Combine24 | Highlight

COMBINE24

A generative art competition by the Finnish National Gallery

Highlight is proud to partner with the Finnish National Gallery on Combine24, a groundbreaking digital art competition that merges the worlds of generative art and blockchain technology.

Below are the 10 shortlisted artworks from the competition. These exceptional pieces, created using the Finnish National Gallery’s extensive CC0-licensed collections, showcase the incredible creativity and innovation of the artists. With approximately 25,000 copyright-free images available, participants drew from a rich archive to craft unique digital pieces. Each work represents a unique interpretation of generative art, blending algorithmic processes with historical and cultural elements.

Voting for your favorite artwork opens on 1 September on the Combine24 website. The public vote will determine the winner of the Audience Favourite prize, which will be announced alongside the overall competition winners in October. Don’t miss this opportunity to support the artists and be part of this exciting journey.

Shortlisted artworks and artists

Agoston Nagy

re-frame

agoston nagy

This generative artwork is using the copyright-free, CC0-licensed collection data of the Finnish National Gallery in its implementation. Two search queries are used while interacting with the database: landscape and still life.

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Nahuel Gerth

BodyArtLab

Nahuel Gerth

BodyArtLab is a playful exploration of the Finnish National Gallery’s open source collection with special focus on body and playful interaction.

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Ilmo Kapanen ja Aarni Kapanen

Loom Of Reality

Ilmo Kapanen

Everything emerges and collapses, only to reappear decades or centuries later. Everything is shaped by the passage of time, unpredictable yet soothing. Everything is fabric, intertwined, forever seeking its final form.

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Blas.v

Perseverance

Blas.v

We are set from the point of view of a user in a not-so-distant parallel universe, watching/using this imaginary software manager of the Finnish National Gallery CC0 archive. The software constantly tries, fails, and restarts endlessly in an effort to properly display a painting/file. In the process of failure, the painted subjects find themselves transported to this new cyber world.

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Andreas Rau

Inventory Numbers

Andreas Rau

We are physical beings. We live in a physical world. We are connected. Over space and time. Our bodies are one with the universe. We are one. Physically entangled, spiritually connected.

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Jeremy Schoenherr (Jeres)

Repetition and Noise

Jeres

Repetition and Noise is about the nature and path of creativity.

It is one of the shortlisted works submitted to the Combine24 generative art competition held by the Finnish National Gallery.

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Arttu Koskela (Shaderism)

The Artist Code

Shaderism

In the modern era, many artists share their creative practice and it’s progress online, acting as a source of inspiration and education for others. Conversely, for former artists, museum collections can effectively serve the same purpose as window into their artistic practice. Self-portraits have historically been one of the most common practice topic for artists, and indeed, many of the ones in the collection of Finnish National Gallery are also rough pencil sketches.

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Roni Kaufman

Portrait Robot

Roni Block

Imagine René Descartes with the lips of a Swedish queen, the eyes of two different Finnish artists, in front of Mount Fuji.

Portrait Robot is a parody of current “generative AI” programs that create images from natural language descriptions. Taking the opposite direction, this work places the emphasis on silliness, openness and culture.

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Tuomo Rainio

Wunderblock

Tuomo Rainio

The name of the artwork Wunderblock refers to Sigmund Freud’s paper on memory. In my work, I have contemplated the Finnish National Gallery Collection with the same mindset, where the collection forms the subconsciousness of visual culture. Images emerge by combining multiple images from the archive, forming constantly evolving new imagery. The text is generated from the keywords in the image metadata.

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Newyellow

A Dance with History

newyellow.eth

Documents and paintings are frozen frames of time, yet history is a continuum. Through these timeless artifacts, we learn and evolve, each step guided by the wisdom of the past — a dance with history.

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