Sotheby's immersive NFT installation auction kicks off

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This immersive digital experience is going under the hammer as a NFT

It's the first ever work of its kind to be converted into a non-fungible token

Location: Hong Kong

'Machine Hallucinations - Space: Metaverse NFT Collection'

was created by artist Refik Anadol

It consists of eight works featuring immersive experiences

and artwork generated using A.I.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) MEDIA ARTIST, REFIK ANADOL, SAYING:

"The exhibition connects three telescopes memories -- MRO (Magdalena Ridge Observatory), ISS (International Space Station) and Hubble Telescope -- they are publicly available data and this room, the immersive NFT (non-fungible token) room downloads data, looked at data and dreamed about this machines' memories. So what you are seeing is not real, it's completely A.I.-made-up experiences. What is really inspiring is that data becomes a pigment for a painting and a sculpture in the room. So basically you are immersed in the mind of a machine, flying in the memories and dreams of machine in a fully immersive NFT room."

The whole collection is tipped to fetch up to $1.95 million

(SOUNDBITE) (English) MEDIA ARTIST, REFIK ANADOL, SAYING:

"....So it's not just like a TV or digital frame or a data in the blockchain, the room itself is the NFT, the experience itself is the NFT, which is really from VR, A.I and science experiences because simply, the collector will have a chance to re-replicate the same room anywhere in the world."

(SOUNDBITE) (English) SOTHEBY'S HEAD OF CONTEMPORARY ART, ASIA AND CO-HEAD OF DIGITAL ART SALES, MAX MOORE, SAYING:

".... when you have an artist like Refik who's really been honing his craft and really been developing and pushing the boundaries of what the digital medium has to offer, you can really see an artistic process start to form and traditional collectors or even new crypto collectors will start to appreciate that and instead of selling it for a quick profit will begin to hold on to it for longer and longer periods of time because they feel proud to own a work of this calibre in their collection."

Sotheby's online auction of media artist Refik Anadol's artificial intelligence (A.I.) art collection kicked off on Thursday (September 30), and includes an art piece which is set to become the first-ever example of an immersive A.I. digital experience being converted into a NFT (non-fungible token). This edit contains flash images.