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WHAT WERE THEY LOOKING AT?
What if an ancient object remained unchanged, but its gaze escaped into the space around it?
For the FLORA × The Met Challenge, I started with the Eye Idol from Tell Brak, Syria (ca. 3500–3300 BCE), from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access collection.
I chose to change one thing: light.
The stone figurine remains still while its four carved eyes extend into shadow. One presence becomes many. The shadows multiply across the space, then slowly disappear. Eventually, the artifact itself disappears.
Only the gaze remains.
I developed the concept through iterative exploration in FLORA, moving from more literal interpretations toward a restrained installation built around light, shadow, scale and motion.
Original artwork: The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Eye Idol, Object 324150
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Chaekgeori 2026 — The Shelves of Today
Chaekgeori were 19th-century Korean folding screens that painted a scholar's bookshelf as a portrait: no face, only books, brushes, porcelain and the objects that defined a person. I found these screens in the open-access collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CC0) and The Met (Public Domain), and trained a Recraft V4 Style on their flat reverse perspective, mineral pigments and indigo silk.
Then I asked the Style to paint the shelves of 2026: a streamer, a developer, a DJ, a student, a gamer, a podcaster, a designer and a remote worker. Each one is still a portrait without a person. The ring light sits next to the peony vase, the rubber duck next to the ink stone, the sleeping cat next to the clock. The genre was always about the objects that define us; it just needed new objects.
The project shows the full 8-panel screen, plus each shelf as its own folding screen.
Also on comments specific shelfs for
- Streamers
- Developers
- DJ
- Student
- Gamer
- Podcaster
- Designer
- Remote worker
📜 Archive references:
Books and Scholars' Accoutrements, Yi Taek-gyun, late 19th c. — Cleveland Museum of Art (CC0): https://clevelandart.org/art/2011.37
Books and Scholars' Possessions, anonymous — The Met (Public Domain): https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/73134
Books and Scholar’s Objects (Chaekgeori), 19th century: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/4812/books-and-scholars-objects-korea
🎨 Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/6ecc9616-9551-4dca-9ac8-df5b6ff3b6b5
🖌️ Try the Style: https://www.recraft.ai/styles/16bdb41a-58f0-4079-b0c5-c647f889b6d1
#recraftstyleschallenge
The Vanishing Gaze — Nature remains. The gaze disappears.
Inspired by Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818), I created a six-part visual story reimagining Romanticism through the lens of contemporary digital culture.
The series follows a solitary wanderer as his relationship with nature changes from genuine wonder to capturing, monetizing, simulating, and eventually replacing the natural experience with virtual reality.
The landscape remains sublime throughout; what disappears is the human capacity to truly encounter it.
Created using a custom Recraft V4 Style based on a public-domain archival artwork.:
459 years ago, an artist imagined architectural worlds that seemed impossible to build.
In 1567, German artist Lorenz Stoer created Geometria et Perspectiva, a remarkable collection of geometric illustrations filled with impossible structures, mysterious shapes, and surreal Renaissance architecture.
When I discovered these illustrations in the public-domain archives, one thought stayed with me:
What if these imaginary worlds actually existed?
For the Contra × Recraft Archive Style Challenge, I decided to bring these centuries-old illustrations into a new dimension.
Using historical references, I explored how Stoer's intricate geometry could be reimagined as photorealistic 3D environments, transforming flat woodcuts into monumental architectural spaces filled with weathered stone, sculpted bronze, metallic geometry, crystal-like surfaces, and natural light.
I wanted to preserve the imagination of the original artist while giving his impossible worlds a sense of physical reality.
The result is GEOMETRIA MATERIALIS: a visual journey from Renaissance imagination to contemporary digital creation, presented through before-and-after comparisons and cinematic motion.
The imagination is centuries old. The dimension is entirely new.
Old visions. New dimensions.
My entry for the Contra × Recraft Archive Style Challenge.
#RecraftStylesChallenge #RecraftAI #Contra #GeometriaMaterialis #DigitalArt #ArchitecturalVisualization
Stoer's impossible geometry was a great find. It feels like it was waiting for this.