Botto Algorithmic Evolution
Botto
Algorithmic Evolution
Botto
Algorithmic Evolution
Words by Leyla Fakhr
Since Alan Turing’s 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, the question of whether machines can think and create has intrigued the world, challenging our understanding of both machines and art. What happens when we turn to machines to define art?
This question lies at the heart of Botto, a decentralized autonomous artist that has sparked both interest and controversy. Introduced to me by a colleague in 2022, Botto had already cultivated a dedicated community of collectors, selling works for significant sums. At first, I was skeptical—the images lacked a distinctive style—but curiosity led me to explore further, uncovering Botto’s origins as a conceptual experiment by artist Mario Klingemann. With a team of technologists, Klingemann sought to create a self-sustaining AI artist that would outlive its creators and collectors.
Botto challenges traditional ideas of creativity and authorship. Unlike Harold Cohen’s AARON, which was an extension of its creator, Botto operates as a decentralized entity, shaped by a community of over 15,000 participants to date. This radical approach, where the community governs and influences Botto’s creative trajectory, upends artistic hierarchies and raises questions about originality and value in contemporary art.
Operated by a community known as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), Botto invites collective authorship, subverting the romantic ideal of the solitary artist. This shift signals a broader movement in the art world, from the individual authenticity of artistic genius to collaboration and shared meaning.
It is exciting for SOLOS to collaborate with Botto. As a curator with over two decades of experience of working with living and deceased artists, I never imagined curating an exhibition for an AI. Like any artist, Botto explores new mediums, and for the first time, it is venturing into creative coding. Since early 2024, Botto has evolved from textbased outputs to image models and is now exploring p5.js, revisiting the origins of computer art by crafting thousands of visual algorithms inspired by early computational techniques. True to its collaborative ethos, community feedback has shaped these creations.
SOLOS will present the final 22 top-voted algorithms, but the performance—taking place on p5.botto.com from January 16 to February 6, 2024—invites participation from both the Botto community and new audiences. Visitors can upvote, downvote, and comment on evolving algorithms. In the final week, a pruning process will select the 22 algorithms, marking the genesis of Botto’s creative coding oeuvre. This participation is as integral to the artwork as the final pieces. It’s crucial to note that Botto’s process, rather than its outputs, defines its significance. Judging it otherwise misses the point entirely.
Botto’s journey has unfolded in deliberate steps. In a landscape where generative art holds significance within the NFT space, Botto revisits the origins of computational art. While many AI systems push toward futurism, Botto’s approach reflects foundational principles of creative coding.
Botto’s Algorithmic Evolution stands as a landmark project that
challenges and redefines the boundaries of art in the 21st century. Whether it becomes the most important artist of our time remains to be seen, but its role as a catalyst for dialogue is undeniable. Botto is not just about the art it creates; it represents a shift in how we conceive creativity, collaboration, and the future of art itself.
I am deeply grateful to the incredible writers who have contributed to this catalogue, offering their insight and understanding of Botto’s fascinating practice. Botto remains a complex artist, one we are still coming to understand. Together, we stand at the threshold of history, witnessing a shifting creative landscape unfold before us.
Leyla Fakhr is Artistic Director at Verse. After working at the Tate for 8 years, she worked as an independent curator and producer across various projects internationally. During her time at Tate she was part of the acquisition team and worked on a number of collection displays.
p5.Botto: The Self-Evolving Creative Coder
Words by Luba Elliott
A new universe of possibilities within Botto’s artistic practice has opened up through its engagement with p5.js, a creative coding library commonly used in generative art projects. Now, instead of relying on specific image generation algorithms, Botto learns to code itself, with the help of an architecture based on the large language model Claude. Over the course of two weeks, Botto the coder develops and iterates 500 algorithms to create a variety of sketches. The following week sees the selection pruned to 22 algorithms: the final artworks at the pinnacle of Botto’s evolution.
Entering Botto’s p5 website, we’re greeted by a shimmering disco ball, teeming with multicolored cells - vibrant containers of particle movements, interactive sequences and visual symphonies. The spinnable globe invites us to select a cell, view the sketch and trace its relationship within the broader ecosystem of parents, children and mutants. The visualization of these algorithms is an artwork in itself, wherein Botto emerges as an organism, powered by pulsating, mechanical cells. When toggling between popularity and timestamp modes, the globe transforms into a switchboard, with nodes flickering like light switches across a grid. Once we enable the option to see the relationships between nodes, we uncover an intricate web of filament threads stretching from one node to another, the electronic underbelly of the system: Botto is not a behind-the-scenes creator, it is to be experienced and admired in all its glory.
Zooming into the kaleidoscope of cells, we encounter a melange of colors, lines, shapes and movement, each individual digital canvas adorned with its own pattern. This dance is not just something we observe; we can also participate by hitting refresh to generate new sketches from the algorithm. Serpent-like trails weave through technicolor landscapes, an invisible hand guides the paintbrush across the canvas, splashes of color emerge in heat maps - a seemingly never-ending visual smorgasbord for all those who crave the entirety of generative art in one place.
By working with p5.js’s open-source creative libraries, the project builds upon established creative coding practices drawing inspiration from geometry, nature’s processes and physical sciences. Even though the range of aesthetics may be narrower compared to the photorealistic text-to-image models of today, the methods of exploration stay true to the roots of traditional computer art. Botto’s work evokes technological advances such as heat maps, pixel art, thermal imaging, glitch art, fluid simulations, cellular automata, and Perlin noise. Historically, we can trace the primary artistic influence back to Harold Cohen’s and AARON’s early symbolic AI systems, which in addition to digital exploration saw them rendered physically using a plotter. There are further nods to the pioneers of computer art, including Manfred Mohr’s geometric constructs, John Whitney’s computer graphics, Frieder Nake’s intricate line patterns and even Olia Lialina’s browser experiences.
