Until 22 September 2025, kanvas Dubai is hosting History Encoded, a free exhibition organised by the Project22 collective. Curated by Evgeniya Romanidi, the collective’s founder, the show offers a mesmerising journey through the evolution of digital art, from early algorithmic experiments to today’s most advanced generative, immersive, and blockchain-based practices. Eleven pioneering digital artists are featured, each contributing works that reflect the milestones and future directions of the medium.
The participants include American artist Casey Reas, a co-founder of Processing, the open-source language and platform that transformed creative coding. His seminal piece Process 6 (2005) remains a touchstone in software-based art. Austrian artist LIA, a trailblazer of software and net art, contributes an early generative piece from 2001-2002 that evokes the pioneering days of digital creativity on the internet.
Italian duo Hackatao, among the leading figures of Crypto and NFT art, presents works from 2018 to 2024 that blend hand-drawn aesthetics with blockchain innovation. The Paris-based collective OBVIOUS, behind a landmark AI-generated portrait sold at Christie’s in 2018, showcases Be Water (2025), sparking dialogue on the intersections of art and AI. German artist and creative technologist Julian Hespenheide engages with the legacies of early digital pioneers through FUZZING, an algorithmic exploration of process and form.
Among the participants are also generative artist Anton Berk (HolotX) and Berlin-based architect and filmmaker Sergey Prokofyev. HolotX displays Shared Memory (2024), an immersive audiovisual environment where sound interacts with particle systems. Prokofyev’s work on view, Phydgital Lymbo, is a cinematic meditation on space and emotion. “Glitch poet” Damien Looney exhibits Glitch & Flow (2023), a piece in which analogue and digital collapse into audio-reactive abstraction.
Polish artist Patryk Witek contributes three works: Mokradła, NER, and SPORE (2024), digital landscapes shaped by memory, ecology, and place. Canadian multimedia artist Lydia Yakonowsky, trained as an economist, presents Statistical Bouquet 4 (2024), a data-driven visualisation that intertwines aesthetics with existential themes. Finally, generative artist Eegun, the exhibition’s art director, delivers a signature immersive finale, while shaping the show’s overarching rhythm and conceptual flow. His logic-infused style underpins the structure of History Encoded.
To get more information about the exhibition, please visit its official web page.
Additionally, you may be interested in viewing Life is a Circus, one of the online exhibitions at the Cultural Foundation, and visiting teamLab Phenomena, a new gallery of digital art by teamLab. We would also recommend that you read our article about four remarkable Middle Eastern AI artists.
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