualization.

We want to do more, better and faster. But do we? Are humans adapting as quickly?

AI today is flawed (like us?); the tools often output faces and bodies deformed.

UKW uses raw AI outputs intentionally as a way to capture this fleeting moment in the development of GANs as an emerging tool in the arts. The art expresses what the AI is good at now (which intriguingly happens to be non-caucasian faces). 

The other dimension explored is the demonization of AI in media; by wanting to freeze this moment in AI’s progress (like a portrait does) we also humanize it.

This is an art collection that is intentionally using the PFP as a medium to capture the present moment in culture and art.

A huge, global shift has happened in the arts akin to the development of the smartphone: power and control are shifting, reach and connection expanding. Art is being democratized.

Bruce Naumann used neon signage as a way to democratize art. Wasabi uses the PFP.

What else represents this pivotal (and controversial) moment in art-history better than the PFP?

The PFP is a marker of our identities in web3 and its ethos: it is a medium of mass culture. For that reason UKW is intentionally embodied in this contested medium asking the age-old question: What is art?


PS -  The PFP is also fascinating to Wasabi because of its inherent repetition. The different ways in which we appreciate repetition is interesting to consider: music sounds better with repeating tunes, the pursuit of perfection requires repetition, calm is felt through repetitive sound or activities (like in Kusama's web paintings), and yet we value that which is one of a kind.

UKW celebrates the human experience across the passage of time.

It asks: What should we value? Why?

It forces us to freeze and reflect as our minds incessantly hurtle toward an exciting future.