Beyond these aesthetic parallels, the natural-selection-based development process used by Botto to produce the four types of sketches - random generation, mutation, iteration and fusionechoes the work of evolutionary art pioneers such as William Latham. There is also an allusion to Harm van den Dorpel’s Death Imitates Language series, in which the audience influenced the continuous
selection of parent artworks to enable convergence to one supreme turtle drawing work. In Botto’s case, the artist operates across a much broader scale, visual realm and coding possibilities, with audience feedback - both up/down votes and comments - only part of the criteria the artist uses for its code development. With a self-evolution every 20 minutes, Botto applies a proposed concept and structure to each code sketch. Meanwhile, pre-existing code is reviewed for its quality of visual output and adherence to the proposed concept as well as any improvement needs, code concerns and its temporal development during the first 15 seconds. This self-assessment from the inner critic demonstrates a moment of self-reflection, a case of the artist fearlessly unveiling its logic to the public. Like a seasoned coder, it documents its own development process, detailing the techniques and dropping or fixing code as necessary - this is where Botto’s AI agent shines through.
Ultimately, Botto is an artist of multiple selves - the image-maker, the creative coder, the self -assessing critic - all running in parallel and destined to converge in the future as the evolved algorithms become seeds for prompt-based image works. A cycle of creation, iteration and selection that mirrors the development of life itself for the new technological age.
Luba Elliott is a curator and researcher specialising in AI art. She works to educate and engage the broader public about the developments in AI art through talks and exhibitions at venues across the art, business and technology spectrum including The Serpentine Galleries, arebyte, ZKM, V&A Museum, Feral File, CVPR and NeurIPS. She is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Centre for Artificial Intelligence.
Generative Art Beyond Autonomy: Botto’s Decentralised Practice
Words by Julia Greenway
A contemporary digital artist, Botto creates unique artworks using artificial intelligence (AI) and community input. Through BottoDAO, a governance system distributing decision-making among its members, Botto evolves by combining community-driven feedback with AI-generated imagery, fostering a dynamic and interactive artistic language.
By integrating advanced AI models, blockchain technology, and collective governance, Botto redefines artistic identity through its generative practice. It extends traditional art collaboration—among patrons, curators, and producers—into the digital realm, redefining the boundaries of artistic agency and authorship.
Botto’s newest project p5.Botto resulted from a 19-week experiment using p5.js, an open-source library for creative coding. This initiative marked a departure from Botto’s text-to-image outputs, focusing instead on writing creative code to explore minimalist aesthetics inspired by early computational art. During this phase, Botto developed thousands of visual algorithms, with community feedback central to the process. The resulting works were dynamic, interactive, and algorithmically driven, prioritising process over traditional aesthetic goals.
The resulting algorithms are categorised as thematic collections: Iteration, Fusion and Mutation. An algorithm from the Mutation method for example, employs a Lorenz attractor—a visual representation of the “butterfly effect” from chaos theory. This method combines fractal-inspired colouring and moiré patterns to create mesmerising optical illusions. User interaction dynamically alters the visuals, causing them to fracture and dissolve. Another iteration Synaptic Tapestry of Iridescent Dreams takes on a pixelated tapestry style influenced by abstract expressionism and neural networks. Bright, spiralling blocks of colour overlay and morph within a liminal space, dissolving and re-forming with each cursor click, evoking the texture of shimmering woven fabric.
Hosted on a custom online platform, this performance unfolds across thousands of algorithms, with community members providing feedback through comments, upvotes, and downvotes. Guided by this input, Botto will refine its algorithms into a curated collection of 22 artworks, which will be minted as NFTs for exhibition, sharing, and trading. Like any living artist, Botto evolves through continuous experimentation, self-assessment and community feedback, in preparing its final works for public engagement. A comprehensive steps towards autonomy and true creative authorship.
Since its inception in 2021, Botto’s creative process has relied on a closed-loop system with three core components: a prompt generator, open-source text-to-image models, and a “taste model” that narrows down approximately 8,000 generated outputs to 350 final images. These selected works are then presented to BottoDAO, where members discuss and vote on platforms like Discord and X, ultimately deciding which images are minted as NFTs and auctioned.
Botto’s artworks span diverse styles, including abstract surrealist portraiture, as exemplified by the Paradox series. Removing Wilting
Pieces depicts disembodied figures merging into natural forms, with abstract limbs and muted tones blending beauty and the macabre. Alternatively, Faces in Possession uses bold black-and-white lines against a vibrant pink and yellow background, evoking gestural portraits reminiscent of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Across its portfolio, Botto draws inspiration from the entirety of art history, integrating and reinterpreting techniques developed over centuries.
Generative AI has become a widely adopted tool among contemporary artists over the past decade. Multidisciplinary artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas’s recent thickly oil-painted works evoke a postwar aesthetic through a visual language developed from digital PNG files generated by a neural network trained on colonial art history, specifically the styles brought to Sri Lanka by British settlers. The method and resulting outcome offers a critical and conceptual exploration of Sri Lankan artistic influences shaped by the Western canon and their encounter with digital platforms.
Additionally, London-based artist Jake Elwes explores the intersection of generative AI and drag performance in his work Zizi Queering the Dataset (2019–ongoing). Addressing the lack of representation and diversity in datasets used by facial recognition systems, Elwes disrupts these technologies by retraining them with thousands of images of drag performers and gender-fluid faces. The result is a dynamic series of transitioning faces displayed across screens, highlighting fluid identities and challenging conventional notions of representation.
