Harold Cohen, a pioneer in computer art, was the creator of AARON, one of the earliest AI computer programs designed to produce paintings and drawings autonomously. For the first time, the Harold Cohen Trust is pleased to make available a selection of his works posthumously minted as ERC-721 tokens on the blockchain.

The AARON program generated a vector file in a custom format designed by the artist called the ‘AA’ format. The program generated both a vector file for the black line drawing and also a color file. These two different files were merged together in the ‘AA” format which further included additional information about how to make the artwork. These ‘AA’ files were referred to as the AARON Artwork descriptor files and were used to create the JPEGS.

The provenance for the JPEG is as follows: May 10, 2003 - aa8 AARON Artwork descriptor file generated Feb 2, 2005 - Harold Cohen completes jpeg conversion, names file 030508.jpg Sept 30, 2024 - Harold Cohen Trust renames file to 0305-08 (i23-3401) Harold Cohen.jpg

The metadata for the JPEG is: File Size 138 KiB File Type JPEG MIME type image/jpeg File Type Extension jpg Comment LEAD Technologies Inc V1.01 Image Width 697 Image Height 994 Encoding Process Baseline DCT, Huffman coding Bits Per Sample 8 Color Components 3 Y Cb Cr Sub Sampling YCbCr4:4:4 (1 1) JFIF Version 1.00 Resolution Unit inches X Resolution 96 Y Resolution 96 Composite Image Size 994x697 Mega Pixels 0.693

This work forms part of the 2002-2004 Digital Prints Era which marked a pivotal moment in Harold Cohen’s artistic journey. Many were shown at the ‘Untouched by Hands’ exhibition at the Earl & Birdie Taylor Library in San Diego, California. They were originally printed as larger-scale works on the artist’s wide-format Roland printer. The works highlight the artist’s evolving approach to representation, as AARON reimagined natural forms—particularly potted plants—and experimented with their arrangement in space, from tables and tiled floors to their eventual liberation from pots altogether. The collection represents a crucial departure from earlier representational forms, with Cohen allowing AARON to autonomously manipulate these elements, creating a seamless blend of human input and machine-generated imagery.

Presented by Gazelli Art House and offered by Sotheby’s in 2024, this work is accompanied by a print signed by the artist and certified by the Harold Cohen Trust and Verisart.

Verisart Certified: https://verisart.com/works/harold-cohen-a6a4e7bb-76b7-4aa0-afcf-8e412cbc5d28