Earlier this month, visitors walking through the Walker Art Center stood in front of Olalekan Jeyifous’s digitally rendered prints, including a piece called “Tomorrow’s Bundle Run,” and got it wrong. They read the work as generative AI output. Some called it AI slop. The museum had to step in and add context: this was deliberate digital-art technique, made by an artist, not a prompt.

We keep coming back to this story because it’s not really about one exhibition. It’s about what happens when a whole category of authored, technical, hard-won work gets flattened into “probably AI” the moment it looks unfamiliar.

Jeyifous didn’t type a sentence and wait. He built the image the way a digital artist builds an image: choice by choice, render by render, with a visible hand in every decision even when the surface looks synthetic. That distinction, between a deliberate practice and a generated output, is exactly the line ARTEX and CODAME have spent years trying to keep visible. Living work has an author. It has a process you could ask about and get a real answer. When audiences lose the ability to tell the difference, the cost isn’t abstract. It lands on the artist standing next to their own print, explaining, again, that they made this.

The Walker’s fix was to add a wall label. Ours is smaller but points the same direction: name the artist, name the tool, name the choices. Every authored experience on ARTEX carries that with it, not as a disclaimer but as the credit an artist is owed. Technique is not a footnote.

If you’re an artist working in this space, digital, generative, AI-assisted, or all three, we’d love to hear how you think about this line for your own practice. Bring it to our weekly community call, open to artists, collectors, and anyone curious. Details and the join link are on codame.org.

Story: MPR News, “Walker Art Center clarifies AI use in Olalekan Jeyifous exhibition”

This is the first post in ART+TECH Signals, a running column on what’s happening at the edge of art and technology. More will be collected under news.codame.com [confirm URL once the section is live].

There are moments in history when a new technology destabilizes art — not by replacing artists, but by forcing them to rethink their role.

Photography did this in the 19th century.

And today, artificial intelligence is doing it again.

To understand this moment, it helps to look at how artists responded the last time the ground shifted.

When Photography Changed Painting

When photography emerged, painting lost its monopoly on representation. A camera could capture likeness, detail, and realism with mechanical precision.

So painters asked a radical question:

If a machine can reproduce reality, what is painting for?

The answer did not lead to the end of art.

It led to transformation.

Movements like Cubism — pioneered by artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque — abandoned single-point perspective and naturalistic representation. Instead of painting what the eye sees, they painted multiple perspectives at once. They painted memory, structure, and inner perception.

Photography pushed painting inward.

It liberated artists from imitation and invited them into interpretation.

Pistoletto’s Crisis and the Mirror

Born in 1933 in Biella, Italy, Michelangelo Pistoletto emerged in the early 1960s during another period of artistic uncertainty. Painting, as traditionally practiced, no longer felt sufficient.

Rather than abandon painting, he redefined it.

He began creating what became known as the Quadri Specchianti (Mirror Paintings): life-sized photographic images transferred onto polished stainless steel surfaces.

The effect was radical.

The viewer’s reflection became part of the artwork.

The surrounding environment entered the composition.

Time itself moved through the piece.

The artwork was no longer a static image. It was a living relationship.

Pistoletto later became a central figure in Arte Povera, a movement that rejected traditional hierarchies and embraced everyday materials and conceptual experimentation. But the mirror works were foundational — not just aesthetically, but philosophically.

They asked:

• Where does art end and life begin?

• Who completes the artwork?

• Is the viewer separate from the work — or inside it?

The mirror did not compete with photography.

It used photography — and surpassed it.

Instead of capturing a frozen image of reality, it reflected living presence.

In a moment of artistic crisis, the mirror became a tool of reflection — literally and metaphorically.

Beyond Representation: Art as Social Practice

Pistoletto’s thinking did not stop at the gallery.

In 1998, he founded Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, an interdisciplinary laboratory connecting art with education, economics, ecology, politics, and social transformation.

For him, art was not isolated from society.

It was a catalyst within it.

The mirror expanded from a physical surface to a societal one.

AI as the New Mirror

Today, artificial intelligence confronts artists with a similar tension.