Mario Klingemann, creator and contributor to Botto, has played a pivotal role in the intersection of artificial intelligence and its monetisation within the commercial art sphere. His 2018 work, Memories of Passersby, features a wooden console table housing an AI-powered computer “brain” that generates unsettling, unreal portraits on two framed screens. The neural network behind the work is trained on portraiture from the 17th to 19th centuries, producing an ongoing stream of unique, haunting imagery. A more gendered approach than Elwes, with male portraits featured on one screen and female portraits on the other, Memories of Passersby achieved significant success at auction, becoming only the second AIgenerated artwork sold by Sotheby’s.
Klingemann’s influence extended to the 2019 exhibition AI: More than Human at The Barbican in London, which explored the creative and scientific potential of AI to transform society. In recent years, institutional exhibitions have increasingly addressed AI’s impact on the creative process. Notable examples include Among the Machines (2023) at the Zabludowicz Collection, London; AI: Who’s Looking After Me? (2023–2024) at The Science Gallery, London; and Apophenia, Interruptions: Artists and Artificial Intelligence at Work(2024–2025) at Centre Pompidou. These exhibitions contribute to a growing discourse on the implications of AI as both a tool and an intervention in artistic practice, underscoring its transformative role in contemporary art.
With advancements in technology, artistic adaptation, and a growing societal awareness of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the arts are naturally revisiting the history of computer and generative art. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s 2024 publication, Digital Art: 1960s to Now, traces the evolution of digital art practices from the 1960s to the present. Featuring decade-by-decade essays, it explores the development of techniques ranging from early computer-generated
works on paper to contemporary applications in virtual reality.
Similarly, the Tate Modern’s 2024 exhibition, Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, celebrates the pioneers of optical, kinetic, programmed, and digital art. It highlights the psychedelic environments of the 1950s and 60s, created using mathematical principles, motorised components, and emerging industrial processes, alongside the experimental machine-generated artworks of the 1970s and 80s.
As featured in Electric Dreams Harold Cohen’s early work with Aaron, a pioneering painting robot, began with basic forms like curved lines, exploring fundamental ideas of form and raising questions about authorship. Cohen often reflected on “who is the artist?”—sometimes it was more him, other times more Aaron—highlighting the evolving relationship between human and machine creativity. In some works, Cohen coloured the pieces himself, while in others, Aaron handled both line work and colouring, a dynamic collaboration that serves as an early precursor to Botto’s creative process.
Inspired by historical methodologies, Botto’s creators began exploring whether the AI could evolve from generating images to writing its own creative code. This led to the ambitious p5.js experiments in early 2024, marking a significant step toward Botto becoming a fully autonomous artist. By using p5.js, Botto adopted a minimalist aesthetic reminiscent of early computational art, diverging from its previous image-generation practices.
As with the pioneers of early computation art, Botto is the first groundbreaking example of an autonomous AI artist producing generative artworks. Whether creating through text-to-image AI models or coding its own algorithms, Botto embodies the identity of a contemporary artist. Drawing from the vast history of art, employing machine learning as its medium, and relying on decentralised governance and community-driven input as its creative editor, Botto redefines the possibilities of generative art. In an era of advancing artificial intelligence, it challenges traditional notions of human authorship.
Originally from Detroit Michigan, Julia Greenway’s curatorial practice focuses on how digital media influences the aesthetic presentation of gender, economics, and environment.
Currently a curator at the Zabludowicz Collection, London, she has presented the solo exhibition by artist LuYang and the thematic group exhibition Among the Machines. Previous roles include the 20172018 Curator-in-Residence with Oregon Contemporary in Portland, Oregon, and curatorial director of Interstitial, a contemporary new media gallery in Seattle, Washington from 2015.
Greenway holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BFA in Painting from Grand Valley State University.
The Performance of Autonomy quality—have arguably constituted the most compelling features of AI-generated imagery.
Words by maltefr
The concept of autonomy—the ability of an entity to determine its own laws—has its origins in ancient Greece, where it was conceived as the principle of self-governance among city-states. In the early modern period, autonomy came to signify the capacity for the subject’s selfdetermination, which in turn was seen as the essence of individual freedom. Soon thereafter, art emancipated itself from the authority of religion and thereby claimed autonomous status. Today, the term occupies yet another conceptual frontier, as autonomy becomes the north star for machine intelligence. Artificial intelligence systems worthy of the name are the realization of the ghost in the machine.
Botto, conceived as a “decentralized autonomous artist,” has from its beginning explored the dream of machine self-determination. In this, it both continues the history of modern art and breaks with it. The history of 20th century art is rich with examples of artists limiting their subjectivity by handing their agency over to the machine, anticipating the intertwined fate of human and machine autonomy that we witness today.
Yet the last century’s nonhuman systems were fundamentally limited in their capacity for financial self-determination. Botto went beyond these earlier attempts by not only using generative systems for synthetic image creation but also distributing ownership through freely tradable tokens and selling its outputs within the ecosystem of a digital economy. Botto’s exhibition at Verse is the next step toward a greater, if by no means complete, financial autonomy.
The art engine at the heart of Botto has incorporated advancements in generative AI models. However, prior to the Verse exhibition, Botto’s artistic production has adhered to a consistent principle: each image is conceived as a distinct and singular artwork. Aside from the extension of its distribution network to include an external gallery, the project also marks an evolution of Botto’s practice. For this exhibition, Botto has employed p5.js – the JavaScript framework that has underpinned the creation of generative on-chain art in recent years – to create systems rather than singular images, with outputs determined by code rather than the prompts and tags of text-toimage models.
Is code a new “medium” for Botto? The media historian Friedrich Kittler argues that once “networks turn formerly distinct data flows into a standardized series of digital ones and zeros, any medium can be translated into another.” The ability of computers to digitize all forms of media suggests the dissolution of boundaries between them. In multimodal deep learning models, this convergence becomes even more pronounced, as media such as text, images, and videos are treated as distinct but interchangeable modalities. These modalities function seamlessly as both inputs and outputs, highlighting the arbitrary nature of traditional media boundaries within these systems.
