WAGMI - but does that mantra include the pessimists of the world? 
So We're All Gonna Make It? Perhaps those who ride this crypto whirlwind are the only ones who will make it. 
The influence of the meme, Pepe the Frog and apocalyptic visions  are strong in this crypto culture. The nature of money is changing but the ride is volatile.  So the frog keeps calm because after the bomb the only way out is up.

We're All Gonna..

Bård Ionson

A scan of the artist in 2018 by his own hand.

Created using a modified damaged scanner.

Self Portrait With Glasses

Commerce of money in a commercial of artificial intelligence propaganda of the individual mind. It is easier to predict the future if you can manipulate the information space. Will pursuit of power and money bring us to extinction?

Ai model trained on McDonalds Commercial Tomato McGrand 2005 with Agota Varga.

This is an installation on a a color CRT TV 4:3 signed by the artist. Video is played from an iPhone4. 

This NFT is a token for the physical manifestation of this art. The CRT and video player may be replaced by any size CRT 4:3 which is also a CRT or an emulation of one once CRTs are no longer in existence. 

The price of the first purchase includes delivery of the CRT TV and video player device and video art.  The devices might be substituted depending on the power requirements of the country delivered to. If possible the artist will deliver. (Contact artist for information on which countries it can be delivered to. US sanctions and regulations apply.) 

The owner of this token is authorized to publicly exhibit the McMelt TV installation even if the original device is destroyed or missing. This token is the official record of ownership.

The first part of the video attached to this token or additional copies in the metadata record is the video to be displayed on the CRT TV screen.

McMelt TV

Looking for utopia; expecting the apocalypse
Crypto is either going to save us all or destroy humanity and perhaps both
An inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit. Crypto does seem to be possessed by a spirit; the spirit of its community. 

A Knights of the Apocalypse with graffiti
https://collect.bardionson.com/5knights

Crypto Fetish

The simulations are being run. The earth and all humans have been made extinct by Ai of their own creation. But now a being from the future knows now how to rebuild heaven and earth. They need to optimize the outcomes this time. This is Simulation 89 one chapter of The SAGE Anomaly story. https://sageAnomaly.com Ai art carefully constructed by Bard Ionson using the tools Stable Diffusion, Runway, Gen-2, Photoshop.

Simulation Number 89: The Goats Watch

The hand reaches for the smart phone  
A digital extension into worldwide connection  
The digitalization device of the age  
The ideas of each person transmitted and digitalized

Image created using the wand of a broken scanner.

Digitalization Device

In the beginning there is only need. The past is the future of history. 
A 4k re-imagination of the XCOPY art pieces called WANT inspired by the techniques of Matt Kane and Coldie.
As a tracing of Bard's original art it is now an animated sound filled 3D fly through with oscilloscope sound. https://collect.bardionson.com/ion/

NEED

The spice boats traverse the fast electronic expanse carrying culture, treasure and food from east to west from west to east. The orbs carry the digital goods from north to south. The wreckage of the failures rest in the dunes of sand. The future has brought us all together to create, trade and love.

An allegory of the surrealistic future set in the nostalgia of the past. Today we see the rise of the blockchain to carry goods, ideas and money in a more equal way. 

At one time the Nabateans transported culture, spice, silk, fur, treasure and ideas between the east and west. We have the chance again to join together.

Spice Boats on Wadi Rum

Rocket The Blue Sky

A series on SuperRare by Bård Ionson. An imagined future based on retro technology such as CRT, oscilloscopes and lasers. Using line drawings, sound, oscilloscopes and lasers Bård produces a new version of an alternate future. The symbols are the communication of a new language of another cyberspace.

Inspired by artists who were among the first on SuperRare he combines their visual language into something in his own style. The artists who have inspired this collection are XCOPY, Coldie, Matt Kane, Oficinas and GiselX. Bård was along for the ride as an artist at the moment these artists explored the possibilities of the Ethereum blockchain and the promise of CryptoArt The future seemed far away, five or ten years out but here we are, the future is now.

https://collect.bardionson.com/ion/
Custom Series contract on [SuperRare](https://superrare.com/bardionson)

WANT - Too much want brings the end closer. The past is the future of history.

A 4k remix of the XCOPY art pieces called WANT inspired by the techniques of Matt Kane and Coldie.  As a tracing of his original art it is now an animated sound filled 3D fly through with oscilloscope sound. 

WANT

Ion on SuperRare

This is not the artist. Not the voice. This is not a pipe. Did the artist create it? Is it art? Ce n'est pas l'artiste. Pas la voix. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. L'artiste a-t-il créé? Est-ce de l'art?

