Self-Miracle #555, a work created by Chinese contemporary video and cross-media artist Cheng Ran in collaboration with generative art platform Genify and applied science artist Sun Bohan, sold for $144,000 at Sotheby's Digital Art Day Auction on December 18.
The “From Miracles” generative artwork series was first exhibited in September 2024 at the K11 Art Foundation’s exhibition “Lunar Water” in Seoul, South Korea. It was inspired by Cheng Ran’s 2015 film “Tracing Miracles”, a 9-hour film supported by the K11 Art Foundation.
The film premiered at the Istanbul Biennial in 2015 to much acclaim, Cheng Ran made a nine-hour film based on three recorded events that mysteriously end as the film progresses.
"Since Miracle" (concept drawing)
In this generative art project, Cheng Ran used experimental film images as the visual basis, which completely revolutionized his artistic creation. He collaborated with Sun Bohan, a computer art programmer who returned to the stage, to explore the application of algorithms and generative coding technology, deconstructing and regenerating the time elements in the film, and restoring the image to the simplest form, pattern and color gamut.
This breaks the traditional boundaries of time, allowing each snapshot to be rearranged and generated, constructing a completely new time landscape. This work is one of the rarest versions in the series.
This year, Cheng Ran collaborated with Genify and Sun Bohan to use generative technology to explore the themes of adventure, time and memory. This generative art work captures image snapshots of a film installation every second, creating unique changes that transcend the limitations of time.
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Cheng Ran was born in China in 1981. He completed the artist-in-residence program at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands in 2014 and founded the artist agency MARTIN GOYA BUSINESS in 2017. Cheng Ran focuses on new media, and his works mainly include video and film.
At the beginning of Cheng Ran's career, his films were not precise or cinematic, but simply wanted to express personal and intimate emotions. Over time, his expression of work has developed to a professional level and he has begun to explore larger issues through his works. The themes of Cheng Ran's video works often revolve around unresolved issues in life, such as identity and death.
Cheng Ran has won several awards in the Best Video Artist category and participated in the 2015 Istanbul Biennial. His work has also been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2014), the New Museum in New York (2016), the Sydney Opera House (2019), and the K11 Art Foundation (2024).
Sun Bohan was born in China in 1992. He is an applied science artist and curator active in Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. He is the founder of SBHStudio and Silicon Art, has founded Bca Technology Art, and is a distinguished lecturer at the International Academy of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Currently, Sun Bohan is committed to promoting the exchange and cooperation of art, technology and culture between the East and the West. He focuses on the integration of technology, algorithms, artificial intelligence and art, and explores the construction of a complete, efficient and standardized art and technology ecosystem.
He has curated several exhibitions, including the world’s first large-scale offline crypto art exhibition “Virtual Niche” (2021) at UCCA Beijing, and China’s first large-scale generative art exhibition “Silicon Valley Future·Tech Generation” (2023). Sun Bohan has participated in many exhibitions, including the K11 Art Foundation, and he is a resident speaker at Stanford University, Tsinghua University, and NFTNYC.
Genify is a global, leading multi-chain generative art platform that enables artists to mint and distribute their works on major blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Base, OKX Xlayer, and Conflux.
Genify has over 200 contracted artists and has facilitated the issuance of millions of NFT assets, attracting hundreds of thousands of collectors around the world and artists from the United States, Japan, Taiwan, France, the Netherlands, Brazil and other places. Genify's artworks have been collected by celebrities such as Zeneca.
This generative artwork, "Self-Miracle #555", which was sold at Sotheby's Digital Art Day auction, was also exhibited at the "Art Hong Kong" International Arts and Culture Expo held on December 19, and there will be an audio-visual experience from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm on December 21.
At the same time, another work by Sun Bohan, Neural Drift, was also successfully sold for US$13,200.
Neural Drift is an interactive NFT artwork that combines the dynamic effects of neural networks with meme culture. By accepting pledges of meme tokens such as DOGE and SHIB, the work can adjust its visual display in real time. The characters drift in the network to reflect the popularity and volatility of these tokens. Neural Drift captures the transience and cultural influence of the cryptocurrency market, creating a smooth on-chain conceptual artwork.
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sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/digital-art-day-auction-3/neural-drift
