The original version of ‘Reconciliation with the living’ was organized at UNESCO HQ on November 25 and 26, 2022, on the occasion of Earth University. Iconic works were exhibited in situ and a virtual gallery extend this art installation into dematerialized space.

Artists & artworks

Living Architecture: Casa Batlló

“Living Architecture: Casa Batlló” is the first UNESCO World Heritage Site to embrace living works of art in NFT format. The pioneering masterpiece changes depending on the city’s weather, data collected in real-time, and the events celebrated on the façade of Casa Batlló (e.g., Saint George’s Day, Christmas, social lightings…). This is the artist’s homage to and radical reinterpretation of Antoni Gaudí’s famous Casa Batlló in Barcelona, Spain. The sense of “the living” is embedded in the work not just for being a dynamic NFT but because it is a multisensorial experience that enhances the spirit of a nature-inspired and originally sustainable-born house.

Refik Anadol (1985) is a media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he owns and operates Refik Anadol Studio and RAS LAB, the Studio’s research practice centered around discovering and developing trailblazing approaches to data narratives and artificial intelligence.

Landscape with Carbon Offset

There are those gurus whom we love to revere, those makers of jewels, pleasures and riches, who chant the promise of our individual happiness in technological progress. These make solutions up that stir up the very problem. “Always control your speed”, said the driving instructor; today no one knows how to brake. Everything I create today is inhabited by this doubt and this guilt, in the realization that my innocent pleasure of creating depens on what fuels our race towards disaster. Yet energy is the engine of men. Art has this kind of energy, charismatic and unifying. If I believe little in technology to save humanity, I keep hope in humanity, in its conscience, in the universality of its love. If only one power is given to artists, it is that of being able to touch, sometimes, the hearts of men, and in this sense, I have this duty to continue to try.

“Landscape with carbon offset” is an honest critique of my own consciousness as an artist working with technology. The canvas where the desire to explore new forms of art is expressed, will always remain stained with the hydrocarbons that I participated in burning ; the technological solutions that we place our faith in are barely more than ways to wash away our guilt. For these reasons, through the hard times, more than ever, we need beauty in our lives.

Zancan, generative artist from Bordeaux, France, has been both a painter and a programmer for four decades. By synergizing his former practice as a painter with the computer code medium, he enlightened the graphical possibilities of a “figurative-generative” art genre. His renderings of natural shapes with programming code remind us of the necessary bond between man and nature, raising attention about environmental and social matters. Zancan’s series “Garden, Monoliths” and “The Lushtemples” released as NFTs have become the top-selling collections on Tezos, an environment-friendly blockchain.

Other artists & artworks: http://artists4theliving.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/V10_hautedef_page.pdf