SOLOS. has announced that their upcoming release this September will be a new NFT Art series by the
genre-bending British artist Ed Fornieles. This release was curated by Nico Epstein, an art historian & contemporary art advisor.
THE WORK
The 8 Ball Sages are a cast of responsive, uniquely animated characters. A set of external factors determine the Sage’s mood and charm. Ownership of a Sage is more than the stewardship of
an artwork – it entails the care of a dependable AI-based being, a futuristic digital companion.
This presentation concurrently pays tribute to one of the most quintessential analogue toys while pointing to a darker disembodied future of interactivity where our conversations with machines bring us
further away from interpersonal intimacy.
Originally released in the 1940s, the Magic 8 Ball is a fortune-telling device whose responses apparate for the holder from its murky depths. In its randomised answering of yes/no questions, the toy has
been a source of pop-culture fascination for children and adults alike. Today, the new digital “toy” that is artificial intelligence has permeated many realms of our existence. Fornieles’ creatures highlight AI’s
playful and fortune-telling results while questioning its capacity to turn into a darker more menacing construct.
The Sages are imbued with nostalgic inspiration from Zoltan fun-park fortune tellers and the 2001 Sci-fi fantasy film A.I. Artificial Intelligence among other esoteric sources. They harken back to a time when the
technological commodification of wisdom was less concerning and more the stuff of fairy-tales. Nevertheless, the lives of the Sages and their integrity depend on technology, be it disbursement through the blockchain, hosting websites or code.
8 Ball Sages form part of the artist’s ever-evolving investigation into consumerism, capitalist cultures and dynamic visual representations of data. Other recent projects and artistic experiments include the relationship app Oom and Finiliars, a cartoon-like set of living characters whose ever-changing behaviours fluctuate according to movements in currency markets. Ed Fornieles was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at Carlos/Ishikawa in London and will launch a new artwork with Hyundai Art Lab later this year.
THE RELEASE – 8 Ball Sages will be released as an edition of 500 digital art works. A live minting event for the first 100 works will be held on Friday, September 13th from 6-8 pm at Shoreditch Arts Club in London.
About the artist
Ed Fornieles (b.1983) is a London-based artist known for his innovative and interdisciplinary approach to contemporary art. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Fornieles’ work spans sculpture, installation, and digital media, exploring themes related to social behaviour, technology, and the manipulation of data. Fornieles’ work reflects his profound engagement with the complexities of the digital age and its influence on human behaviour and has been exhibited internationally. Recent exhibitions include Inside Out 2 at Carlos/Ishikawa, London; Cute, Somerset House, London; Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in
the Digital Age, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz and Julia Stoschek Collection (JSC), Düsseldorf; Cel, Center For Contemporary Art Futura, Prague; The Finiliar, Arsenal, New York.
SOLOS. is a gallery programme which emerged from an exploration of what it means to curate exhibitions in the digital age. We believe that the art world has evolved beyond traditional galleries and museums. We embrace this new and exciting era of collecting and collaborate with artists whose work showcases the influence of technology in relation to contemporary society and human nature. We firmly believe that art doesn’t need to exist solely in a physical form; its essence lies in the concept and creative process. For digital artworks, its native medium is its truest and most authentic format. Therefore, we sell them digitally, as what are commonly referred to as NFTs. We make this process easy and accessible, even for those unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies.
