GENE KOGAN (B. 1985) Latent Character Arithmetic: King - Male...

GENE KOGAN (B. 1985)
Latent Character Arithmetic: King - Male + Female = "Queen"

(i)
Latent Character Arithmetic: King
smart contract: 0xB127acD5786E3F8526f6AF0d2D19D093e9261588
token id: 526
wallet: 0x5308545D3CA57D051E1cFa56e9E1a330c2933d79
IPFS
500 x 500 pixels
Executed in 2015 and minted on 12 February 2025. This work is unique and accompanied by a non-fungible token.

(ii)
Latent Character Arithmetic: Men
smart contract: 0xB127acD5786E3F8526f6AF0d2D19D093e9261588
token id: 527
wallet: 0x5308545D3CA57D051E1cFa56e9E1a330c2933d79
IPFS
500 x 500 pixels
Executed in 2015 and minted on 12 February 2025. This work is unique and accompanied by a non-fungible token.

(iii)
Latent Character Arithmetic: Woman
smart contract: 0xB127acD5786E3F8526f6AF0d2D19D093e9261588
token id: 528
wallet: 0x5308545D3CA57D051E1cFa56e9E1a330c2933d79
IPFS
500 x 500 pixels
Executed in 2015 and minted on 12 February 2025. This work is unique and accompanied by a non-fungible token.

(iv)
Latent Character Arithmetic: Queen
smart contract: 0xB127acD5786E3F8526f6AF0d2D19D093e9261588
token id: 529
wallet: 0x5308545D3CA57D051E1cFa56e9E1a330c2933d79
IPFS
500 x 500 pixels
Executed in 2015 and minted on 12 February 2025. This work is unique and accompanied by a non-fungible token.

Provenance
Minted by the artist, 2025

Literature
This 2015 work is the result of an early experiment in generative AI, where a neural network was trained to understand and recreate the essence of handwritten Chinese characters. Drawing on a database of nearly a million handwritten characters, the model learns to distill their patterns, forms, and textures, ultimately producing entirely new characters that never existed in the original dataset.

The title is a reference to the 1988 book by Xu Bing, who created thousands of fictitious glyphs in the style of ancient Chinese prints from the Song and Ming dynasties. In a similar way, this AI-driven exploration blurs the line between authentic tradition and imaginative creation, inviting us to reflect on the boundaries of written language.