Alotta Money Version - I borrowed the base image he created and added to it.

This is the not voice of Bård from an Ai model converted to a French accent.

Not The Artist Alotta Money

This is not the artist. Not the voice. This is not a pipe. Did the artist create? Is it art?  
Ce n'est pas l'artiste. Pas la voix. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. L'artiste a-t-il créé? Est-ce de l'art? 
La Trahison de l'IA (The Treachery of Ai)

https://bardionson.com/not-an-artist

My fake self, the anit-self portrait. This is a fake copy of my face and a fake Ai copy of my voice. The voice was then modified by Ai to have a French accent. 

This is a reserved edition that was in an exhibition at The NFT Factory Paris called "100% AI It does not exist" "100% IA Ça n'existe pas"

This Is Not An Artist

Bard Editions

Tape SPAM Wall

A SPAM performance in virtual reality. A meme of meaning, an energy source preserved in a packable stackable can to fight a war or two or three. The countries where SPAM performed became fused with their cultural cuisine. 

Upload the video to a platform that supports 360 video or to your VR Goggles and enjoy the performance and listen to that slurp as it slides out of the can.

A hand with a gold ring reaches down and holds a can of SPAM. A can with its distinctive gold can with blue label with the word SPAM in bold yellow.  With a second hand the artist pulls the ring tap slowly upwards. The hand grabs the can. An old CRT TV rests in the background. The can moves upward and upside down. The hand shakes the can again and again. Now the performance goes into slow motion. The edge of the can is seen at the top of the screen.The slab of SPAM slowly slides out, growing larger with its fall to the plate. It bounces slightly on the beige plate.

SPAM Metaverse Performance

SPAM ART V2

The weather is nice in New Mexico.
A reminder that sometimes the ethical thing is not the legal thing to do.
Sometimes we must walk in that gray space between realities. The space between the legal and the moral. The place between love and right.

Sound Words A Spoken Word Generative Art Poem performed by the artist into an oscilloscope.
Source: NPR -"3 abortion bans in Texas leave doctors 'talking in code' to pregnant patients", March 1, 2023

In 2023, The OB-GYN Said:

The weather is nice in New Mexico.
A reminder that sometimes the ethical thing is not the legal thing to do.
Sometimes we must walk in that gray space between realities. The space between the legal and the moral. The place between love and right.

Sound Words turned into a talking face using Artificial Technology
Source: NPR -"3 abortion bans in Texas leave doctors 'talking in code' to pregnant patients", March 1, 2023  

The Weather Is Nice In New Mexico

Sound Words

Eyes of the artist explore the distortions of decentralization and digitization of value.

Decentraleyes

The Scanner scans himself with a water damaged scanner.
https://vimeo.com/746716954


Out of alignment but it cannot be fixed.  
We can only move forward  
Patch up what is broken by our mistakes  
By the unforeseen consequences of our choices  
The future is marred by a flood  
But does that make it any less beautiful

Future Alignment

Scanning The Scanner

This is not the artist. Not the voice. This is not a pipe. Did the artist create it? Is it art? Ce n'est pas l'artiste. Pas la voix. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. L'artiste a-t-il créé? Est-ce de l'art?

Hike in The Brain Version - Base image from Stable Diffusion with Ai of artists voice and animated with Thin Plate Spline Motion

This is the not voice of Bård from an Ai model converted to a French accent.

This Is Not An Artist - Brain Hike

This Is Not... by Bård Ionson                                                                                                                   Editions for burn exchanges                                                                                                                     BardIonson.com
Ceci n'est pas une pipe  

La Trahison de l'IA (The Treachery of Ai)  
This is not the artist. Not the voice. This is not a pipe. Did the artist create it? Is it art? Ce n'est pas l'artiste. Pas la voix. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. L'artiste a-t-il créé? Est-ce de l'art?

This is the not voice of Bård from an Ai model converted to a French accent.

This Is Not An Evil Ai

This Is Not

Inspired by the shapes and colors of childhood and the exploration of planets, where translucent vinyl shapes overlay to create new colors to spark the imagination. Using the token code the location of shapes and colors are generated. Watch out for the Entity in their latent spacecraft. Based on an original artwork by Liza Grace "Colorform Multiverse"

Color Magic Planets #168

Color Magic Planets #240

Color Magic Planets by Bård Ionson

The future is unknown. The unexpected is what is next.

