01. About Obvious.

Obvious is a French collective of artists and researchers who use artificial intelligence algorithms to create works of art. Their work was highlighted in 2018 with the sale of one of their paintings “Edmond de Belamy“, the first of its kind, at Christie’s NY sold for 432 500$. Their works, at the crossroads of classical art and the most recent technologies, are subsequently exhibited in the largest museums in the world.

Pioneers of digital art, they are also one of the first French artists to have created NFTs in 2018, and in 2021 they collaborated with the Kamel Mennour gallery on this subject. Through their work and collaborations, Obvious aims to bring the tools developed in research to creatives, in order to initiate the next visual and artistic revolution.

"This collaboration with EDH on offering a new interpretation of the street art using the last technologies is one step further into making AI art a new universal means of expression"

Obvious

02. Creating Burners with AI algorithms

Neural Burners is a video artwork created using a combination of Generative Adversarial Networks and super resolution algorithms on a large database of graffiti artworks. This unique artwork was created for the EDH, a higher education program in Paris, France. The school campus itself is a tribute to street art, and this artwork is exhibited alongside the works of some of the most iconic living artists of that movement, such as Jon One and Speedy Graffito.

A sample from our dataset of 12 000 images of Burners

03. Paying tribute to the street art history.

Neural Burners traces back the history of Graffiti. We chose this specific subject due to its assumptive rules. Graffiti art is linked to dissidence and freedom in its spirit as much as in its expression. It has been used to denounce and to express, in a way from which certain patterns emerged. Large lettering, bright colors, words floating at the border between the readable and the illegible.

With this project, we wanted to give these artworks as a basis to the algorithms to identify their own pattern, and to create from it. This interpretation is devoted to being abstract and purely visual as these algorithms can’t read, let alone make sense of words. This imperfect pattern detection allows the creation of new and unique visuals.

Part of the interpolation of the algorithm we choose to be the final artwork

04. EDH x Obvious, an ongoing story.

We were thrilled to be tasked to create this artwork, as this idea of letting Generative Adversarial Networks create from Graffitis had always been in our mind. We already have a history with street art, with the success of our collection of Prints called “Parietal Burner”. We are extremely grateful the EDH school allowed us to push further into creating within this vast subject, and to offer a new interpretation of one of the most emblematic art movements in contemporary society.