AI Hokusai: Legacy Encoded

This story began in 1760 when a boy named Tokitaro was born in Katsushika, a poor suburb of Tokyo. He began drawing at six and, diligently honing his skills throughout the eight decades of his life, would change his pseudonym more than 30 times.

He would go down in history as Katsushika Hokusai, the author of “Wave” and Manga – a 15-volume drawing textbook (in total, there are about 30 known series of Hokusai's books), in which the artist reveals the secrets of his mastery in depicting scenes from everyday life, animals, people, mystical characters, and architectural sketches.

Like his great predecessors, Hokusai was an innovator who inspired Art Nouveau and French Impressionism, icons of modern visual culture, and anime.

He inspired us, too. For over 10 years, one of our curators, Evgeny Merman, created works based on plots from Hokusai's Manga - in a spiritual dialogue with the departed genius. During the last decade, Anna and Vladimir (AIH co-curators) have curated and produced exhibitions using the latest digital technologies. In early 2024, the curators teamed up to work on the ArtTech Research project, where the past and the future converged with AI and Hokusai. After all, Hokusai is known for his methodology, which deconstructed complex elements of nature and everyday life into basic forms (lines, perspectives, rhythms). This approach is similar to the algorithmic* thinking used in AI training.

In September 2024, we held an open call which received 400 applications from all over the world, and formed a dream team of artists for this online residency. It was essential to select people working in different media, so our observation of art creation using AI tools would be as comprehensive as possible. Eight outstanding artists worked for three months in a period of intensive production. ArtTech professionals from France, Germany, the USA, Israel and Latin America took on technological challenges, sought solutions and made real magic, reviving a virtual venue with Hokusai prints and filling spaces with works by the artists-in-residence.

Welcome to "AI Hokusai: Legacy Encoded - a Multiplatform Exhibition Uniting Past and Future."

*algorithm derives from the name of Central Asian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi - it is a set of precisely defined rules for solving a specific class of problems or a set of instructions describing the order of actions of the performer to solve a particular issue.