The Finnish National Gallery is hosting an open generative art competition

The Finnish National Gallery is hosting an open generative art competition Combine24 as a part of the Digital Finnish National Gallery programme. The aim of the competition is to seek out new generative artworks that incorporate the Finnish National Gallery's CC0 licensed collection data and blockchain technology. Unlike more traditional art, generative art uses an algorithm governed by artist-defined rules and parameters, and that generates dynamic variations. 

The Finnish National Gallery has published approximately 25,000 copyright-free images of artwork under the CC0 licence. These images are marked as copyright-free. This means that the images can be shared, edited, and used without restrictions, for example in academic or commercial use. These images can be viewed on the Finnish National Gallery’s website. The copyright-free images also include pictures from the artists’ sketchbooks, as well as photographs and letters from the Finnish National Gallery’s collections.

“Few people know that, under the CC0 licence of the Finnish National Gallery’s collections, the artwork images published online can be used in a variety of ways to produce different kinds of content and even to create something new”, says Kimmo Levä, Director General of the Finnish National Gallery. 
 
“The purpose of the Digital Finnish National Gallery programme is to find new ways of using Finland’s National Art Collection digitally. For example, we have created virtual exhibitions and a series of video essays. With the Combine24 competition, we want to inspire artists to use the material and related metadata to create something new”, comments Johanna Eiramo, Director of the Digital Finnish National Gallery programme.
 

The international jury, prizes, and exhibition

The international jury for the competition consists of a distinguished panel of professionals specializing in art history, museums, and generative art. The jury members will be announced in February 2024. 

Artworks can be submitted between 1 March and 31 May 2024. Ten artworks will be shortlisted, and the shortlist will be published on the competition website no later than on 5 August 2024. Shortlisted artworks will be exhibited in Helsinki in the autumn of 2024. The competition winners will be announced during the exhibition in October 2024. 
 
The first prize 10,000 euros is given by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra. 
“Looking into the future, we at Sitra want to support the combination of technology, data, and art as the building blocks of new creativity. In Finland, we need to understand which direction new technological opportunities are developing”, states Kristo Lehtonen, Director of Fair Data Economy at Sitra. 

The second prize is 8,000 euros. The third Audience Favourite prize is 5,000 euros. The winner of the Audience Favourite prize will be selected through an open public vote between 1 September and 1 October 2024. 

The Combine24 competition is organised in cooperation with Highlight, a service specialising in on-chain generative art.

Digital Finnish National Gallery programme

The Digital Finnish National Gallery programme (2022–2024) explores the possibilities that digitalisation brings for the future of art and museums. The generative art competition is part of the programme’s Web3 project. The project’s funding comes from the Next Generation EU recovery fund through the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The Web3 project aims to examine new community centric ways of production and creation for the museum and cultural sectors. Under the programme, the Alusta.art service was launched in November 2023 to enable the publication, sharing and collection of digital content with the help of blockchain technology.