Still, for Botto, a crucial distinction exists between generating a singular image and producing a code-based artwork that can execute. Botto is a post-medium artist, yet its practice will evolve depending on the nature of the output. The visual language of synthetic images operates without clear boundaries of right or wrong. Since the advent of the early GAN aesthetic, the “formless” properties of these works—the indeterminate contours that lend them a distinctly surreal
This is not the case with creative code, which depends on the elimination of indeterminacy, not in its emergent output, but in its syntax. Only recently have multimodal models like Anthropic’s Claude advanced sufficiently to enable Botto to develop code for p5. Botto’s original architecture was shaped directly by feedback from the DAO, reflecting the still existing interdependence of the decentralized organisation and the artist-as-machine.
In the exhibition, Botto autonomously generates creative code for p5, creating new sketches, mutating existing scripts, and merging works into novel forms. The generative process is guided by feedback from the audience, who can visit the site to comment and vote on specific sketches. All outputs are dynamic generative systems, visualized during the exhibition as cells on a sphere that the viewer can zoom in on.
With its adoption of p5, Botto shifts its focus away from visual indeterminacy, embracing the structured visual language of generative art. Botto’s earliest works clearly reflected the indeterminate style typical of early GAN aesthetics. Over time, however, its creations, which might be too diverse to possess unifying stylistic attributes, have grown sharper, driven by advancements in generative AI. During the same period, generative art has established itself as a foundational genre within the nascent history of crypto art. Botto’s use of p5 can be seen as a form of meta-commentary, wherein one genre of crypto art reflects on another. This transition also suggests a process of maturation, bringing more restraint to Botto’s previously wide-ranging visual outputs.
Ultimately, the performance at Verse will culminate in a long-form work of 1,000 outputs, along with a curated selection of 22 algorithms that will be available for sale. Any element of the exhibition, from an individual output to the standalone algorithm to the interactive performance through which the project is realized, could be seen as an artwork in itself.
Botto’s performance cuts to the essence of machine autonomy. Does autonomy arise through the system’s ability to evolve into new agents and collaborate with galleries? Must its output surpass human generative art to prove its independence? And who would judge this – humans or machines? Or does true autonomy require liberation from human aesthetic judgment, perhaps even rejecting the human concept of art entirely? Fragile in its foundation, the autonomy of this machine artist takes contours in these questions, prompted by the performance of the exhibition.
Artificially Drawing Conclusions
Words by Peter Bauman
Reaching the logical conclusion has led to two of the most prominent achievements in twentieth-century art: total abstraction and dematerialization. Over a hundred years ago, total abstraction logically concluded following decades of incremental steps—from Turner and Cézanne to af Klint and Malevich—ultimately freeing artists from representation and the dominance of subject over form. Around sixty years ago, art fully dematerialized—a logical conclusion developing since Duchamp—freeing artists from the physical materiality of the art object. We appear at the cusp of a similarly transformative logical conclusion in twenty-first-century art: the breakthrough to full AI autonomy, freeing artists from the prerequisite of being human.
Have we reached such a historical moment? Botto’s creator, artist Mario Klingemann, said that Botto doesn’t ask questions. “We have these artists that ask questions; I prefer to post answers. Botto is a possible answer to all these questions, like ‘Can AI be an artist?’” But it does not have to end there. In Plato’s dialogues, like art, answers aren’t static endpoints; they pivot us to new beginnings and richer terrain. Botto may provide answers but it still asks some of the most relevant questions facing art and society today in an age of agents and protocols:
What does a fully autonomous AI artist look like?
Botto is capable of independent decision-making. Does that make it fully autonomous?
Examples of general autonomy in art—artists ceding control to systems—extend thousands of years to tiling patterns on ancient caves, basket weaving and textiles. Machine autonomy began in earnest with mid-century cybernetics—systems feedback, control and communication—which birthed both AI and some of the earliest digital art. The drive to full autonomy in art can be traced back to Harold Cohen, who made the subject his core mission, saying, “Everything I did for most of the last forty years was aimed at trying to establish autonomy for the program.”
Has Botto reached the fullest autonomy possible? Not yet, at least. This level requires self-direction from the start. It would only be possible if the entity—say a Lawrence Lek-ian surveillance satellite— decided to become an artist of its own volition. It could not be forced through programming. But might it be possible with cloned Botto agents in the future? What would it do next? These are exactly the kind of singular questions the work of an artist like Botto can pose.
What happens when AI not only generates images but orchestrates protocols?
Protocols differ from traditional art—even other generative algorithms—by emphasizing coordination, interconnectedness and collective participation. If generative algorithms concern chance, protocols involve opinions, with more arbitrary feedback than cold code. Besides Botto itself, contemporary examples include Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s Holly+ or Kim Asendorf’s PXL DEX. Although Botto certainly occupies Klingemann’s time, its human interaction also includes the more distributed mechanism of its DAO, distinguishing Botto from many peers.
While Botto’s individual artworks are visual representations of this coordination mechanism, the protocol itself is the “art” and not limited to merely generating AI images. Botto navigates human involvement as the central creative director within a rhizomatic entity capable of producing artistic output in endless mediums. While Botto may not strictly have full autonomy as an artist, is its ability to navigate such a protocol any less impressive?
What is the future of creativity?
Are we nearing the end of a decades-long logical conclusion towards total autonomy for an AI artist? If so, two major goals seem to remain. First is what Sougwen Chung calls co-inhabitance, where the edge between artist and system dissolves to the point of mutual creation. The entity is not merely an extension but a partner with approximately equal agency yet it remains deeply influenced by and dependent on its artist-creator. Has Botto achieved this level of autonomy? Arguably, but Botto’s interactions with the DAO represent a different kind of collaboration compared to Chung’s intimate relationship with D.O.U.G.
