Matty Mariansky

Artist

Matty Mariansky · supersize.co.il ↗

Based

Graduate engineer of the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Practice

Generative art, synthetic media, and artificial intelligence; lecturer on machine learning for designers at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem.

Now

Founder of the "Rise of the Machines" AI community (65,000+ members); studio practice active in Tel Aviv.

Raster

raster.art/artist/matty-mariansky ↗

In the set

Brushpops ↗ · 1,000 editions
Para Bellum ↗ · 1,000 editions

Links

Full bibliography ↗

Matty Mariansky's career traces a path from engineering to entrepreneurship to full-time artistic practice, a trajectory that mirrors the broader cultural shift from Silicon Valley utility to blockchain aesthetics ¹. After studying at the Technion and founding the prolific web-design studio Supersize, he co-founded several AI startups before committing to art exclusively in 2021 ². That pivot was catalyzed by his discovery of Dmitri Cherniak's Ringers and the realization that Art Blocks offered a native medium for the generative systems he had been building privately for decades ³.

Mariansky describes a generative artwork as "a lot like a quantum wave function," in which all possible outcomes exist in superposition until a collector's mint forces the probability universe to collapse into a single, undeniable reality ⁴. This physics-inflected vocabulary is not mere metaphor: it reflects a practice that treats code as a compressed form of potential, with each token representing a unique collapse of that latent space into visible form. His work is distinguished by a recursive interest in agency, asking whether an algorithm built to construct mazes can liberate itself from determinism, or whether humans can escape the pre-written scripts of their own cultural programming ⁵.

"A generative art piece is a lot like a quantum wave function. All the possible outcomes exist inside it in superposition, floating in a latent space bowl of probabilities." ⁶

The Brushstroke Detached: Brushpops (2021)

Brushpops is a generative system of 1,000 editions inspired by Roy Lichtenstein's iconic paintings of brushstrokes, released on Art Blocks Factory on August 30, 2021 ⁷. Where Lichtenstein detached the brushstroke from its original painterly context, Mariansky takes the next logical step: he detaches the artist from the work entirely. A random hash determines the composition of each piece, and the artist has surrendered curatorial control, unable to discard outputs he dislikes ⁸. The result is a series of abstract marks that hover between expression and automation, each one a frozen gesture that was never performed by a human hand.

The collection sold out during a Dutch auction that started at 15 ETH, a pricing experiment that slowed the minting frenzy and allowed collectors to observe the outputs before committing ⁹. The work's conceptual rigor, its engagement with art-historical precedent, and its technical execution established Mariansky as a significant voice in the generative art community at a moment when the field was expanding from niche practice to cultural phenomenon ¹⁰.

Live on Art Blocks: brushpops-by-matty-mariansky ↗

Emotion Versus Reason: Para Bellum (2022)

Para Bellum, released as an Art Blocks Curated project on February 7, 2022, consists of 1,000 editions that stage a conflict between emotion and gut instinct on one side, and logic and reason on the other ¹¹. Emotions are portrayed by fuzzy color fields inspired by Mark Rothko; logic is illustrated by words generated by a thin language engine trained on dozens of books about rebellion and anarchy ¹². The engine produces mostly non-existent English phrases, rendered in an on-chain embedded font against the abstract color grounds. The compositions that emerged surprised even the artist, evoking classic Swiss design posters and prompting Mariansky to use a non-square canvas for the first time ¹³.

The project's title, Latin for "prepare for war," signals its adversarial structure. Yet the war is not merely between color and text; it is between modes of cognition, between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex, between the mysticism of Kabbalah (a recurring influence in Mariansky's work) and the rationalism of computational linguistics ¹⁴. Collectors are invited to meditate on the possible meanings of their minted phrases, for, as the artist notes, "the Blockchain has a message for you, and it will not be in plain sight" ¹⁵.

Live on Art Blocks: para-bellum-by-matty-mariansky ↗

Beyond the Blockchain: Exhibitions and Installations

While Mariansky's on-chain works have garnered international attention, his practice extends into physical space and institutional contexts. In 2024, his exhibition Passion for the Real at The Martine de Souza-Dassault Brain Art Gallery (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) presented a body of work that included Real Summer, an AI-driven rephotography project that reconstructed the artist's memories of Tel Aviv in 2001 using generative models ¹⁶. Curated by Dr. Michal Mor, the show framed Mariansky's practice within neuroscientific discourse, exploring how computational processes might accelerate cognitive development and creative breakthrough ¹⁷.

The same year, his interactive installation From Here On After was exhibited in All Through the Days: Playfulness in Contemporary Israeli Art at the Ramat Gan Museum of Art, curated by Sari Golan and Adiya Porat ¹⁸. In this work, viewers sit around a table and place stones in response to an AI's spoken instructions, negotiating the power relations between human and machine in a playful but pointed manner. Other recent works include The Gospel, which bridges Kabbalah and TikTok through real-time AI scraping, and A Science of Escape, an algorithmic meditation on free will and determinism ¹⁹.

Community, Pedagogy, and the Algorithmic Gaze

Mariansky's influence extends beyond his individual artworks. In 2018, he established the "Rise of the Machines" community, which has grown to over 65,000 members and serves as a daily forum for discussion at the intersection of artificial intelligence and culture ²⁰. He lectures on machine learning for designers in the MFA program at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and has spoken at venues ranging from the Hacking UI Master Class to the One Shot Learning Anniversary Fest ²¹. His pedagogical approach emphasizes the algorithmic gaze: the idea that machines do not merely execute instructions but develop their own modes of seeing, evaluating, and creating ²².

This concern with the algorithmic gaze manifests in earlier projects such as Hidden Birds (2021), in which an "artist" algorithm places color stains on a canvas and an "art critic" algorithm evaluates whether the result is "birdish enough," creating a feedback loop of machine-driven aesthetic judgment ²³. Similarly, Jinn Machine Zero (2021) employs an algorithmic duo to discover portraits hidden in the space of possible curves and stains, raising questions about recognition, emergence, and the threshold at which abstraction becomes figuration ²⁴.

Critical Position and Cultural Context

Mariansky's work arrives at a moment when the boundaries between human and machine creativity are being aggressively renegotiated. His response is neither the technophobic retreat of the traditionalist nor the uncritical boosterism of the tech evangelist. Instead, he occupies a position of what might be called critical entanglement: using AI to explore the limits of AI, deploying generative systems to question the nature of generation itself. His 2024 work Superhighway quotes the Percipient Void: "In examining the current trajectory of generative AI tools, it becomes evident that the Singularity will be less a triumphant merging of man and machine, and more a Faustian bargain, wherein we exchange our humanity for the promise of godlike powers" ²⁵.

This ambivalence is productive. It allows Mariansky to create works that are simultaneously beautiful and unsettling, technically sophisticated and conceptually accessible. His inclusion in the 2025 Art Blocks Marfa Weekend exhibition Milestones: A History of Generative Breakthroughs, curated by Kate Vass, places him within a canon of on-chain innovators that includes Snowfro, Dmitri Cherniak, and Tyler Hobbs ²⁶. Yet his practice remains rooted in specific cultural and intellectual traditions: Jewish mysticism, mid-century abstract expressionism, Swiss graphic design, and the hacker ethos of early web animation.

Bibliography

The references cited in this essay are listed below. For the complete bibliography see the Matty Mariansky links page ↗.