Face Right

Created with manipulations of a custom modified scanner, water and the hand of the artist. By passing it over faces and other objects to create distortions of what is within. Like a spiritual x-ray it visualizes the distortions between realities of the soul and the physical. 
https://collect.bardionson.com/scan 

Who am I in this digital culture? We connect but through a strange medium. We are far but near, distorted but real. We see through a long piece of glass darkly, recording ourself into the future cataloged on a blockchain. We watch with a sideways glance. We cannot know where this will take our grandchildren.

The artist scans himself with a damaged scanner.

Side Eye

Scanning the Scanner

The Entity is a triune being who displays herself in different physical forms. There are three parts but she is one. The Daughter has decided to exhibit the form of the crucifix in order to instigate a response from the human mind. Pick her form, size and place. These images have been generated by the Entity using artificial intelligence software like StyleGAN and Pix2Pix.

Daughter

A little green bug has chosen where to sit for the day or to hide away as its world changes. Sometimes a friend who is less happy joins in. 
My daughter found this green bug in my generative art images and was so excited to see it turned into art.

A video version of Happy Green Bug is available on SuperRare.co/bardionson

Images generated from a StyleGan2 artificial intelligence model of toilets. The original video comes from the Fountain remix project as artwork Fountain No. 501. 
https://fountain-art.com?501 and it is published here under the remix license written by Bård Ionson. 

This work is provided under the remix license https://bardionson.com/remixLicense1.html so it is available for remixing.  Created from the remix project Fountain-art.com using images Fountain 501, 14, 18, 85, 110, 113, 163, 178, 294, 402. To see originals use https://fountain-art.com?###

Happy Green Bug

Async Art

A coin for the winner. My initial coin offering series contained hidden coins. This is one of the secret coins hidden in another artwork and encrypted. It looks like a coin that was rubbed down and the face looks like a pope. But is there something inside. Use steghide. Made with artificial intelligence using Art-DCGAN and 20,000 coins.

Ghost Pope Coin

The little green bug is surprised you like them so much. 
From Fountain-art.com a AI GAN model of toilets to celebrate art and the beauty in the mundane and the absurdity in the perception of art. It is a remix project that encourages the remixing of the fountains by allowing them to be resold.
A remixed single frame of Fountain 501 printed on a FujiFilm Instax SP-3 live at NFC.NYC at the Coldie & Ann Marie Alanes Karaoke party 2022. This is the NFT that pairs with the instant print.

Surprised Bug (Fountain 501 single frame) 

SuperRare

We Are Anarchy On Chain

We Are Anarchy - the noise of anarchy - completely on chain art generated by an Ethereum Virtual Machine running a smart contract - distributed noise, randomness, entropy, anarchy.
Do see in full form right click and open in a new tab or window.

We Are Anarchy On Chain by Bard Ionson

Themes of gender & sexuality expressed in a symbol of luck, fate, a cosmic slot machine. Luck of the mint, art of the flip to explain the randomness of one’s unique traits. The fruit of the slots to the binary I Ching of 8 sides & planetary gender. These traits are in the art & in us. They might seem imperfect but their unique lucky combination give each a power no one else has. 
**At least 12% of the profit is donated to CasaBrumar Foundation & Safe Space and other LGBTQ+ charities**
Space: stop/start, C: color, F: Faster, E: Slower, X: Stop/Reset/Start, ASWD: move symbol, 2 finger touch: stop, 1 finger drag: move

8 #104

Eight a symbol of luck, fate, a cosmic slot machine. The I Ching gives a glimpse of the future & some traits allow you to draw your own art. Luck of the mint, art of the flip to explain the randomness of one’s unique traits. The fruit of the slots to the binary I Ching of 8 sides & planetary gender. These traits are in the art & in us. They might seem imperfect but their unique lucky combination give each a power no one else has. 
**At least 12% of the profit is donated to CasaBrumar Foundation & Safe Space and other LGBTQ+ charities**
Space: stop/start, C: color, F: Faster, E: Slower, X: Stop/Reset/Start, ASWD: move symbol, 2 finger touch: stop, 1 finger drag: move

8 #110

8 by Bård Ionson

A fantastical retro futuristic view on the spice trail. An alternative future where the East and West are equals and desert outposts protect small cities but manage decentralized distributed trading systems. 

At one time the Nabatean were the players in trade. They controlled the trade between India, Rome, Egypt, Damascus, Medina and Greece and beyond. 