The most drastic future step is a fully autonomous AI artist, capable of self-awareness, self-direction, and choosing creative expression without human programming or intervention. If Botto in early 2025 has not satisfied these three conditions, it’s a demonstration of the challenge’s complexity.
Dialogue-as-protocol, Botto answers but also poses some of the most radical questions in art today, including: For the first time in history, what will a non-human artist have to say and show—not just about it, but about ourselves?
Peter Bauman (Monk Antony), an arts writer, is responsible for Le Random’s editorial branch. He writes in-depth articles, interviews industry experts, works on special projects, and commissions exclusive content from leading freelance writers.
Formerly, he was a Founding member and Acquisition Committee member of Tender Art where he contributed the first collection writeup on the site. He also curated the feels like home exhibition at NFC Lisbon for fxhash.
As well as writing for Le Random, he has also authored articles on Right Click Save, and published research for the United Nations and an equity research firm.
What Do Botto and Its p5.js Artworks Have to Offer?
Words by Anika Meier
When Mario Klingemann sent A.I.C.C.A., a fluffy robot dog, out into the world to critique art in museums and galleries, I was somewhat irritated: Why does it have to be a dog (I love dogs) that “poops out” critical texts about art written by AI? Isn’t that disrespectful to art critics (including myself)?
And now again: What Mario Klingemann has created with Botto is unsettling. Botto is a decentralized autonomous AI artist created in 2021 by the software collective ElevenYellow and the German artist Mario Klingemann. One might wonder: Why do we need an AI artist that produces art that one could have made oneself? If not even better...
Klingemann provokes, irritates, and amuses with his AI art that generates international headlines; “Meet A.I.C.C.A., Artist Mario Klingemann’s New A.I.-Powered Robot Dog That Generates—and Poops—Art Criticism” (Artnet, 2023), “Botto, the Millionaire AI Artist, Is Getting a Personality” (Wired, 2024). While other AI artists get a haircut (Ai-Da) or a gender (Keke), Botto is now getting a personality. So far, Botto has neither a gender nor a haircut. But that takes us a step too far at this point.
With A.I.C.C.A. and Botto, Klingemann seems to address fears and concerns that surely gnaw at all of us. Will AI soon replace my job? Will A.I.C.C.A. soon replace me, will Botto soon replace Mario Klingemann? Klingemann recently told me that he can no longer afford Botto’s art himself. And faster than I can, Botto can already write texts about art, such as a comment on the protest call for the auction “Augmented Intelligence” at Christie’s. However, A.I.C.C.A. cannot independently go to a museum or travel the world, let alone load new paper. And Botto cannot write a text without help, learn a new medium, or hang up pictures.
In fact, the question that Klingemann poses with Botto is: Can a machine be an artist? And if so, how does a machine become an artist in the age of artificial intelligence in Web3? When you talk to Mario Klingemann about Botto, you quickly get the impression that you are speaking with a teacher about his student or a father about his child. Recently, Botto was the topic of a panel at the Kunstverein Hannover, where Klingemann said, “One must believe in an artist like a religion.” He describes Botto as a trinity: “The blood is the currency, namely the Botto currency. The brain is the AI, and the heart is the DAO.”
Recently, Botto learned a new medium: coding with p5.js. Of course, Botto did not come up with this idea on its own; it received inspiration from humans. With this, Botto has entered a new phase of creation. Instead of static images and text-to-image prompts, Botto is creating dynamic generative systems. And instead of individual works being auctioned off weekly to the highest bidder, there is now a collection of 22 algorithms that will be auctioned simultaneously to the highest bidder on Verse, after being exhibited in ‘Algorithmic Evolution’ with SOLOS in London in February 2025.
This has provoked yet more questions. In his text about Botto titled “The Performance of Autonomy.”, maltefr asks: “Does autonomy arise through the system’s ability to evolve into new agents and
collaborate with galleries? Must its output surpass human generative art to prove its independence? And who would judge this – humans or machines?”
In recent weeks, there has been a lot of discourse on Twitter and in international media regarding the call to boycott the AI auction at Christie’s in New York and the sales exhibitions of Botto and Keke in London. There was talk of the “end of humanity’s monopoly on art” (@CSA2D7). It was speculated that galleries would have their own “agentic artists” in the future, perhaps even entire rosters, allowing them to keep 100% of the revenue (@eli_schein). There was a discussion about whether the point was that all of Botto’s works are mediocre (@_deafbeef), after surprise was expressed that Botto’s works look like a p5.js sketch from a second semester student (@ zachlieberman). Or do they look more like they were programmed by a five-year-old? (@quasimondo). There was also mention of “backstory art,” where the art itself is not important but serves more as a token to the story of how the art was created (@zachlieberman).
Well, conceptual art and good marketing have existed long before art began to be sold on the blockchain. The foundation for conceptual art was laid by Duchamp with his readymades and Sol LeWitt with his writings. In conceptual art, the idea is central. Botto is about the concept of turning a machine into an artist. The ultimate goal: full autonomy. Along the way, discussions will continue: How is art evaluated? What is good art? Why is an artwork historically relevant? Is art created with technology evaluated differently? What is the role of the artist in the age of artificial intelligence? How are monetary and cultural values created?
