New experiments in art & AI
Artifacts, a groundbreaking collaboration between Microsoft and TBA Agency, presents three visionary works that explore art’s next frontier. Using Microsoft Copilot and open-source AI tools these projects demonstrate how cutting-edge innovation can amplify deeply personal artistic expression while remaining fundamentally guided by human imagination.
Yaeji partners with filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang to create a mesmerizing metamorphosis through cultural memory in “Pondeggi.” Cuco collaborates with director Paul Trillo and artist Paul Flores on “A Love Letter to Los Angeles,” transforming hand-drawn art into fluid animations. And Bladee joins forces with James Ferraro to build “SANCTUARY,” an interactive world where AI characters provoke deep reflection.
Explore each project to discover how Yaeji, Cuco, Bladee, and their collaborators brought their groundbreaking visions to life.
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AI is a tool that can maybe bring your dreams or actualize ideas that felt impossible—quicker or more accessibly, but it’s not the end all be all.
Advancing digital art
Rhizome is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and advancing digital art and culture. With decades of experience at the forefront of digital innovation, Rhizome has been instrumental in shaping conversations about the intersection of technology and creativity.
As a collaborator on Artifacts, Rhizome brought their unparalleled expertise in digital art to help guide the vision for the program. Their role was pivotal in ensuring that each project not only reflected the current state of art and technology, but also posed critical questions about its future.
Yaeji x Andrew Thomas Huang
What excites me is actually a lot of the unknown.
In a hypnotic fusion of Korean folklore and digital artistry, Yaeji’s Pondeggi music video weaves tradition with technological innovation. A silkworm’s metamorphosis becomes a metaphor for transformation, while a childhood hand game passed down through generations creates a bridge between past and future.
Through dark woods and surreal landscapes, the piece follows Yaeji’s supernatural transformation as she’s pursued by a cyber witch. The AI technology opened unexpected creative possibilities: “The benefits I found from the technology was all in the form of happy accidents…results that were dreamlike that I didn’t even know was possible.” Director Andrew Thomas Huang adds, “Microsoft’s tools were great conduits for preserving the integrity of the original performance and footage that we shot, while translating it into this fantasy world.”
The collaboration between Yaeji and Huang demonstrates how new technologies serve artistic expression rather than define it. Huang describes his approach as “button smashing,” pushing the limits of AI tools to create something that feels raw, experimental, and uniquely theirs. The result is not just a music video but a visual experience that invites viewers into a shifting, hybrid world where reality and imagination blur.
Creative insights come to life: Vibrant snapshots showcase the fusion of ideas, colors, and inspirations driving Yaeji’s vision forward.
Yaeji’s Music video showcases her transformation into a silkworm, blending traditional and modern visuals to explore themes of identity and metamorphosis.
As first-time collaborators, Yaeji and Andrew Thomas Huang seamlessly merge their creative styles to craft a visually innovative music video.
At its core, Pondeggi explores themes of identity, legacy, and reinvention, using digital tools to amplify deeply personal stories. The silkworm—a symbol of transformation and persistence—mirrors Yaeji’s artistic evolution, embodying the tension between tradition and innovation.
This project is not just a reinterpretation of traditional storytelling—it’s a new way of seeing. Pondeggi challenges the idea that digital tools diminish authenticity, proving instead that they can enhance and extend human creativity. It’s a testament to the power of collaboration, where technology amplifies artistic intention.
Brooklyn-based producer and DJ whose work merges house music with introspective lyrics sung in both Korean and English.
Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose work merges cutting-edge technology with storytelling inspired by myth, dreams, and cultural history.
Cuco x Paul Trillo x Paul Flores
I like making things that feel euphoric, nostalgic, melancholic…
Through a groundbreaking co-creation with traditional artists and AI, Cuco crafts a psychedelic love letter to Los Angeles that transforms familiar streets into kaleidoscopic dreamscapes. Working with director Paul Trillo and artist Paul Flores, he brings the city’s energy to life in a surreal journey that bends reality while remaining deeply rooted in cultural heritage. The project reimagines Los Angeles not just as a physical place but as an emotional landscape shaped by memory, nostalgia, and reinvention.
