By Marie Chatel
Edited : DANAE Human Intelligence has been renamed DANAE for the sake of simplicity, while everything in this article stays relevant about our vision of art and technology
Finding a name is always momentous to a firm, and we wished to bring you behind the scene of choosing DANAE Human Intelligence in embracing our values and goals.
Danae represents a classical myth that inspired artists from every period. As told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Danae was a princess of Argos, whose father, Acrisius, imprisoned her into a bronze tower to avoid her from falling pregnant after an oracle had predicted his grandson would kill the king. Eventually, the king was responsible for his faith. The mystery created around Danae’s outstanding beauty and reclusion appealed to Zeus who took the form of golden rain to meet with the young lady and seduce her. From this relationship, their son, Perseus, was born. Feeling again the urge to act upon destiny, Acrisius set his daughter and her newborn son into a chest to drift away at sea, but Zeus and his brother Poseidon ensured the pair would reach the shore. When Perseus reached adulthood, he fulfilled the prophecy, killing his grand-father without knowing as part of an Olympic dual.
First depicted on Antique ceramics, Danae became increasingly represented throughout art history. While religious paintings were of the highest importance during Renaissance’s very beginning, the 16th-century saw the coining of hierarchies in figurative art, placing historical and mythological paintings as alternative subjects of predilection. In turn, Old Flemish master Jan Gossaert depicted Danae in the manner of an annunciation — wearing blue cloths with sun rays above her head representing the Spiritus Sanctus — while his Italian counterpart Antonio da Correggio showed her with cupids in a similarly divine vision of procreation. Other Renaissance artists like Titian and Tintoretto departed from religious subjects strictly-speaking with depictions of Danae increasingly highlighting her nudity, and featuring gold coins instead of rain (most likely foreseeing our use of Danaes, the platform-exclusive tokens for the purchase of digital artworks’ intellectual creation and editions).
To many artists, narratives around Greek myths allowed to represent female nudes and erotic scenes while preventing a direct connection to reality, bringing viewers’ eye to sensuousness without controversy. Danae stood as the perfect subject because of the suggestive nature of her immaterial fecundation. Depictions gained eroticism in the 18th-century in works from artists like Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Anne-Louis Girodet. Ultimately, the Argive princess appeared in a non-diluted sensuousness in Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele’s representations, and her contemporaneity was again made visible with Anselm Kiefer’s Danae sculpture displayed at the Louvre in 2007. Over time, her unparalleled beauty and grace owed her to symbolize the arts, creation, aesthetic, and taste.
What about Human Intelligence? The acronym is just as important to the name, bringing a contemporary, digital twist to the almost divine patroness of the arts.
Artificial Intelligence is a vital stake extensively covered by all media. With threatening bets about the disappearance of humanity and the rise of the machine, it is ubiquitous to understand the excitement around this futuristic technology. Sculptor Jack Burnham thoughts on art and technology perhaps best embrace the quest entailed to artificial intelligence. As he explained in his 1968 book Beyond Modern Sculpture, “Behind much art extending through the Western tradition, exists a yearning to break down the psychic and physical barriers between art and living reality — not only to make an art form that is believably real, but to go beyond and furnish images capable of intelligent intercourse with their creators.”
But while computer-generated artworks, such as digital painting, videos, photography, and media involving VR and AR disconnect from an artist’s hand, its impact is still very present in pieces created. As art historian Christiane Paul wrote, “It has been suggested that the creation of artworks such as paintings or drawings on a computer implies a loss of relationship with the “mark” — that is, that there is a significant lack of personality in the mark one produces on a computer screen as opposed to one on paper or canvas.” Something she counters, saying “Concept, all elements of the composition process, the writing of software, and many other aspects of digital art’s creation are still highly individual forms of expression that carry the aesthetic signature of an artist.”
The mark of a digital artist is fully connected to one’s creativity, emotional understanding, and thought process, which a computer cannot replicate. Although the interconnection between human and machine is complementary, at DANAE we perceive computer engineering as a tool for empowering artists to produce anew. Subsequently, “Human Intelligence” grasps the nature of the artist’s intrinsic value in technology-based environments.
