In six days, Sotheby’s will open bidding for lots in an auction led by a work painted by a robot. Specifically Artefact 26, a fracas of eddying blues and blacks that hint at figures paused in a chaos of motion, which has a high estimate of $60,000 and was created by artist Sougwen Chung, whose work with art and technology won her a Lumen Prize in 2019. The robot they collaborated with was called D.O.U.G. or, more formally, Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 4. The sale in question is the Featuring Future: Pathfinders of Digital Art auction, curated by Auronda Scalera and Alfredo Cramerotti (co-directors of IAM-Infinity Art Museum) and benefiting The Lumen Prize on the occasion of its thirteenth anniversary.
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“This auction represents a significant milestone for many of our past winners who have reached a point in their growth as artists where they can be presented to worldwide collectors through a prestigious venue like Sotheby's,” Gillian Varney, director of The Lumen Prize, told Observer.
For those unfamiliar, The Lumen Prize was established in 2012 along with Lumen Art Projects (now Lumen Studios) by Carla Rapoport, a champion of digital art in the contemporary art world who had, by her own admission, no background in the arts. “However, it’s probably because I didn’t have any art qualifications that I was undaunted by the prospect of trying to shine a light on an aspect of art that I felt had been unfairly neglected at that time,” she told Artnome in 2020. Her goal was to elevate technology-driven art’s standing in the contemporary scene by connecting innovators with global opportunities while showcasing (and funding) the best in tech-infused art.
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Since its inception, Lumen Studios has distributed over $100,000 in prize money and provided opportunities for digital, Web3 and A.I. artists through exhibitions, commissions and partnerships. Its most recent show is “ECLIPSE,” artist duo NONOTAK’s solo London debut of three architecturally-scaled light and sound sculptures in a 3000-square-foot warehouse space.
Varney oversees the annual competition, which has a multi-stage judging process that involves reviewing thousands of entries to select roughly seventy finalists, whose work is then assessed by a jury panel of prominent curators and academics from institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, M Hong Kong and the Whitney. Notable past Lumen Prize winners include digital art world darling Refik Anadol, researcher and scent artist Sissel Tolaas, artist and software developer Casey Reas and A.I. artist Mario Klingemann. Among this year’s finalists are Emily Xie and Sasha Stiles (both part of Christie’s 2023 Future Frequencies: Explorations in Generative Art and........