AI Infinity

by John Maeda

Glossy C-type print on dibond accompanied by an ERC-721 token certified by Verisart

11 3/4 x 16 1/2 inches

Edition 1/1 + 1 AP

Regular price
Sale price
$50,000.00

John Maeda has a particular affection for this image, as it was the first one that he coded in PostScript programming language, after a long hiatus away from computer programming. He made it shortly after being asked by his typography teacher what he would do with his life. His response was that he wanted to become a classical Swiss-style typographer like the teacher — and a master of letterpress. The teacher responded kindly but harshly - “Idiot! You are young. Do something young with yourself. The classics will still be there when you are old.”

Maeda took that as direction to start using the computer again. He was surprised by how the computer could do so much at the call of a few lines of code. It would just keep going and going, until infinity. Maeda made a piece for the NeXT computer that drew an infinite loop. It never stopped — unless one made it stop, of course. He stopped the image above at the 10,000th loop stroke.

Maeda showed the image to his professor. The teacher smiled and told him to look at the work of Karl Gerstner, and to learn from him. Twenty years later, Maeda was standing on a commencement stage at Rhode Island School of Design, honouring him with an honorary degree. As such this image is very meaningful to the artist, even after many years, it now represents his life coming “full circle.” 

About John Maeda

John Maeda (b. 1966) is Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft. An American technologist and designer, his work merges business, design, and technology to champion the "humanist technologist." Previously, Maeda served as Chief Technology Officer of Everbridge and was President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He also worked as a research professor at the MIT Media Lab, advancing computational design, low-code/no-code, and creative commerce. As an artist, Maeda redefined electronic media in art by blending computer programming with traditional techniques, and pioneering interactive motion graphics on the web. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Cartier Foundation in Paris, and he has held solo exhibitions in London, New York, and Paris.

AI Infinity
AI Infinity