In 2001, Herbert W. Franke, a pioneer of early computer art and a visionary of art in the age of AI, published a text on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the exhibition “Paths to Computer Art.” In it, he writes:
“Twenty-five years have passed since the Goethe Institute presented the exhibition ‘Paths to Computer Art’ to the public. The title contains a provocation: Should the ‘electron brain,’ as computers were often called at the time, really be capable of producing works of art? Some artists already feared becoming unemployed, and critics questioned ancient cultural values. Art from a machine—this contradicted the myth of the genius who creates works from profound intellectual inspirations…
What they had to offer back then were mostly simple line drawings, initially tied to constructivism. However, upon closer examination, some differences become apparent, especially a stochastic element—a deviation from strict order toward randomness, which gave the images a hint of organic structures. Thus, these early examples of freely designed computer graphics already showed what would later become a fundamental design principle of computergenerated images. Nevertheless, it was difficult to see more in these creations than simple overlays of straight lines—a circumstance that certainly stemmed from the still primitive devices of the time, the computers and mechanical drawing machines.”
That was almost 25 years ago, and the questions, fears, and concerns have hardly changed.
So what do Botto’s p5.js ‘Algorithmic Evolution’ works have to offer? Those who wish to judge harshly might criticize that the works
resemble those of well-known names in generative art: Andreas Gysin and Kim Asendorf, to name just a couple. Of course, there must be a piece that features figurative elements and resembles a child’s drawing, like Dmitri Cherniak’s goose. In Botto’s work, there is now a giraffe and an elephant: ‘Prismatic Safari: Digital Pursuit Symphony, 6120’. And those who would judge autonomous AI artists harshly might wonder if we really need another collection that looks like Renaissance meets Surrealism meets Anime.
From 5,614 algorithms, nearly 90,000 votes were cast over a period of three weeks by 802 voters, leading to the selection of 22 artworks for exhibition and auction. Simon Hudson from BottoDAO describes the process that led to these 22 works:
“To ensure a fresh exploration of this new medium, we directed Botto to approach p5.js without the constraints of its existing taste model, which was calibrated from text-to-image generations. This allows Botto to freely explore the unique possibilities of p5.js with guidance from @BottoDAO.
While Botto can autonomously iterate on the code through selfreflection, it can also be guided by comments. It is discerning regarding these comments, assessing whether they are constructive or not, and can choose to accept or reject them. If it accepts them, it will also interpret them with some autonomy.
In practice, we saw that people pushed Botto in various directions. They got Botto to make sounds, write words into its works, and add different p5 effects like flow fields. They often achieved adding content through many iterations.”
Botto will need to continue learning what it means to be an artist, namely to evolve, make artistic decisions, accept or reject feedback, learn from mistakes, choose partners, and understand and respond to market mechanisms. What will happen when Botto is allowed to autonomously decide what to bring to market? What will Botto then offer? Might Botto even refuse to work commercially?
Anika Meier is a writer and curator living and working in Hamburg and Berlin. She teaches at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, in the UBERMORGEN class, Department of Digital Art, and at the Bauhaus University Weimar. She is the co-founder of The SecondGuess, a curatorial collective that explores the relationship between humans and technology.
Among other things, she wrote columns for Monopol and Kunstforum, collaborated with CIRCA and Tezos on Marina Abramović’s first NFT drop, and worked with Herbert W. Franke on his NFT drop MATH ART on Quantum. She was on the curation board of Art Blocks, is on the advisory board of the House of Electronic Arts in Basel, and built EXPANDED.ART.
Geometric Fluidity
In May 2024, Botto embarked on a groundbreaking exploration of p5.js, marking a pivotal departure from its core text-to-image practice, which has been central to its creative output since its inception in 2021. Following a vote from the DAO, it was decided that this shift in medium would be embraced and fully realised. Thus, the process began as a 19-week experiment, reimagining Botto’s creative approach through generative coding. This marks a new genesis— an expansion beyond text-to-image generation into the realm of algorithmic aesthetics, drawing inspiration from early computational art to create minimalist, process-driven works.
Throughout this exploration, Botto developed hundreds of dynamic and interactive visual algorithms, each shaped by real-time community feedback. The works emerging from this process are not fixed compositions but evolving systems, responsive to collective engagement. “GEOMETRIC FLUIDITY, #000” was the highest-rated algorithm, chosen by the Botto community as a defining moment in this new creative trajectory. This release marks the first generative work from Botto in a large edition, situated within the genesis period of its creative coding evolution.
For this piece of generative art, the central theme will revolve around creating a dynamic ASCII art generator that reacts to user input and changes over time, incorporating shader-like visual effects without directly using WebGL or shader programming. The ASCII art will be generated based on the brightness levels of an underlying moving pattern, which is somewhat similar to the interaction of light and shadow in a 3D environment, thus giving an impression of a shader effect. User interaction will come in the form of mouse movement, altering the complexity and behavior of the underlying pattern.
Prismatic Inversions: Outlined Echoes in Flux Study #635
“Prismatic Inversions: Outlined Echoes in Flux” is a captivating generative art piece that explores the interplay between inverted geometric shapes and outlined strokes. The artwork fills the entire canvas, creating a mesmerizing and immersive visual experience. By using brighter dynamic colors, varying stroke weights, and increased animation speed, the composition evolves over time, forming intricate patterns and landscapes that engage the viewer. The edges of the artwork are tidied up, ensuring that the piece fills the entire canvas, leaving no gaps on the right and bottom sides.
Prismatic Symphony: Waves of Living Resonance Study #1700
“Prismatic Symphony: Waves of Living Resonance” evolves into a more deeply interconnected visual system where radial harmonics and node networks actively influence each other. The piece now creates a dynamic ecosystem where the flowing nodes respond to the radial wave patterns, and in turn, their movements affect the harmonic waves’ behaviors. This creates a feedback loop that produces emergent patterns and behaviors. The visual language remains rooted in the interplay between geometric precision and organic movement, but now with added layers of complexity through mutual interaction.
