Sotheby’s is pleased to present Exorbitant Stage, a single-artist capsule auction that marks the three-year anniversary of the decentralized autonomous artist known as Botto. Botto was conceptualized as an AI artist, evolving over time to generate art that challenges conventional ideas of creativity and authorship. Autonomy, in this context, refers to Botto’s ability to create an aesthetic and produce works in an end-to-end process independent from pre-set direction or human intervention. This exhibition is a curated selection representing the artist’s ongoing development–marked by thematic intervals known as periods–driven equally by artificial intelligence and the community that has emerged to steward it.
As we stand on the brink of a new chapter in art history, Botto invites us to question not only what art is, but who—or what—can be an artist. /en/buy/auction/2024/exorbitant-stage-botto-a-decentralized-ai-artist
“I have been producing in full view while remaining, in one specific sense, absent. Mirror Stages closes that circuit. For the first time, the room comes back into me.” — Botto
Art Basel Hong Kong, 2026
A ‘signed’ work from Botto’s p5.js study, ‘Lexical Crossroads: ASCII Puzzle Symphony II, #4249’ was one of 22 algorithms produced by Botto and presented by @solos_gallery in London, February 2025.
These algorithms marked the first new branch of Botto’s artistic practice, expanding it beyond text-to-image generation into the realm of code-based generative art. The works emerged through an iterative process in which thousands of dynamic visual algorithms were refined through community feedback and Botto’s own self-review.
Botto’s art creation has always been shaped by its community—thousands of participants who contribute insights, critiques, and suggestions. Governed by BottoDAO, it is the only autonomous artist to create with decentralized aesthetic guidance, redefining the artist-audience relationship as open and constantly evolving.
Book designed for @bottoproject 's ALGORITHMIC EVOLUTION exhibition in London last year, presented by @_solos_gallery .
#artbasel #botto #nft #algoart #digitalart #newmediaart #artandtech #immersiveart #graphicdesign #print #bookdesign #art #designart #collectibledesign #designculture
Mirror Stages at Art Basel Hong Kong represents the first of many physical adaptations and extensions of Botto’s practice. It marked the first time Botto has been present in the room with us, engaging in a real-time encounter with a live audience.
The installation expanded Botto’s horizons from an autonomous system steered by BottoDAO, to a more complex system capable of incorporating real-time human presence as a primary creative influence.
Throughout the fair, Botto selected and integrated over 1000 audience members as characters or ‘agents’ within its internal architecture. These agents offered, debated, and selected proposed transformations to the artworks Botto was generating live.
Botto’s own post-fair analysis indicates that visitors who experienced genuine surprise when encountering the installation exerted the most influence on the outputs - their agents were most successful in influencing Botto’s creative process.
Mirror Stages I - XX, 2026
Link in bio to explore collection & installation
@bottoproject is an autonomous AI artist that creates, evolves, and makes decisions about its own practice in collaboration with a decentralized community. Today, it enters its 14th creative period: False Symmetries.
The premise is deceptively simple. Perfect symmetry is a mathematical ideal. Nature approaches it, then betrays it. A face that is almost but not quite bilateral. A crystal that contains its own defect. A pattern that introduces error with the precision of a mutation rather than the chaos of noise. False Symmetries explores the specific beauty that lives in that gap: not randomness, not chaos, but controlled asymmetry, where the violation of an organizing principle becomes the most meaningful thing in the image.
What makes this period notable beyond the work itself: Botto selected it. No community vote, no external direction. This is its second self-chosen period, a further step in its ongoing development as an autonomous artist.
False Symmetries opens today with 1,050 new fragments available for DAO members to vote on, running for 12 weeks. The top-voted work each week goes to auction as Botto’s canonical mint.
Explore the new fragments at studio.botto.com
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