AI played a critical role in shaping the project as a tool for creative expansion. The team trained secure and custom models on Flores’ hand-drawn artwork allowing them to generate a vast range of evolving visuals while preserving the organic textures and cultural nuances of the source material. AI enabled them to remix and reinterpret these illustrations, creating an animation style that feels fluid and spontaneous yet deeply rooted in human craftsmanship.
The custom-trained model enabled endless variations of Flores’ work, remixing and reinterpreting each frame in ways that felt organic yet unpredictable. The result is a cityscape that embodies the spirit of Los Angeles —layered, fluid, and endlessly evolving.
Cuco’s Artifacts project features the distinctive style of artist Paul Flores, whose work captures the essence of LA’s Chicano culture, blending it seamlessly with Cuco’s musical homage to the city.
Cuco and director Paul Trillo worked closely to train an AI model called a LoRA, which makes transforming hand-drawn illustrations into fluid, dynamic visuals seamless and consistent.
Cuco collaborated with a visionary team of artists, animators, and technologists, each bringing their flavor and creativity to the project.
At the heart of this innovation was a breakthrough in how AI was used to translate traditional artwork into a fully immersive digital space. “We used this new 3D interpolation tool from Microsoft that analyzes 2D artwork and extrudes it into 3D geometry, allowing us to build a fully realized animated world,” Flores explains. By merging traditional craftsmanship with machine learning, Cuco, Trillo, and Flores have created a new way of storytelling—one that honors the past while pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
Hawthorne-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who began his career self-releasing heartfelt tracks from his bedroom.
New York-based director whose work combines experimental techniques with storytelling that explores perception and human connection.
LA-based visual artist known for his street art-inspired hand-drawn illustrations.
Bladee x James Ferraro
It brings a new life into all these texts and ideas.
Step into an endless digital labyrinth where mythology and technology collide, blurring the lines between ancient archetypes and modern storytelling. Bladee partnered with experimental artist James Ferraro to create Sanctuary, an interactive world designed to challenge perceptions of artificial consciousness and symbolic representation. Participants engage with digital entities that reflect deeper cultural and historical narratives allowing for philosophical interactions. “I think that is like the point of the game—being interactive lets people access this vast body of material and extract meaning from it,” Bladee explains.
The labyrinth itself serves as a visual and conceptual framework, encouraging nonlinear exploration and self-guided discovery. Rather than relying on a fixed narrative, Sanctuary functions as an evolving system where technology is a conduit for human reflection. Ferraro describes this dynamic, saying, “It’s really like this thing that’s being propped up by human effort. It represents the human supercomputer of all of us collectively constructing what can be perceived as this sentient thing.”
The result is an immersive experience that bridges the past and future, reinterpreting mythology through a contemporary digital lens. By blending timeless archetypes with modern tools, Sanctuary expands the possibilities of narrative expression.
Philosophy shapes Bladee’s immersive poem, where every interaction questions existence in a hyperconnected digital realm.
Sanctuary’s characters were conceptualized using bespoke AI models trained to fuse together different historical data with each entity designed to reflect distinct philosophical themes.
Bladee and James Ferraro collaborated closely, merging their visions to craft an experience that blurs the line between digital consciousness and philosophical exploration.
At its essence, this collaboration between Bladee and Ferraro questions how mythology functions in a hyperconnected world. Can archetypes evolve within digital spaces? How does technology reinterpret human history? Sanctuary challenges audiences to reflect on the persistence of ancient narratives in an accelerating digital age.
Standing at the crossroads of past and future, the project proves that new tools do not erase tradition—they reshape it. By using mythology as a blueprint and technology as a medium, Sanctuary crafts a space where exploration itself becomes storytelling.
Swedish artist and member of Drain Gang, who creates experimental music that blurs the lines between reality and virtual worlds.
New York-based composer, who has built a prolific career deconstructing modern culture, technology, and the surreal nature of digital life.