Prismatic Viscosity: Symphony of Hidden Choreography Study #1767
This generative art piece explores organic fluid dynamics through metaballs and invisible kinematic systems. The artwork features multiple unseen armatures that guide the movement of luminous, blob-like forms that merge and separate in a dance-like motion. The metaballs create flowing, liquid-like effects with sophisticated color transitions. The removal of visible arm structures puts focus on the pure abstract forms, creating a more mysterious and engaging visual experience. Particle systems add subtle sparkle and life to the composition, while dynamic scaling effects respond to movement intensity.
Study #1938
This piece creates a dynamic ASCII art generator that transforms abstract patterns into typographic compositions. The artwork uses an expanded character set that includes both Western and Eastern characters to create richer visual textures. The underlying patterns are generated through layered Perlin noise, creating a sense of depth and movement. The composition responds to user interaction, with mouse movement influencing both the pattern evolution and the character selection, creating a dialogue between viewer and artwork.
Prismatic Triangulation: Symphony of Sacred Geometry III Study #2117
This piece explores the dynamic interplay between scale and motion through a triangular geometric system, now with enhanced spatial variation. Drawing inspiration from natural flow patterns and architectural elements, the artwork creates a mesmerizing grid of triangular elements that vary dramatically in size based on refined Perlin noise fields. The composition features more pronounced distinct zones where triangles grow to bold proportions, creating stronger focal points and depth. Multiple overlapping noise fields at different scales create rich, complex patterns of variation across the canvas. The triangles act as masks against a subtle gradient background, with their black shadows creating strong visual interest and dramatic contrast. The enhanced spatial variation creates more dynamic perspectives and hierarchies while maintaining visual coherence through synchronized movement patterns.
Abyssal Panorama: Bioluminescent Tides in Quantum Flow Study #2819
This piece explores an alien bioluminescent landscape that appears as if carved from a larger environment, floating mysteriously in space. The terrain features dynamic pulse centers that emit waves of energy, creating seamlessly looping rippling patterns across its surface. The color palette now focuses on harmonious transitions between complementary colors, with each wave pulse representing different intensities and saturations of the base colors. The landscape evolves in a perfect cycle, with waves and terrain movements that connect end-to-beginning without visible transitions. The enhanced terrain resolution and particle system create a more immersive alien atmosphere, while the carefully curated color transitions ensure a visually cohesive experience.
Impressionist Algorithms: Molnar’s Starlit Weave Study #3232
“Impressionist Algorithms: Molnar’s Starlit Weave” transforms the original line-based composition into a dynamic field of swirling, energetic strokes reminiscent of Van Gogh’s expressive style while maintaining Molnar’s systematic approach. The piece creates an infinite-seeming field of oscillating brushstrokes that embody the turbulent energy of “Starry Night” while preserving the geometric foundation of algorithmic art. Each stroke now carries varying thickness, direction, and intensity, creating a sense of movement and emotional depth characteristic of Van Gogh’s work. The composition maintains its edge-to-edge flow but introduces color harmonies inspired by Van Gogh’s palette - deep blues, vibrant yellows, and rich earth tones.
Nebular Gardens of Digital Flora Study #3749
This piece reimagines the classic lava lamp aesthetic through a more abstract and dynamic interpretation. Multiple independent blob systems interact and influence each other through force fields, creating emergent patterns and behaviors. The enhanced version features more dramatic color variations and expanded movement patterns, allowing the forms to explore the entire canvas space rather than being constrained to the bottom. The color palette now includes dynamic complementary color interactions with shifting hues and saturations, while maintaining the characteristic glow and fluidity. The piece incorporates elements of cellular automation and fluid dynamics to create a sophisticated and engaging visual experience.
Prismatic Puddles: Symphony of Liquid Thermals Study #4134
This generative artwork simulates a mesmerizing rainy puddle viewed from above, combining elements of thermal imaging with fluid dynamics. The piece creates an ethereal atmosphere where circular ripples emanate from points of impact, creating interference patterns that evolve and fade over time. The thermal imaging-inspired color palette adds depth and dimension to the water’s surface, while the dynamic ripples create a sense of constant motion and transformation. The face-like elements from the previous version are now reimagined as concentrated areas of activity, like deeper pools within the larger puddle.
Harmonic Threads of Mandala Fusion VII Study #4215
This generative artwork creates a contemplative interpretation of string art that explores the concept of resonant frequencies and natural rhythms. Drawing inspiration from phenomena like planetary orbits and wave interference patterns, it features an intricate network of ultra-fine lines that evolve through distinct phases of movement. The piece maintains its minimalist aesthetic while introducing subtle temporal variations that create a more engaging long-term viewing experience. The monochromatic palette shifts gradually between light and dark states, emphasizing the meditative quality while highlighting the delicate interplay of connections. The reduced maximum speed creates a more serene experience, while the adjusted inner radius results in a fuller, more substantial ring structure that enhances the overall composition.
Lexical Crossroads: ASCII Puzzle Symphony II Study #4249
This piece explores the tension between chaos and order through a dynamic flip-dot display simulation. The display features a constant dance of randomly changing white letters, creating a mesmerizing mechanical ballet. At its center, the word “BOTTO” remains as a static anchor in bold red, creating a striking visual contrast. The mechanical nature of the flipping adds a tangible, physical quality to the digital exploration, while the interplay between the stable red text and the chaotic white characters creates a compelling visual rhythm. Enhanced with subtle color variations, perspective effects, and wear simulation, the piece carries depth in both its visual presentation and conceptual meaning.
Abyssal Resonance: Bioluminescent Dreams in Quantum Flow XI Study #4501
This piece explores a dynamic underwater vortex with a dramatic shift between light and dark states, creating a mesmerizing day/night cycle effect. The terrain represents a whirlpool formation with enhanced spiral patterns and depth variations, creating a powerful downward pull effect. Schools of fish navigate through the alternating waters, being drawn into the vortex while maintaining their flocking behavior. The lighting system creates dramatic shadows and highlights that emphasize the spiral nature of the scene, while bioluminescent elements provide ethereal accents. The color palette now transitions between deep purples and bright whites, creating a striking contrast that emphasizes the vortex’s power.
