Bio-generative Artist Agoria Concludes Scorpios, Mykonos’ $3m Summer Art Program

· Scorpios, Mykonos 7-week Encounters ‘In Resonance' summer program has brought renowned generative artists and musicians together for unprecedented collaborations, fusing new media and music.

· Notably, primary art sales have already exceeded $3m, and secondary sales to date contributing over $800k.

· Over half million visitors have experienced these generative art masterpieces amidst the breath-taking beach front backdrop of Scorpios, Mykonos.

· The concluding artwork collection titled ‘Bohem-IA’ created by the French bio-generative Agoria will drop on 24 August 2023, and serves as a tribute to Scorpios’ creative, collaborative ethos and the enchanting allure of Mykonos.

· ‘In Resonance’ commenced with a striking collection by celebrated AI artist Refik Anadol collection, co-creators the Yawanawa tribes of the Brazilian Amazon, each pre-sale selling out within hours and raising over $1.5m for the tribes.

· Listen to exclusive interviews about ‘In Resonance’ from Art Talks curated by HOFA, Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

LONDON, 23 August 2023: French AI artist and polyhyphenate creative Agoria, will on 24 August 2023 launch his new collection of bio-generative artworks ‘Bohem-IA’ in the highly anticipated closing act of the successful Encounters 'In Resonance' 7-week summer arts program at Scorpios, Mykonos (ends 3 September 2023).

The program is part of a visionary experimental platform created by renowned Mykonos-based creative and culture collective, Scorpios, to explore innovative art and culture experiences and the artists bold enough to make them. For the inaugural edition of Encounters, Scorpios collaborated with London-based contemporary art gallery and tech entrepreneurs HOFA, to curate an unprecedented collaboration between artists and musicians.

So far, sales of the artwork collections released have topped $3m, with secondary sales in excess of $800k and counting.

One of many highlights of 'In Resonance' was the release of ‘Winds of Yawanawa’, a series of sold-out digital artworks by the popular Turkish-American generative artist, Refik Anadol, co-created with the Yawanawa Indigenous communities of Aldeia Sagrada and Nova Esperança. The artwork series was commissioned by Impact One as part of its Possible Futures program, to reflect the dynamic interrelationship between Yawanawa culture and the Amazon Forest. Pre-sales of this collection sold out within hours and the project raised $1.5m so far, thanks to Anadol and Impact One’s donations to support long-term initiatives for the protection of Yawanawa heritage.

Agoria, is a veteran generative artist, having begun his exploration of AI-based artworks using bespoke models inspired by the organic forms and the vibrance of living systems in the mid-2010s. He is a talented DJ, music producer, AI-model developer, scientist, and expert on the role of technology in creating and mediating art experiences.

In ‘Bohem-IA’, Agoria celebrates the creative, collaborative ethos of Scorpios and the captivating beauty of Mykonos Island. The collection of 22 unique works conjures the magnificent vibrance of the Island's coral reefs, alive with colour and motion, and the life-giving luminosity of the sunlight that bathes it through the pristine waters of the coast. It is as much an ode to nature's matchless palette of chameleonic hues as it is a celebration of what has made Scorpios, Mykonos a summer gathering place for artists and art lovers alike.

Shedding light on the inspiration behind ‘Bohem-IA’, Agoria explains, "Scorpios Mykonos is a very special place. It's an artistic and cultural sanctuary that has given AI artists like me a rare platform to showcase our work and experiment with new, innovative models this summer. ‘Bohem-IA’ is my way of celebrating the unique essence of Scorpios."

For HOFA Co-Founder and art-tech Entrepreneur Elio D'Anna, it is fitting that the closing act of Scorpio’s Encounters 'In Resonance' will be an emphatic visual homage to the values that inspired it. "HOFA was one of the first contemporary galleries in the world to embrace the role of technology and Web3 in creating art and delivering new, exciting art experiences. The success of our partnership with Scorpios, bringing the world's best generative artists to collaborate with musicians and musical directors, is as clear an indication as ever that the market for digital art is maturing and is here to stay."

WWW.SCORPIOSMYKONOS.COM

HOFA Gallery (House of Fine Art) is a contemporary aNOTES TO EDITORSrt gallery established in 2012 to discover, spotlight and support new and emerging contemporary artists from around the world. Since inception, they have blazed a trail by integrating Web3 features and functionalities into their art programming.

