3 screen installation. GANs (Generative Adversarial Nets) generated video

This video draws historical parallels from “tulip-mania” that swept across Netherlands and Europe in the 1630s to the speculation currently ongoing around crypto-currencies. The work, generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) shows a tulip blooming, an updated version of a Dutch still life for the 21st century. In the seventeenth century, the so-called mosaic virus was responsible for some colored veining on the petals of tulips that turned the flower into an object of luxury and economic status, finally triggering a speculative escalation of its price and the crisis of the Dutch economy. In this piece, the stripes depend on the value of bitcoin, changing over time to show how the market fluctuates.

This project was commissioned by IMPAKT as part of the European Media Art Platform programme funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.