Ai Prompt Art with artist driven in painting of details

Spice Road Outpost 3010

Distortions Of The Future

Bard Ionson Installations

Simulation Number 89: Astroid Floats

Simulation Number 89: Night Light

Simulation Number 89

Ouroboros explodes with power destroying and creating at the same time.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
StyleGAN 3 - Timo, Karras, Tero Aittala, Miika Laine, Samuli Härkönen, Erik Hellsten, Janne Lehtinen, Jaakko Aila (June 23, 2021). Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks. OCLC 1269560084.
Pascal Boyart - "Legend"|2023|https://twitter.com/pascalboyart/status/1721928031755780214

Ouroboros Ignition

Painting with Fire presents a vignette of transformation: the evolution of GANs from 2014 - 2023 seen through the eyes of fire. Using 14 vintage GAN models, Ionson articulates the emergence of synthetic image generation. Ionson explores fire as the quintessence of humanity's relationship to both innovation and destruction, embracing the unexpected abstractions of classic AI as a distinctive aesthetic statement.

GAN (generative adversarial network) technologies were developed by researchers and programmers but then utilized by artists. Though the technology was invented to make the images as realistic as possible, Bård subverts this to use it chaotically and abstractly; the opposite of what the AI researchers had in mind. This project celebrates the innovators and artists who have brought synthetic image generation to life with models such as the aiCAN, DCGAN, Stylegan 1, 2 & 3, bigGan, biGAN, pix2pix, AttnGan and more.
https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire/
a Sovrn Curated release

A patchwork of passion and pixels that breathes life into the embers of creation, stirring deep with each golden hue and smoldering silhouette.
Channeling the fire myths of the world, Prometheus, the Phoenix, the gods of the sun and flame. A story of technology brought to humans; to myths of destruction and rebirth. To be immortal; to be a god; it is always a paradox of fire and technology. The morality of the fire is always in question but we desire it and fear it. And yet it has changed us, we have learned so much since we first touched fire. We used it to destroy the wood, smelt the metal and build the chip. And now we teach and show the fire what we know; what we create and our reflection is there telling us our faults. The GAN is but a single neuron in a blazing star; a greater fire is coming. 
One of 200 unique pieces of art in Painting With Fire: A History in GANs. Exploring the history of generative adversarial networks GAN as represented by fire.  https://bardionson.com/painting-with-fire
DCGAN - Radford, Alec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks"
The Books of GANesis: Divine Comedy in Tangled Representations Helena Sarin|Nov 2019|https://www.artxcode.io/journal/helena-sarin-celebrating-the-original-gancomic

Genesis of the Artificial Inferno

Painting with Fire: A History in GANs by Bard Ionson

We are all seers. Look into the smoke and what stories, what images does your mind conjure? Out of randomness and noise, forms emerge. A story is born out of artificial shapes predicted by fire or by computer. We are smoke and form, yes evolving in a process in which the technology (like fire) we harness brings about changes the human mind. And the evolved mind creates revolutionary tools but we have a failure to communicate.

Inspired by Bård’s first mint of art called Alien Intelligence. A foreign intelligence is attempting to communicate with any intelligent life on earth. They have chosen to use technology to communicate and travel. The first understood contact at the SAGE computer give rise to the SAGE Anomaly and an ongoing mystery. https://sageAnomaly.com

Art created using drawings made using oscilloscope software OsciStudio and then used to train multiple Ai models using StyleGAN3. Oscilloscope drawings were made by the artist between 2016 - 2023

Smoke And Shape #42

{R(Evolutionaries);} at Art Dubai 2024
by Morrow Collective
We are all seers. Look into the smoke and what stories, what images does your mind conjure? Out of randomness and noise, forms emerge. A story is born out of artificial shapes predicted by fire or by computer. We are smoke and form, yes evolving in a process in which the technology (like fire) we harness brings about changes the human mind. And the evolved mind creates revolutionary tools but we have a failure to communicate.

Inspired by Bård’s first mint of art called Alien Intelligence. A foreign intelligence is attempting to communicate with any intelligent life on earth. They have chosen to use technology to communicate and travel. The first understood contact at the SAGE computer give rise to the SAGE Anomaly and an ongoing mystery. https://sageAnomaly.com

Smoke And Shape #10

Smoke And Shape by Bard Ionson

A predictive output curated from a StyleGAN3 model trained with hand-selected images of fire and nude paintings by the artist, Bård Ionson.

"The nude fire. Grasping at identity is like a flicker of fire. The flame goes out when held too tightly. The desire to know brings more uncertainty. In the age of artificial intelligence, we are learning to live with the anxiety of our naked uncertainty. Our nakedness meets the flame. We still seek to know the next event, whether by fire or the casting of bones, or now by algorithms and models trained on all of human knowledge.

