Go behind the scenes of the world's first AI art hackathon, where artists Trevor Jones and Hackatao created a human-machine alliance

AI art can spark in every way of contempt For his foray in male-dominated domain, but not at the non-fungible Lisbon conference. Earlier in June, the Web3-focused symposium delved into the hot medium, hosting the world’s first-ever AI art hackathon, hosted by the NFT MakersPlace platform.

And what is an AI art hackathon? Quite simply, it was an event that saw digital artists generate work – live and on location – based on creative prompts.

Over two days, BLΛC, DVK the Artist, DigitalCoy and Illustrata created works inspired by author Sasha Stiles’ poem, “Ars Autopoetica.” It was a process made more unexpected by fellow digital artists Trevor Jones and Hackatao who spontaneously introduced “mysterious artifacts” throughout (one of which was Jones is famous bitcoin angel).

The results of this work have been published on MakersPlace as an open, limited-edition NFT on June 7; a further drop in 1/1 launches on June 15.

A scene from MakersPlace’s AI Art Hackathon at NFC Lisbon. Photo: Makers Place.

Indeed, the hackathon was an opportunity for creative collaborations, said Kayvan Ghaffari, chief legal officer at MakersPlace.

“Artists were collaborating, not competing with each other, but helping each other,” he told Artnet News. “At the table, they were looking at each other’s screens, they were asking each other for recommendations or advice.”

As an event that announces the launch of MakersPlace’s Market Category “AI Generative Art”, the hackathon was of course as much a catch for the emerging genre as an attempt to demystify it and expand its boundaries. This involved making transparent in real time the myriad creative processes that go into producing an AI work.

Example: the works created by the four artists above go well beyond the digital medium. They were quickly printed by robotics company Artmatr, with the resulting canvases chopped and pasted by digital artist Coldie into a single physical artwork. This coin, signed by all participating creators, will be raffled off to holders of the eight limited-edition NFTs, created by the four artists alongside Jones and Hackatao, on June 23.

The collaboration that occurs during the hackathon therefore does not just occur between artists, but also between humans and machines – an exercise that Ghaffari sees as injecting “soul” into the computer-generated works.

“We have four humans using technology to create art. What if we also had another technology to create a more human form of art? he explained. “A lot of people will call a painting art, because they assume it was created by a human. What if it wasn’t?

Below, see more images from the event and the artwork it produced.