GANBROOD

Bas Uterwijk aka Ganbrood, (1968, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) has a background in special effects, 3D animation, videogames, and photography. Mostly self-taught, he has always been involved in forms of visual storytelling that imitate and distort reality. Since 2019 he combined his different skills and experiences when he started working with generative adversarial networks (GANs): Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence based software that interprets and synthesizes photographs. With the help of these neural networks, he constructed photos that were never recorded by an actual camera. Portraits of people that lived before the camera was invented or people that never existed. Since early 2021, he has been minting Non Fungible Tokens on the Tezos blockchain. His latest series of artworks are more abstract: "pseudo-figurative" pieces in which he interrogates GANs on creativity and their ability to disrupt human visual recognition.

In the intricate weave of language—particularly in the Germanic andLatin tongues—the connection between "art" and "artificiality" isn'tmerely incidental. For me, the ultimate act of artistry lies incrystallizing your unique worldview into a format that not onlycommunicates but resonates. There's a magnetic pull in how imitationand illusion factor into this process. So, what's the real deal withoriginality in art? Are we caught in an endless loop of mutualreflection? Adding AI to the mix complicates things delightfully. When an algorithm, trained on a melting pot of artistic styles, pumps out new creations, are we staring at high-tech mimicry or a profound commentary on the very essence of artistic evolution?