Igor Stravinsky : While others have worked with AI image synthesis to surpass photorealism, I use to make images from music. Large Language Models behave unpredictably when prompted with text that it cannot associate easily with its training. Words like ‘counterpoint’, ‘melody’, ‘rhythmic vitality’ make models such as DALL-E and Stable Diffusion reach for anything that might by some chance generate images. Add ‘in the style of Stravinsky’ or ‘inspired by music of Bach’ and the models react in riotously unexpected, chaotic ways. But their training always ensures coherent visual syntheses. In this series, I combine select synthograms with parts of different images, applying layer modes, transparency, masking, lighting, cloning and erasure. The results simulate a synaesthesia, but are not literal (if that were even possible) representations of a composer’s music. In the end, these are visual celebrations of my experience and love of the rich, layered and challenging world of formal or classical music. https://platform.wise.art/author/TomAng/ https://www.instagram.com/tomangphoto/

The acquisition of this NFT is linked to the physical work of art which will be shipped to your preferred location directly from the artist’s studio. The work is performed using nothing more than the spatula blade. I press the blade in the paint and then immediately on the canvas, so that a fine line becomes visible. This meticulous process is repeated over and over until a hatching of fine lines develops into a filigree composition. The layering of densely criss-crossing strands interspersed with translucent glaze gives rise to an impression of great depth and three-dimensionality in the view of the observer. The fine, relief-like structures create patterns of shade as the light moves, so that images change according to lighting. This effect imbues with the added feeling of variability, changeable mood, symbolic of the sometimes unexpected changes in life and variant approaches for one and the same event.

Treaty Pieced New Zealand’s central document, the Treaty of Waitangi, was drafted hastily as a single-page manuscript. Māori chiefs signed it in 1840 after only a day and night of discussion. Unable to read, few understood any English, and even fewer grasped the abstract political concepts. Those who signed relied partly on an instinctive sense of the Treaty’s meaning and importance. Interpreting the Treaty remains a deeply contentious issue today, and artists often choose to avoid this debate. My works highlight the lack of comprehension and the cloud of misunderstanding experienced by those encountering unfamiliar symbols and ideas. These pieces combine random elements with asemic calligraphy to represent confusion and a lack of meaning. They merge painting with torn or asemic renderings of the Treaty’s words, collages of paper, and paintings unified through photography. https://platform.wise.art/author/TomAng/ https://www.instagram.com/tomangphoto/