AI can generate images, text, music, and video in seconds. It can emulate styles, remix aesthetics, and simulate creative processes that once required years of practice.

Again, artists ask:

If a machine can generate images, what is left for us?

History suggests the answer is not retreat — but depth.

Just as photography freed painting from representation, AI may free artists from surface production.

AI can reproduce.

But it does not experience.

AI can simulate.

But it does not embody.

The opportunity, then, is not to compete with the machine on speed or volume — but to move into territory it cannot inhabit:

Embodied experience.

Ethical responsibility.

Contextual meaning.

Human intention.

AI becomes a reflective surface — much like Pistoletto’s mirror.

When we interact with generative models, we see reflections of our datasets, our culture, our biases, our imagination. The machine reflects us back to ourselves at scale.

And like any mirror, it can provoke discomfort — or insight.

The New Human: A Space for Reflection

At CODAME, as we explore The New Human, we are not asking whether AI will replace artists.

We are asking how artists, technologists, and thinkers respond creatively to this inflection point.

Just as Pistoletto used the mirror to confront his own artistic crisis and transform it into a new language, we now stand before a different kind of reflective surface.

The New Human Creative Hackathon is an invitation to step into that reflection.

Not to race against AI.

Not to fear it.

But to explore what it reveals.

• What does authorship mean in the age of generative systems?

• How does participation evolve?

• How do we design responsibly?

• What remains profoundly human?

Photography once pushed artists toward abstraction and interiority.

The mirror turned the viewer into co-creator.

AI now challenges us to redefine creativity itself.

The hackathon becomes a living laboratory — much like Pistoletto’s mirror — where technology is not an endpoint, but a surface for inquiry.

The future doesn’t arrive all at once.

It emerges through how we respond.

And just as Pistoletto once stood before a mirror and discovered a new artistic language, we now have the opportunity to stand before AI — to reflect, to question, to build — and perhaps shape the next movement.

The movement of the New Human.

Lukacs suggests that while “rewiring” implies the engineered precision of a circuit board, the brain is actually more akin to a forest—a living, breathing, and messy ecosystem that grows and adapts in ways far more complex than simple toggles or cables.

Why this matters for The New Human:
The theme of this year’s CODAME festival posits that the future is built from the “debris of the past—a coral reef of human traces, layered into new bodies, minds, and worlds.” If we view ourselves only as machines to be reconfigured, we lose the organic, emergent quality of what makes us human.

⬩ From Circuitry to Ecology: “The New Human” isn’t just a hardware update. It’s an exploration of how we evolve when we embrace our biological complexity alongside our technological tools.

⬩ Art as Inquiry: Just as Lukacs calls for better metaphors to understand our minds, our artists use tech to challenge the rigid definitions of humanity, moving beyond “fixed paths” toward “dynamic connectivity.”

Are we “rewiring” ourselves, or are we growing into something entirely different? Join us at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival as we peel back the metaphors and build the future of the human experience.

Explore the theme: The New Human

Read Peter Lukacs essay on Aeon: Can you rewire your brain?

Michael Bervell’s Untitled (Booth #513) wasn’t a stunt.
It was a philosophical intervention.

At the National Retail Federation’s annual conference, TestParty nearly got kicked out—not for disrupting the event, but for exposing an assumption no one wanted to name.

The booth didn’t look like a booth.

No LED monoliths.
No branded carpet.
No desperate swag.

Instead:
A table. Broken. Disassembled. Exposed.
Next to it, a sign: “Ceci n’est pas une booth.”

Inspired by René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, the work challenged a deceptively simple idea:

A representation of a thing is not the thing itself.

A painting of a pipe is not a pipe.
A pile of parts is not a booth.
And a website that cannot be navigated, read, or understood—
Is it really a website?

The reactions were immediate.

People stopped.
Stared.
Photographed it.

Some were amused. Others confused. A few angry.

Eventually, NRF staff intervened.
“This isn’t a booth,” they said.
“It’s unprofessional.”

That was the moment the work completed itself.

Because 96% of websites fail basic accessibility standards.
Screen readers can’t parse them.
Keyboard users can’t navigate them.

They are technically websites in the same way this was technically a booth.