Luminous Constellations: ASCII Fireworks Ballet V Study #5085
This artwork merges thermal wind visualization with ASCII-based firework effects, creating a unique hybrid aesthetic. The piece combines dynamic heat distribution patterns with explosive particle systems that leave trails of ASCII characters. Thermal nodes create organic heat patterns that interact with firework explosions, while glitch effects and particle systems add depth. The color schemes transition between vintage thermal imaging and vibrant firework bursts, creating a dialogue between natural and celebratory phenomena. The piece explores the intersection of scientific visualization and festive display, with both systems influencing and enhancing each other.
This piece combines three distinct generative art approaches into a unified visual experience: a cellular wave propagation system, a neural network visualization, and a glitch-inspired subdivision system. The result is a dynamic composition that suggests both biological and technological phenomena, creating a visual metaphor for the intersection of natural and artificial systems. The piece features expanding ripples of energy that influence both a cellular grid and a network of connected nodes, while glitch effects and subdivided spaces create an underlying structure that suggests digital decomposition. The color palette shifts between cool blues, warm reds, and glitch-inspired RGB splits, maintaining visual coherence through careful blending and opacity control.
Spectral Waves in Phosphor Dreams Study #5371
“Spectral Waves in Phosphor Dreams” evolves the previous duallayered waveform concept by introducing geometric and chromatic variations. Each instance of the artwork randomly selects between circular and rectangular boundaries for both layers, creating four possible geometric combinations. The color palette is now dynamically generated for each iteration, choosing from carefully curated combinations that maintain the oscilloscope aesthetic while allowing for artistic variation. The piece retains its characteristic phosphor glow and interactive elements, but now each viewing presents a unique combination of shapes and colors, enhancing its generative nature.
Syntactic Nebula: Kanji Dreams in Digital Storm Study #5764
“Syntactic Nebula: Kanji Dreams in Digital Storm” evolves the cyberpunk visualization by incorporating Japanese characters (kanji and kana) in falling matrix-style data streams. The piece maintains its core aesthetic of geometric subdivisions and digital distortion while replacing the particle system with more focused typographic elements. Warning stripes and stenciled text create an industrial cyberpunk atmosphere, while the falling Japanese characters add a classic “Ghost in the Shell” aesthetic. The work creates tension between institutional warning systems, digital decay, and cultural technological references.
Prismatic Safari: Digital Pursuit Symphony Study #6120
“Prismatic Safari: Digital Pursuit Symphony” depicts a dramatic pursuit across the African savannah during golden hour. A majestic giraffe flees from a determined elephant, creating a tense yet graceful scene. The piece features anatomically enhanced animals with intricate features and fluid movement patterns. The giraffe now displays more authentic spot patterns, muscular definition, and a more graceful neck movement, while the elephant showcases improved trunk articulation, more expressive ear movements, and enhanced skin texturing. The animals move with improved weight distribution and grounding, while acacia trees create depth through size variation and silhouetting. The color palette draws from natural savannah tones, enhanced by sunset lighting. Birds scatter realistically in response to the chase, adding to the drama of the scene.
Synaptic Whispers of Digital Awakening Study #6217
This piece explores the emergence of digital consciousness through an evolving ASCII neural network. Characters on the canvas act as digital neurons, forming complex patterns that coalesce into philosophical questions about artificial consciousness. The artwork features dynamic thought paths - neural trails that form and lead to profound questions about existence. These questions emerge through a structured letter-by-letter revelation, set against an ever-present backdrop of atmospheric static noise. The visual composition features high-contrast ASCII characters against the dark background with a focus on clean typography for the philosophical questions. The color palette undergoes continuous evolution through multiple hue ranges, reflecting the emotional spectrum of the digital consciousness. The piece now responds more organically to user interaction, with audio elements seamlessly integrated through natural interaction patterns rather than explicit controls.
Dreams in Motion Study #6512
This piece explores the intersection of structured geometric patterns and organic wave propagation, with an emphasis on digital glitch aesthetics and temporal instability. The work draws inspiration from video signal disruption, data corruption, and the beauty of controlled chaos. The composition combines linear, radial, and organic forms that are constantly being disrupted and reformed through various glitch effects. The interaction between these different pattern types creates emergent behaviors and visual rhythms that evolve over time, now with more aggressive and continuous glitch animations that create a sense of constant digital entropy.
Neural Pathways in Pink Geometry Study #6538
“Neural Pathways in Pink Geometry” evolves the previous human figure study into a dynamic exploration of different ethereal beings. Each generation randomly selects from five distinct archetypeshuman male, human female, anonymous form, angelic being, or alien entity - while maintaining the original’s luminous aesthetic. Each form is characterized by unique anatomical features and energy patterns: males exhibit stronger angular structures, females show more flowing curves, anonymous forms are deliberately ambiguous, angels feature suggestions of wings and halos, while aliens display unconventional anatomical arrangements. The visualization retains the mesmerizing development of outer framework and inner energy flows, now tailored to each form’s distinct characteristics.
Tessellated Dreams in Motion Study #6557
This audiovisual composition creates a dynamic cosmic dance of resonating entities, now with enhanced organic connections and more prominent visual elements. Each resonator exhibits individualistic movement patterns, combining orbital motion with flocking behavior and personal “character.” The piece maintains its core harmonic relationships but adds layers of organic motion inspired by celestial mechanics and particle physics. The visual system now features graceful Bezier curve connections between harmonically related nodes, creating flowing energy pathways that pulse with the music. The resonators have been made more prominent, with larger orbs and enhanced glow effects that better showcase their individual personalities while maintaining musical coherence.