Gaia by Ben Snell

The Gaia subseries of sculptures juxtaposes dreamt forms with raw materials. Drawing from Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI, the pieces are upheld by rough-hewn lumber, symbolic of the natural resources that enable advances in modern computing, including artificial intelligence. Here, AI returns from where it came, auric and agenic. Named after the Greek ancestral mother, these pieces pose a new computational ecology: one that links up the origins and afterlife of AI, revealing its cyclical, material nature.

Following in the lineage of Dio, the Inheritance series explores the influence of nature and nurture through the passing of knowledge from one generation of computers to the next. These machines began with the same set of knowledge inherited from an ancestral computer, but time and differing environmental conditions have diverged their paths, endowing each computer with a unique perspective and final form.

As the story goes, Ben Snell trained his computers to become sculptors. With practice, they developed their own distinctive styles. Inspired by the classics, each created a single sculpture—the uncanny, figurative forms presented here. They are also materially made from the computers that invented them. Snell ground the computers to dust and utilized them as a physical medium, fusing process and product. Reborn, the computers assume a newfound physical agency, while traces of their invisible processing power live on in their bodily form. Endowed is a materiality upon the impossibly immaterial.

Upcoming Exhibition and Shipping Details

The 4 sculptures will be exhibited at The Delaware Contemporary from September 8, 2023, to December 31, 2023. Please note that the sculptures will be in possession of the museum from August 8, 2023, until February 2, 2023, after which they will be shipped via art handler to collectors.

All works will be accompanied by both an NFT Certificate of Authenticity and a physical one signed by the artist.