SCHIELE’S GHOST

Schiele’s Ghost (Since 2020)

In 2018, the art world found itself at a critical hour. Edmond de Belamy, a portrait generated by machine algorithms rather than human hands, was sold at Christie’s for over $400,000. The work, created by the French art collective Obvious, emerged from a dataset of 15,000 oil paintings, processed through a machine-learning model originally developed by Robbie Barrat. Its signature, an equation rather than a human name, became a cipher for a larger ontological question: Who is the artist in the age of algorithmic creation? Is it the programmer, the conceptual mind behind the experiment, or the machine itself?

This moment was more than an auction; It was a conceptual collapse. A phrase began to circulate in the digital sphere: „Anyone can be an artist.“ But what does that mean in an era when algorithms generate works indistinguishable from those of artists? Is art defined by the time invested in perfecting a craft, the uniqueness of an idea, the validation of the market or a dedicated fanbase? Does authorship dissolve when filtered through an autonomous system, or does it transform?

For over two decades, my engagement with machines and technology has been both my canvas and brush. Like any artist, I have made mistakes, sought to improve, and developed my vision. This process — deliberate, evolving, unreplicable — is what constitutes artistry, from my point of view.

The Genesis of Schiele’s Ghost

„Schiele’s Ghost“ emerged as a collaboration between Martin Gasser and myself, initially conceived as a tool for generating film scripts. Yet, as with all meaningful artistic endeavors, its trajectory shifted. The raw energy of Egon Schiele became the project’s locus. Rather than merely referencing Schiele through an archival lens, I sought to engage with his essence at a computational level.

While it is easy to summon an approximation of Schiele’s style via search engines or existing databases, I wanted something deeper: a direct, algorithmic collaboration. The aim was not to replicate, but to transpose – to allow the machine to learn from Schiele with the curiosity of the result.

The first iteration of Schiele’s Ghost was an emotional experiment. Could AI-generated images trigger an emotional response? I presented 10,000 images, inviting individuals to select the one that resonated most with them. The exercise underscored an age-old tension in art: scarcity versus abundance. The ability to generate infinite variations seemed to dissolve meaning, reinforcing that the power of art often lies in its uniqueness.

The Evolution of an Algorithmic Muse

As technology advanced, so did Schiele’s Ghost. The advent of Midjourney opened new creative possibilities, resulting in Schiele’s Ghost Reloaded, Schiele’s Ghost Sublime, and Schiele’s Ghost Memories. Here, the 10,000-image corpus was merged with contemporary portraitures, refined through prompt-engineering that invoked „Egon Schiele.“ The results were unpredictable, as all true artistic experiments must be.

The machine, in its algorithmic quirks — distorted limbs, spectral elongations, the occasional unintended nudity —began to behave like a temperamental collaborator, introducing both serendipity and limitation. The project transformed into something greater than the sum of its inputs, echoing Schiele’s own rebellion against conventional form. Something I got even more drawn to.

Art, Technology, and the Question of Authenticity

For me, Schiele’s Ghost is not merely an aesthetic project but a philosophical inquiry. It forces us to reconsider fundamental questions of authenticity, authorship, and the evolving role of the artist in an age where human and machine co-create.

When I sign a digital print, that signature stands as the only trace of the human hand in an otherwise computational process. In this simple act, the artwork becomes a connector of past and future: the ghost of Schiele seems to be present, but it is our era — our anxieties, our technological dependencies, our redefinitions of value and reality —that defines the project.

The Blockchain as Conceptual Framework

The integration of blockchain technology into this project was not just a trend-following maneuver, but an interrogation of how new digital infrastructures alter the very fabric of artistic value and ownership. By minting selected works as NFTs, I sought to engage directly with the shifting paradigms of scarcity, provenance, and artistic autonomy. We live in an era where the reproduction of images is frictionless, yet the blockchain seem to offer a counterpoint: a mechanism to give the digital the idea of the unique. And the artwork turns into a digital twin.

A Living Archive of the Digital Zeitgeist

At its core, Schiele’s Ghost is also a time capsule of our moment. It reflects a world in which the boundaries between human and machine creativity become increasingly blurred. It engages with our unease, our curiosity, our willingness (or reluctance) to redefine what it means to be an artist.

I do not seek to replace the human hand, nor do I wish to fetishize the machine. Rather, I seek to expand the dialogue between past and future, between intuition and computation, between the ghosts of history and the algorithms of tomorrow.

Schiele’s work was raw, visceral, unapologetically human — mine is conceptual, interrogative, a deliberate engagement with the evolving dialectic between art and technology.

In the end, Schiele’s Ghost is an ongoing experiment. An invitation to participate in the construction of a new artistic paradigm, one where technology is not merely a tool but a provocateur, a muse, a conspirator in the act of creation.

[envira-gallery slug="schieles-ghost-10-000-2021"]

PROJECTS:
SCHIELE’S GHOST 10.000 (2021)

„May you live in interesting times,“ was the motto of the 2019 Venice Biennale, the last ordinary edition before everything changed. Then came the pandemic, sweeping over us, seemingly tearing apart the basics of society. This old Chinese curse appeared to have caught up with the present, or perhaps was it simply history repeating itself? Pandemics and diseases have always interrupted societies, reshaping, transforming, and creating new directions. The last pandemic to affect Europe and the world in a similar, yet distinct, way to today’s COVID-19 was the Spanish flu. One of its most famous Austrian victims was the artist Egon Schiele—he was not spared by the virus. Schiele died in 1918, at a time when no vaccine existed, and there were also no state programs to support the survivors financially or in any other form.

Egon Schiele passed away at the height of his career. A century later, our society faced a similar scenario. Although much milder, it is still comparable. The science of the fin de siècle, closely intertwined with art, reached its peak shortly before everything turned tragic. Before the political change forced many brilliant minds to leave Austria. Is history repeating itself in a modern way? Have we learned as a society, or are we doomed to repeat the past? Indeed, we live in interesting times, don’t we?

Since May 2021, artist Stephanie Meisl (s.myselle) has been engaging with Egon Schiele’s legacy. The foundation of Schiele’s Ghost stems from hours of discussions with AI expert and artist Martin Gasser during the pandemic. The question at the heart of this exploration was: Can a machine capture and reproduce the essence of Egon Schiele?

The project, Schiele’s Ghost, began with an in-depth study of Schiele’s life, personality, thoughts, and artistic style. The result is 10,000 machine-learning-generated images, based on a dataset of 440 digital images of Egon Schiele, sourced from the Kallir Research Institute. The artificial intelligence creates new works, incorporating traces of Schiele, analyzing, deconstructing, and rearranging them—continuously evolving under the curation and direction of the artist.

What remains is Schiele’s Ghost: an infinite series of synthetic images, generated on demand. They resemble each other yet remain distinct, never identical. „Same same, but different.“ This complexity is reflected in the totality of the 10,000 images, and, if one so chooses, Schiele’s Ghost reveals itself to the viewer.