Remix the Archive gives artworks from the Finnish National Gallery's collection a new form through generative art

In early 2024, The Digital Finnish National Gallery announced an open international generative art competition, that asked participants to create a new generative artwork that innovatively uses the copyright-free, CC0-licensed collection data of the Finnish National Gallery.

The basis of generative art is that work is created by an autonomous system—in this case, code or an algorithm. Through this process the artwork creates new variations from the selected data. Recurring themes within the collection data have provided the artists with anchor points and structures from which to create an algorithm that produces intentional variations.

The competition task has also guided the artists' work by requiring a clear conceptual connection between the collection and the newly generated artwork.

Remix the Archive invites the viewer to become involved with the artwork.

The artworks in the Remix the Archive exhibition also showcases familiar artistic techniques in digital form, such as painting, collage, drawing, printmaking, and textile art, in the context of generative art. All the artworks are interactive and understanding them requires participation from the viewer.

In the exhibition space, each artwork is accompanied by a "remix" button. By pressing the button, the code generates a new variation on the artwork, making each viewing experience different from the last. Sometimes, a single press of the button is enough to experience a new version of the artwork. Other times, physical participation is required, as in Nahuel Gerth's BodyArtLab.

In addition to Gerth, the artworks A Dance With History by Newyellow, Portrait Robot by Roni Kaufman, Perseverance by Blas.v, The Artist Code by Arttu Koskela, and Inventory Numbers by Andreas Rau emphasize a human-centered experience and the fleeting essence of it. These artworks have taken inspiration from the figurative artworks within the collection, paying special attention to portraiture and the human poses present within them.

In Loom of Reality by Aarni and Ilmo Kapanen, the artists' algorithm called Ryijy reworks familiar paintings by Eero Järnefelt that depict familiar Finnish landscapes. Agoston Nagy, on the other hand, combines landscape and still-life painting in his piece re-frame, challenging traditional categorizations of physical and metaphysical spaces.

Jeremy Shoenherr's (Jeres) Repetition and Noise blurs the boundaries between the original artwork and the created new work, asking whether " all art is contaminated by other arts." Tuomo Rainio's Wunderblock uses sketches and unfinished works from the collection, along with keywords present in the metadata, to challenge conventional perceptions of artistic representation.

All the exhibited works share a desire to understand, highlight, and explore how art collections influence our cultural memory, questioning the role that digital technology and its development play in preserving it.

Voting for the audience favorite has begun

Three prizes will be awarded in the Combine24 competition. The first and second prizes (€10,000 and €8,000 respectively) will be selected by the competition's international jury. The main prize is awarded by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra.

The jury members are; Martin Grasser, generative artist and designer; Leevi Haapala, Dean of the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts; Luka Piskorec, computational architect and co-founder of {protocell}; Diana Velasco, founder and director of MoNDA Museum of Nordic Digital Art; and Melissa Wiederrecht, algorithmic artist.

The third prize (€5,000) will be awarded to the artist chosen by public vote. Voting is open from 1 September to 1 October, 2024 on the competition website.

The competition winners will be announced on Friday, October 4, 2024.

Exhibition space in Vallila made possible by YIT

The exhibition Remix the Archive will be open to public in an exhibition space in Helsinki's Vallila district (Teollisuuskatu 9D) from 20 September to 26 October, 2024. Construction company and urban developer YIT has provided the space for the Finnish National Gallery's art competition exhibition free of charge. The transformation of the space was designed by the architecture firm NERVIN. By offering the space, YIT aims to support culture and sustainable urban development.

"The rough industrial setting of Vallila is an excellent fit for showcasing the works from the Combine24 competition. The exhibition and its visitors will bring life to the block and more broadly to the Vallila area. Hopefully, the competition will inspire the current occupants of the block as well," says Juha Kostiainen, Director of Urban Development at YIT.

The competition artworks can also be explored on the competition website.

For more information:
Anna Puhakka, Competition Producer, Finnish National Gallery
Tel: 050 328 8565
Email: anna.puhakka@kansallisgalleria.fi

Johanna Eiramo, Director, Digital Finnish National Gallery Programme
Tel: 0400 99 56 99
Email: johanna.eiramo@kansallisgalleria.fi

Competition partners include Highlight, the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, and the construction company and urban developer YIT.

Combine24 is part of the Digital Finnish National Gallery programme's Web3 project. The project is funded through the Next Generation EU Recovery Fund via the Ministry of Education and Culture.