REALITI / RXALITI

REALITI [2019]

Realiti is an NFT collection by Atay Ilgun, created using stills from Grimes’ video Realiti, combined with images scraped by web crawlers that built datasets based on the track’s lyrics. Today, it holds immense historical value and is considered a pioneering work in early AI and crypto art as the first AI art [as GAN] on Ethereum blockchain with it’s own smart contract.

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In addition, technically and aesthetically, Realiti stands apart from its contemporaries due to its distinctive approach to dataset curation, training, and DIY methodology. It is widely recognized as a precursor to what we now call AI agents or autonomous artists.The visual style, while reflecting the early characteristics of AI-generated art, goes beyond similar projects, creating a mesmerizing fusion of landscapes, mountains, and cosmic elements seamlessly blended with Realiti. You can explore examples on the following pages and learn more about the creative process.

Realiti is an NFT collection minted in May 2019, recognised as one of the earliest AI-generated art projects (using GANs) on the Ethereum blockchain. It stands alongside pioneering works by artists like Robbie Barrat and Anna Ridler. Beyond its historical significance, Realiti distinguishes itself through its technical sophistication and artistic innovation, surpassing many contemporary GAN models that often relied on pre-trained models or lacked expressive depth. Unlike these, Realiti incorporates a custom smart contract, unique code, and a meticulously crafted conceptual framework that elevates its aesthetic and intellectual weight.

Initially discovered by a wider audience through a Dapp page in 2021, Realiti has since cultivated a dedicated collector base and a growing cult following among AI art and NFT enthusiasts. The collection has been featured in key archival records, including The Definitive Timeline of Early NFTs on Ethereum by Leonidas and UnderTheGAN by historian and collector Jediwolf. Individual pieces have sold for up to £45,000 and are held by some of the most prominent collectors in the space.

Over the years, Ilgun’s engagement with the crypto-art scene, both as an artist and curator, has led him to explore broader cultural and philosophical themes surrounding art and finance. His works can be traced to even earliest NFT minting guides on OpenSea, and even direct contribution to NFT protocols. His critical yet intellectually rigorous voice has contributed to the evolving discourse on AI art, further enriching the lore of Realiti. And today, Realiti continues to thrive across various communities spanning Discord groups and private collector chats while artist is currently developing a series of exhibitions, articles, and new pieces.

RXALITI [2025]

RXALITI is a new NFT collection of 500 unique pieces by ecolagbohrsac2021 [Atay Ilgun]—a thematic continuation and evolution of the artist’s 2019 work, Realiti, which today is regarded as the first AI art on Ethereum with it’s own smart-contract.

This twin/body of work explores the widening chasm between online reality and simulation, the fractures of [un]real data, model collapse of generative AI, and the Dark Forest Theory of the Internet through the speculative lens of an obsolete AI agent/corrupt scraper. In an age increasingly defined by cyberpsychosis-fueled AI and algorithmic decay, RXALITI offers a haunting yet hopeful glimpse of renewal within the digital fertile ruins—a vision of cyber-hauntology and glitter in the adversarial landscapes of hypermedia.

Each piece in RXALITI emerges from a sculptural process where the artist wields now-archaic GAN models, foundational algorithms of early AI art. Trained and tainted on fragmented remnants of the internet and curated datasets, these models are deeply infused with the work’s conceptual essence, positioning AI as a tool of artistic expression above all else.

The artist employs a distinctive approach to visualizing the latent spaces and noise within the generator layers of a neural network, achieving a unique GAN aesthetic. The resulting distortions or “glitches” are intrinsic to the model’s architecture, not post-processing artefacts, created by deliberately blending latent codes across different layers.

This ethos redefines the AI’s role—not as a static image generator confined to predetermined classes or styles—but as a dynamic, malleable medium. By sculpting the latent space itself, from early training stages through to image generation, the artist reshapes the AI’s output through iterative and creative reconfiguration. Across the collection, this approach manifests in varied visualizations, exploring different neural network layers and noise activations, transforming each step of the process into a testament to the intersection of artistry and machine logic.

As it reflects on ‘model’s collapse’, the training/tainting process, evoking the glittering sludge of an internet in decay. The pieces become spectral landscapes, textured with chaotic, self-referential fragments that shimmer with retro-futuristic unease. The aesthetic suggests digital fossils of humanity, with once-flourishing networks devolved into an endless recursion of scraped data, pseudo-human patterns, and algorithmic delusions.

The collection interrogates the ontological implications of generative AI, situating its collapse as a central motif. As the model endlessly trains on its own outputs, it produces a shimmering black-sludge aesthetic—a vivid metaphor for the decay of meaning within a self-referential digital culture. The works function as digital fossils, fragments of a humanity subsumed by the very systems it created.

This aesthetic resonates with broader cultural anxieties about the erasure of authorship, the destabilisation of meaning, and the encroachment of synthetic intelligence into creative domains. By framing the AI as both a collaborator and a critic, the artist challenges traditional notions of artistic agency, suggesting a more fluid interplay between control and chaos—simultaneously fragmented and cohesive.

Further reading and useful links;

⋆ M Ξ T A P L Ξ X [a crypto art experiment] [originally published Nov 24, 2019]
⋆ OpenSea Collection page

⋆ The Definitive Timeline of Early NFTs on Ethereum
⋆ X Thread about Realiti

⋆ RXALITI OpenSea Collection page
⋆ In-depth Documentation
⋆ X Thread about RXALITI