The textures evoke the color and form of paintings from a distance and merge the human form with fire. A closer inspection shows the fingerprint of the AI algorithms can be seen in the matrix-like patterns."

– Bård Ionson

Verisart Certified: https://verisart.com/works/57d848d8-bfba-4801-98ea-1c5d720e88fb

Naked Flames: Anxiety Of Hell

A predictive output curated from a StyleGAN3 model trained with hand-selected images of fire and nude paintings by the artist, Bård Ionson.

"The nude fire. Grasping at identity is like a flicker of fire. The flame goes out when held too tightly. The desire to know brings more uncertainty. In the age of artificial intelligence, we are learning to live with the anxiety of our naked uncertainty. Our nakedness meets the flame. We still seek to know the next event, whether by fire or the casting of bones, or now by algorithms and models trained on all of human knowledge.

The textures evoke the color and form of paintings from a distance and merge the human form with fire. A closer inspection shows the fingerprint of the AI algorithms can be seen in the matrix-like patterns."

– Bård Ionson

A predictive output curated from a StyleGAN3 model trained with hand-selected images of fire and nude paintings by the artist, Bård Ionson.

"The nude fire. Grasping at identity is like a flicker of fire. The flame goes out when held too tightly. The desire to know brings more uncertainty. In the age of artificial intelligence, we are learning to live with the anxiety of our naked uncertainty. Our nakedness meets the flame. We still seek to know the next event, whether by fire or the casting of bones, or now by algorithms and models trained on all of human knowledge.

The textures evoke the color and form of paintings from a distance and merge the human form with fire. A closer inspection shows the fingerprint of the AI algorithms can be seen in the matrix-like patterns."

– Bård Ionson

Verisart Certified: https://verisart.com/works/c682dad5-8021-4105-b500-fb43f6861e22

Naked Flames: Body Of Fire

NAKED FLAMES by Bard Ionson

Naked Flames In Motion - this series was originally created for giving a the collectors of Naked Flames an animated version if they collect two art pieces of the Naked Flames series at Expanded Art. 

This was created using the still art pieces of Anxiety Of Hell, 451° and Threshold Of Fire
                                                                            
https://opensea.io/collection/naked-flames-by-bard-ionson 
https://www.expanded.art/collections/bard-ionson-naked-flames 

"The nude fire. Grasping at identity is like a flicker of fire. The flame goes out when held too tightly. The desire to know  brings more uncertainty. In the age of artificial intelligence, we are learning to live with the anxiety of our naked uncertainty.  Our nakedness meets the flame. We still seek to know the next event, whether by fire or the casting of bones, or now by algorithms and models trained on all of human knowledge.           

The textures evoke the color and form of paintings from a distance and merge the human form with fire.  A closer inspection  shows the fingerprint of the AI algorithms can be seen in the matrix-like patterns."                                             
          - Bård Ionson     

Collection from a StyleGAN3 model trained by the artist with hand-selected images of fire and nude paintings by the artist

Naked Flames In Motion: Anxiety Threshold 451

Naked Flames In Motion

Check out my newest project, “Wet Kiss” which is now live on Transient Labs using Stacks! 
Poetry for prompting images of love from image generation Ai 

Your love is like water 
That fills my heart with its grace 
It flows to the depths of my soul 
And wraps me in its embrace 


Wet Kiss

The nude fire. The nude fire. Images of fire and nude paintings mixed within a custom Ai model. 

Grasping at identity is like a flicker of fire. The flame goes out when held too tightly. The desire to know brings more uncertainty. In the age of artificial intelligence, we are learning to live with the anxiety of our naked uncertainty. Our nakedness meets the flame. We still seek to know the next event, whether by fire or the casting of bones, or now by algorithms and models trained on all of human knowledge.

The textures evoke the color and form of paintings from a distance and merge the human form with fire. A closer inspection shows the fingerprint of the AI algorithms can be seen in the matrix-like patterns.

Collection curated from a StyleGAN3 model trained with hand-selected images of fire and nude paintings by the artist, Bård Ionson.

Naked Flames

A reverse drop. The project is closing on August 8 2023 it has been active since 2021
Eight is an interactive animated generative art piece. Some have a symbol that can be moved by the viewer to draw something new.
Based on I Ching and each one comes with a fortune.

8 (Eight)

The Entity has come to rebirth humanity. This is simulation 89.
189 unique art pieces

Bård Ionson (bardionson)

Bård Ionson (bardionson)

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