At its branches in London, Los Angeles and Mykonos, HOFA Gallery has hosted several ground-breaking solo and group exhibitions of traditional and digital artworks while also supporting fractionalized art investments targeted at young, web-savvy art collectors. These include Qvantum, its first Web3 art exhibition; XXI, which supported secure art investments via blockchain technology; Portrait of an Era, which featured many renowned digital artists; and more recently, Beyond the Screen.

Since 2021, HOFA has launched its own web3 platforms, HOFA.io and HOFA DAO, and continues to embrace contemporary art created and enabled by Web3 technologies.

Scorpios emerged on a sun-drenched peninsula of Mykonos in 2015, founded by Thomas Heyne and Mario Hertel, two nightlife impresarios from southern Germany. As a return to the bohemian spirit of this windswept Cycladic island, this open-air enclave ushered in a cultural shift from all-night partying to all-day ease, through ceremonial rituals, inspiring events, and a festival atmosphere. Scorpios sets the standard for a new kind of beach experience that nurtures community and collaboration — an alternative to mainstream entertainment.

In 2019, Scorpios joined the Soho House & Co family. As a platform for new ideas, synergies and artistic experimentation, Scorpios is a natural fit for Soho House & Co’s vibrant, diverse and global group of members. Built around a love of food, music, and design, both brands reflect a strong sense of place and a relaxed spirit of radical togetherness. Today, the Scorpios culture is designed to nourish all the senses, expand the mind, and welcome our eclectic, free-spirited, creative community on an uncharted journey to find their own rhythm.

Scorpios’ new cultural program marks a live iteration of the brand’s online storytelling platform, also called Encounters, that existed solely as the online magazine until this point. Envisioned as a cultural investigation into the ideas, healing practices, food, art, and design that lie at the core of the Scorpios experience, Encounters was created to initiate conversations about the radically changing times we live in. Now, it is transitioning into an immersive experience, with Scorpios deepening its cultural offerings.

With a population of over 1,200, the Yawanawa people live in villages nestled along the banks of the Gregório river in the Brazilian state of Acre, where they are guardians of thousands of acres of rainforest. Their history and culture are rich and diverse, with a deep connection to the natural world through their ancestral wisdom, plant medicine and environmental stewardship. The Yawanawa people’s traditional way of life is based on subsistence agriculture, hunting and fishing, and an exceptional musical culture. Their way of life and deep cultural connection to the forest has served as an inspiration for the director and cast of the Hollywood movie Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).

The Yawanawa community is represented in this project by chiefs Biraci Nixiwaka Brasil, Putanny Yawanawa and Isku Kua Biraci Brasil Junior, leaders of the villages of Aldeia Sagrada and Nova Esperança.

Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. He is the Director of Refik Anadol Studio in Los Angeles and Lecturer in UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. Anadol’s work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. Taking the data that surrounds us as primary material, and the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol offers us radical visualizations of our digitized memories and expands the possibilities of interdisciplinary arts. Anadol’s site-specific data paintings and sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, while encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, collective experiences, public art, decentralized networks, and the creative potential of AI. Anadol’s work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Art Basel, National Gallery of Victoria, Venice Architecture Biennale, Hammer Museum, Arken Museum, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Ars Electronica, Istanbul Modern, and ZKM | Center for Art and New Media. Anadol has received a number of awards and prizes including the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award for New Media Art, Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, Columbia University’s Breakthrough in Storytelling Award, and Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award.

Impact One is an impact investment initiative dedicated to restoring a balance between nature and urban life. To create nature-positive economies, Impact One is establishing a new asset class of infrastructure that places interconnected human and environmental wellbeing at its core, under the name of Wellbeing Infrastructure. Through evidence-based research and full life-cycle impact assessments, Impact One introduces scalable solutions for developing social and economic models that reintegrate nature into cities and creates visible and measurable positive impact on environmental and societal health. Impact One launched the Possible Futures programme, which looks into concepts to redesign the anthropogenic impact on ecosystems through existing evidence-based and scalable solutions.

Launched officially during COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh in November 2022, Possible Futures supports the indigenous lands reclamation movement to offer indigenous nations the means to self-govern their territories. The opening event, hosted in partnership with the New York Times and co-curated with Nina Gualinga of the Kichwa People of Sarayaku, focused on discussions on the protection of culture, biodiversity and land in the Amazon region, featuring the present Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil Sonja Guajajara, together with representatives of the Yawanawa, Xakriabá, Witoto, Terena, Kichwa, Ushigua and Ponca People.