Between December 6 to 10, South Florida hosted Miami Art Week. At the Miami Beach Convention Center, on the beach, and at various satellite locations, an international community of art exhibitors presented work of all kinds. Among the many exceptional exhibits was an AI-designed maze of sand for visitors to explore.
Artist Sebastian Errazuriz, born in Chile and now living in New York, designed “MAZE: Journey Through the Algorithmic Self,” with the help of artificial intelligence platforms Midjourney and DALL-E 2. “This is your childhood sandcastle on steroids,” said Errazuriz, who built the maze using paths designed by the AI. The maze includes three ways in or out, and all paths lead to a large central square where explorers can mingle. Its design intentionally gives explorers the ability to always find the center.
“The AI maze is the first maze designed not to get lost, but to find ourselves,” Errazuriz said, “Because we probably are quite lost right now.” The central square was conceived as a plaza where explorers could find a temporary escape to disconnect and have conversations about “society’s upcoming technological and environmental challenges.” Within the maze were QR codes that explorers would use to download Errazuriz’s “AI MAZE” publication, which presents some imagined possibilities for human interaction with AI.
Walls within the maze were made using plywood covered with three coats of sand, looking like it rose from the beach itself. This created a very intentional contrast between the natural and the artificial. From inside, explorers could hear the sea, but see only sand and sky. Two viewing platforms outside of the maze allowed people to look down into it.
Other art installations in Miami this week included works more grounded in the past, or those more straightforward in their disruption. Wynwood Walls, Miami’s first street art museum and an internationally-renowned destination for fans of urban art forms, puts up new murals every year during Miami Art Week. This year, Wynwood Walls hosted a subway car that had been brought from Chicago.
“The subway kind of sits at the core of the street art movement,” said Jessica Goldman Srepnick of Wynwood Walls. “It’s where it really all began. It was a way for artists to kind of paint and have a larger audience because the subway would travel throughout the community.”
Miami Art Week was filled with exhibitions from artists from all over the world, many of whom were displaying their work for the first time. Satellite events occurred at locations as varied as local artists’ studios and downtown clubs. The Pérez Art Museum Miami presented an exhibit of work by New York artist Gary Simmons and hosted an invitation-only after-party. The Miami Beach Botanical Garden hosted evening wine tastings and talks about the Tribeca Film Festival featuring celebrities like Robert De Niro and John Stamos. Downtown afterparties included appearances by Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, and DeadMau5e, as well as a special birthday party for DJ Khaled. Many other celebrity guests and attendees appeared at various events throughout the week.
