Why Gucci is still experimenting with generative AI art

To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Technology Edit newsletter, click here. Gucci Art Space has teamed up for a second time with Christie’s 3.0, the auctioneer’s platform dedicated to digital art. ‘Parallel Universes: From Future Frequencies to Gucci Cosmos’ is the second iteration of Gucci and Christie’s collaborative exploration into the intersection between fashion, art and technology. This time, they’re exhibiting nine artworks made once again using generative AI, reflecting Gucci’s commitment to art as an avenue for trialling new tech. The collaboration, which builds upon the pair’s first ‘Future Frequencies: Explorations in Generative Art and Fashion’ exhibition, takes cues from Gucci Cosmos, the brand’s in-person exhibit currently on show at London’s 180 The Strand, which looks back through the house’s storied history. Whereas the first exhibition asked artists to explore how new design technologies, tools and skills might influence the future of fashion, this iteration invited nine artists to look to Gucci’s archives and the themes therein. Alexis André, Alexis Christodoulou, Amy Goodchild, Harvey Rayner, Jacqui Kenny, Jo Ann, Melissa Wiederrecht, Sasha Stiles and Thomas Lin Pedersen’s works will once again be auctioned off as NFTs from today through to 28 November. The works pull from Gucci archives and house codes. The resultant pieces are imbued with Gucci’s Ancora hues (six of the nine have at least a hint of red); many feature cyclical patterns, representing the interplay between art and fashion across time periods. Sasha Stiles taps into these ideas of recurrence with her creation “REPETAE: Again Again” that features the word “Again” accompanied by an audio. From the first auction, 15 of the 21 artworks sold for the expected price. The most expensive work sold for 13.69 ETH (£22,331). This time around, starting bids range from 0.50 ETH (£803) to 4 ETH (£6,427). The artists were selected by Gucci and Christie’s, who sought out those already working with generative systems to enhance the human element inherent to artistic creation; an effort to tap into the Gucci Cosmos theme of oscillating between past and present. The decision to experiment with generative AIis in keeping with Gucci’s commitment to the digital art world. Having launched its Art Space platform in January 2022, in June of that year, Gucci asked 21 artists to imagine the future of Gucci through NFTs. This project tackles similar themes, in a similar context. Gucci’s choice to do so in the context of art — rather than clothing — suggests a focus on experimentation and testing, rather than a full-fledged embrace of AI. With Christie’s, the brand is able to explore generative technologies in ways that build out Gucci’s creative identity, without bringing them into its runway collections (yet). “I find that artists using generative systems have an innate understanding of concept and craft, which fundamentally feels very aligned with Gucci’s ethos,” says Sebastian Sanchez, Christie’s manager of digital art sales. “Using generative systems such as programming languages and text-to-image models requires countless experiments, tests and iterations to achieve results that meet the artist’s vision. There is an interesting tension between artists wielding the power of this cutting-edge technology. It allows for human concepts and ideas to really shine through.” The works look back to look forward. The artists were tasked with using generative systems to produce pieces that looked to — and shaped — the future, still informed by Gucci’s heritage. In this, they delved into the Gucci archives, tapping into different eras and moments from the brand’s past to produce pieces of work that play on artistic methods and aesthetics across different eras. “The interplay between past and future in the final works is remarkable,” Sanchez says. The artists were presented with brand origin myths to inform their work, such as the moment in 1897s London when a young Guccio Gucci took a job as a luggage porter at The Savoy hotel. They also looked to the house’s aesthetic signifiers, including the Horsebit, Flora and Gucci Rosso Ancora. André took The Savoy’s famous red lift as a starting point. “This piece is my interpretation of the myth around the origin of the Gucci legacy. Time spent in an elevator that started everything. A slow process that eventually created a whole universe of style and fashion,” he says. “I took the red of the elevator, the iconic red and green colour combination and added some gold accents to reflect my interpretation of the signature codes of Gucci.” André worked around the idea of growth, with what he calls Gucci’s “big bang” (the elevator) at the centre. “I looked at how venation patterns happen in leaves and I imagined how the artistic direction of Guccio Gucci acted as a foundation for everything that was created along the years: a structure that would support the entire Gucci heritage that is then represented as feathers or fireworks around the tree-like growth pattern,” he says. The technicality behind the work hints at the same story and ideology. “This piece is created using a very huge amount of circles that follow clear rules of growth; the same rules dictate which colour the circles should be,” he says. “The final structure then glows while the pulse is going through all those circles in order. The wave goes up, like an elevator would do.” Other artists tapped into different aspects of Gucci’s heritage, many of which overlap with the physical Cosmos installation. Christodoulou’s work takes inspiration from horses in motion (Cosmos has a room encircled by virtual galloping ones); Rayner looked to the Garden of Eden as a foundational theme (Cosmos in London features an all-white representation in a nod to the brand’s floral motifs). “[Rayner] developed a unique technique when creating “Eden Fresco”, that emulates and recreates the appearance of time-worn fresco surfaces purely using code,” Sanchez says. The blockchain-based exhibition isn’t the first tech tie-in for Cosmos. Earlier this month, Gucci brought the 180 The Strand exhibition into the metaverse for Gucci Cosmos Land, which took place in The Sandbox. This auction takes Cosmos’s Web3 alliance a step further, reflecting Gucci’s continued commitment to blockchain-based fashion and art. It is also not the first time Gucci has played on forward-looking technology to harken back to its beginnings. In 2022, it opened Gucci Vault Land, also in The Sandbox, as a landing space for all of Gucci’s “multiverse” and Web3 efforts. It incorporated vintage pieces as well as gamified education about the maison. André’s work reflects on how a single idea can evolve into a deep, complex and interconnected structure. Like Gucci Cosmos and ‘Parallel Universes’, it is a comment on the evolution of the house of Gucci — and on the current moment’s emergent technologies. “How this specific moment feels,” he says. “How it feels obvious a posteriori that this was ‘it’. But how did it feel at the start?” Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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