The barriers are invisible to most users.
But for the 1.3 billion people living with disabilities worldwide, they determine who gets to exist in the modern economy at all.

This philosophy runs consistently through Michael’s work.

During a visit to the Picasso Museum in Málaga, he reflected on Picasso’s line:

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

In an AI-first world, execution is no longer scarce.
You don’t need to code.
You don’t need to design.
You don’t need to hire a team.

You can “vibe” your way from idea to reality.

Which means the real constraint is no longer capability—it’s imagination.

And imagination, for Michael, is not about novelty for novelty’s sake.
It’s about seeing what systems quietly normalize—and choosing to question them.

Untitled (Booth #513) reframes accessibility not as compliance theater, but as craft.

Not decoration, but foundation.
Not overlay, but infrastructure.
Not spectacle, but care.

The exposed table offers no place to hide.
Only structure.

Viewers are encouraged to approach.
The work is not complete without you.

Sometimes, to help people understand that something is broken, you have to stop pretending it’s whole.

Ceci n’est pas une booth.
And that’s the point.

The article is a timely meditation on how art, technology, and shared cultural spaces shape not only innovation, but meaning. Looking back at moments such as 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering and Cybernetic Serendipity, it reminds us that some of the most transformative shifts in technology emerged when artists and technologists worked side by side, supported by environments that valued curiosity, embodiment, and collective imagination.

Rather than celebrating tools alone, the essay calls for the rebuilding of modern “cathedrals”: living cultural ecosystems where experimentation is protected, uncertainty is welcomed, and human values are allowed to evolve alongside machines.

This perspective deeply resonates with us at CODAME.

CODAME’s Contribution: A Living Practice Since 2010

Since our founding in San Francisco in 2010, CODAME has worked — often quietly, always collaboratively — to help sustain exactly the kinds of spaces the article describes.

Through our ART+TECH Festival, creative hackathons, performances, workshops, and installations, CODAME has consistently brought artists and technologists into shared, hands-on environments. These were not conferences or product launches, but temporary cultural commons: places to prototype ideas, relationships, and new creative languages together.

We’ve supported emerging artists in experimenting with code, sensors, sound, AI, and interactive systems — not as novelty, but as material for artistic inquiry. Just as importantly, we’ve emphasized artistic ownership, open exchange of knowledge, and community-driven learning, ensuring that technology serves expression rather than defining it.

Our contribution has never been about scale or spectacle. It has been about continuity — showing up year after year to create conditions where trust, experimentation, and collaboration can take root.

CODAME, Gray Area, and Shared Stewardship

CODAME is proud to be part of the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, a San Francisco–based nonprofit that continues to have a meaningful and positive impact on the city’s creative and cultural life through initiatives like the Gray Area Theater and its broader art + technology programs.

We are grateful to be in this ecosystem alongside people who actively shape these spaces. Barry Threw, co-author of the article, is the Executive and Artistic Director of Gray Area, and Scott Moore, co-author, serves on Gray Area’s Board of Directors. Together, Gray Area and its community have helped sustain San Francisco as a place where art, technology, and civic imagination remain deeply intertwined.

CODAME’s Perspective: Toward The New Human

Since the beginning, CODAME has believed that art and technology are not separate domains, but co-evolving forces that shape how we sense, think, and relate to one another.

As we move toward CODAME ART+TECH Festival 2026 — The New Human, the ideas in Cathedrals and the Silicon Soul feel especially urgent. The New Human is not a finished figure, but a being in motion — learning to co-create with intelligent systems, navigating hybrid physical and digital realities, and redefining authorship, presence, and agency.

CODAME gatherings function much like the cathedrals described in the article: living systems rather than fixed institutions. They evolve through participation. They privilege process over polish. They create room for bodies, machines, and ideas to encounter one another in real time.

In a moment when efficiency often outpaces reflection, we see this work not as nostalgia, but as preparation — rehearsal spaces for futures that are still being written.

With gratitude to Barry Threw and Scott Moore for articulating this vision so clearly, and to Gray Area for continuing to make it tangible in San Francisco.

Let’s keep building — not just technology, but the cultural spaces where The New Human can emerge.