Introducing Homages Over the next few months, I’ll be releasing a series of works in which I, using AI tools, create novel artworks emulating a handful of well-known artists. In other words, I'll be making the artworks without the artists. That starts today, with @beeple. This theme of erasure, disappearance, or erosion of authorship in the age of AI has been on my mind for a while now. We are faced with a growing crisis of fungibility of style, conceptuality, and even identity. Last year, I shared that I was working on a model to replace myself as an artist. When it was ready, I would begin a one year performance, titled The Artist Is Absent, in which I cede my work to the model. The Homages will culminate with that performance. For this first Homage, every day for the next 30 days I’ll be sharing a totally new Beeple Everyday, with just one thing missing: Beeple. The sentiment of homage is earnest. The chosen artists all had a significant influence on my own style or career trajectory. They are the inputs that have led me to who and where I am—my training data. Beeple’s work was the first NFT art I ever saw back in early 2021. Without him much of this space would not exist. And so I’m beginning the Homages where it all began, with him. With that, I present day one of my Beeple Everydays: HOMAGE