An exhibition of Joseph Nechvatal's recent artificial life-assisted paintings on velvet, created using AI virus-based software. These computer-robotic assisted paintings articulate the artist's ambivalence around artificial general intelligence (AGI) as interpreted through Arthur Rimbaud's 1871 poem Le Bateau ivre.
Le Bateau ivre (The Drunken Boat) presents Joseph Nechvatal's recent artificial life-assisted paintings on velvet, created with AI virus-based software first developed in 2001 by Nechvatal with the assistance of C++ software programmer Stéphane Sikora.
These computer-robotic assisted paintings articulate Joseph Nechvatal's ambivalence around the cataclysmic narratives now circulating concerning artificial general intelligence (AGI)—a technology with the potential for vast economic and ecological disruption—as interpreted through Arthur Rimbaud's 1871 poem Le Bateau ivre.
In the poem, an unmanned boat narrates its own existence as it floats loose out to sea after the human crew has perished. These men are suggested by the shredded human shapes in the bottom of the diptych paintings. Their degeneration allows the missing boat to be free and no longer consider the demands placed upon it by human society. The aimless "drunken" boat is no longer bound by the constraints of the humans who once guided it.
This poetic image struck Joseph Nechvatal as an apt metaphor for artificial general intelligence that could surpass human intelligence and act in ways that are misaligned with human values, thus leading to irreversible negative outcomes.
This Bateau ivre series of paintings marks a return to a crucial period in the artist's practice during the late-1970s when he embraced a minimal aesthetic that he now revisits but penetrates with the complexification of artificial life (a subdivision of artificial intelligence). The minimal aesthetic used in this series of AI-assisted paintings on velvet was chosen by Nechvatal to float above the sea of AI 'slop' imagery, now drowning the eyes of the world with the rapid integration of large language models—a theme Jospeh Nechvatal explores in his 2025 novella Venus Voluptuous in the Loins of The Last God.
These paintings, however, do not illustrate artificial general intelligence theory or the Rimbaud poem. No black box or boat is depicted. Rather, the drunken boat expresses the artist's declaration of an artistic freedom that praises individual artistic risk, independence and liberty.
The Vernissage: Saturday January 31st, 4-7 pm.
