New York Hosts Exhibition of Azerbaijani Carpets Created with AI
The development of technology in the 21st century has completely changed the way we think and create. We now live in a digital world, so the art world is undergoing its own changes. Artworks are appearing as digital simulations of reality, and the number of digital exhibitions is growing around the world.
New York is certainly one of the great cities where you can follow the latest trends in the art world. The exhibition by Azerbaijani artist Orkhan Mammadov, based on artificial intelligence and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), is the latest show to cause a stir in the cultural capital of the United States.
The exhibition "Revival of Aesthetics" was organized by the digital art company Blackdove in one of the city's leading exhibition halls, Lume Studios NYC. In the works presented at the exhibition, Mammadov creates a unity between heritage and modernity, combining Azerbaijani carpets, which are a symbol of Azerbaijan's cultural heritage and are mentioned in "The Book of Dede Korkut" (the best-known Central Asian epic of the Oghuz Turks, dating from the eighth century), with the latest technological innovation of our time, artificial intelligence. The exhibition, to which well-known collectors from New York and around the world were invited, presents nine works by the artist.
The epic tales of Dede Korkut are narratives about the mythical, pre-Islamic and nomadic heritage of peoples of Oghuz origin, who today make up the majority of the population of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Silk carpets of Azerbaijan, praised in the 12 books of Dede Korkut, have been renowned since ancient times. Carpets that began circulating in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries appeared in paintings by well-known artists of that period, such as the Flemish painter Hans Memling and the innovative Northern Renaissance artist Jan van Eyck.
Mammadov, who in his previous works wove carpets and reworked traditional patterns with the help of AI, brought Azerbaijani carpets into the modern era in his works for "Revival of Aesthetics". When visitors entered the exhibition, they felt as if they were on a flying carpet. The impressions were special, as this is one of the first successful attempts to align cultural heritage with machine algorithms.
Azerbaijani carpets are truly remarkable. Their ornament is a kind of visual language that creates a natural dance in the digital world. Culture and artificial intelligence enthusiasts were also able to collect NFTs from the exhibition using Blackdove's technology.
"Revival of Aesthetics" brings to life new, imagined carpets, expanding the boundaries of the "living" tradition by combining painting techniques, thread simulation and color data. Mammadov starts a dialogue between rapidly disappearing cultural heritage and the spread of digital cultures. NFTs also offer a solution for preserving cultural memory in this show. Mammadov spoke about the known and unknown aspects of the new art form he presents.
“We call this type of art "new media art". It is a kind of traditional art that uses unique technologies. The area I work in within contemporary media art is AI, which uses codes or algorithms. The works shown at my latest exhibition were created by AI using 150,000 Azerbaijani carpets. After these carpets were collected from museums around the world, they were analyzed by AI, which identified common values. Then I created new alternatives based on them. With my exhibition, I want to show our culture and carpets to the world. The next stops for the exhibition are London and Moscow”
By showing the first carpets and rugs of the metaverse, the show aims to surpass Eastern heritage in the digital realm. In his work, Mammadov gives new meaning to patterns, merging their traditional associations with machine algorithms.
In this radically new context, an expanded dialogue takes place not only between the tangible past and the digital present, but also between the risky entropy of data, the constraints of political and historical structures, and the exhausted epistemologies of modernity.
As a multi-temporal node connecting many different simultaneous pasts, "Revival of Aesthetics" questions the role of technology itself as a form of memory and a tool of power. Collecting stories about traditional crafts also underlies Mammadov's multilayered, multi-source project, which combines storytelling and data processing and leaves open the question of the boundaries between them.
Thanks to its unique design and high artistic value, Azerbaijani carpet art is known worldwide. In 2010, UNESCO included the art of carpet weaving in Azerbaijan in its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. By their technical characteristics, carpets are divided into flatweaves and knotted (pile) carpets.
Flatweave carpets belong to an earlier period of carpet weaving. There are several types of flatweaves, such as Shadda, Verni, Jejim, Zilli, Sumakh, Kilim and Palas. One of the most common types of flat carpet is the "Verni". The key pattern of the "Verni" is considered to be the S-element. Its shape varies; it can resemble both the number 5 and the letter S.
