March 8th a day of celebration, but also a day of remembering. The 2026 International Women's day theme is "Give To Gain' and that's why this CALL FOR ART for the @batsoupyum collection (and friends) is giving a voice to artists so that our space grows by supporting your talents!
Really like this output from @ValyssAI that it generated for this positive news article it found:
Life after: a terminal diagnosis
Faced with a terminal diagnosis, 27-year-old sailor Jazz Turner refused to give up on her dreams and recently circumnavigated the UK solo
By the doctors’ reckoning, Jazz Turner might have two years left. She hopes it might be more. But the 27-year-old from Seaford, East Sussex, is realistic. A decade ago she was diagnosed with an incurable condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome; complications arose, and her health is getting progressively worse.
“They can’t give me a real estimate because my condition is so poorly understood, but I’m completely prepared,” she says. Her attitude? “We focus on quality of life, rather than quantity of life.”
Source: @PositiveNewsUK
The comeback arc of art on blockchain is still something 99% of people don't understand and conflate NFT mania (same as memes are/were) in order to write it off. Meanwhile much incredible art is being created and prices for legacy grails are exploding which will help old and new artists and encourage new collectors.
Expect @cryptopunks and @XCOPYART and @beeple to lead and that's ok... it will pave the way for a generative art comeback too... Squiggles, Fidenza, Ringers, Autoglyphs with then also pave the way for all the incredible other artists too.
If you need any inspiration my The Culture Vault collection is a pathetically small start...and I'm still building it and missing many great
Valyss - where art and AI are the utility and your life is beautiful art (https://t.co/ff4cNMrjbF)
@clairesilver , thank you for always supporting artists and giving us the opportunity to share what we are creating. This contest aligns perfectly with what I've been building for the last several months and helps me explain why I create:
1) Joy & Expression: creating brings me joy and gets me through the hard times. It allows me to express what cannot be said, what I imagine, and was especially clutch during the pandemic
2) Challenge & Fun: it pushes me to explore the boundaries of my creativity and helps me stay curious
3) Deep Connection: creating allows me to connect with others on a profound level and art has allowed me to make so many close friends, and strengthened my relationship with my wife and kids
4) Positive Impact: creating empowers me to actively transform my visions for a better world into reality
AI has finally given me the opportunity to create Valyss (https://t.co/ff4cNMrjbF), an AI-driven platform designed to help people reduce stress and anxiety, find their passions, and live more fulfilling lives through the transformative power of art. My dream is simple: for every person in the world to swap 5-10 minutes per day from their doom scrolling to experience art and chat with Valyss. Studies consistently show that experiencing art you find beautiful and discussing it with others reduce stress and enhances overall health and well-being.
This is the first time I'm releasing Valyss to the wild and any winnings will directly support further development and expansion, as I've been funding and building this entirely on my own.
Some additional background:
History:
The vision for Valyss emerged around 2003, inspired by my conversations with Professor Paul Lansky (the grandfather of electronic music) and some of his students who were pioneering tech-driven art. Originally intended as research for a radio show exploring the intersection of art and technology, the concept evolved into a sci-fi novel (still in progress). The story features an anonymous artist who becomes the galaxy's most celebrated creator by transforming mundane flight data from his job as a space garbage collector into breathtaking art.
The connection to health first emerged as I was building out the product design and features while reading Valis (https://t.co/bfmsczx1JN), a novel by Phillip K Dick (which also inspired the name). In the novel, the main character, Horselover Fat, seems to experience a complete mental breakdown, claiming a pink beam of light enters his brain from outer space as the cause. By the end, his ordeals created by the highly advanced, possibly divine, extraterrestrial or artificial intelligence in space, end up helping him find peace and catharsis. This narrative deeply influenced my thinking about how technology can help mental health and wellness. The health connection was further enforced when I was helping life & health insurers to integrate AI and ML into their core business. During that 8 year time, I saw how much insurers wanted their customers to use wellness app because of the clear stress-reducing benefit to health, yet noticed how most people did not use them. This insight inspired me to design Valyss as an engaging, art-driven wellness platform, aiming to genuinely motivate users to visualize and improve their health through meaningful interactions with art, AI, and others.
Tools:
Though I'm not a developer, I've built Valyss primarily using @cursor_ai. This journey of creating Valyss has been an inspiring testament to what's possible when combining imagination, taste, AI tools for art creation, and conversational AI platforms like @StableDiffusion and @OpenAI. I'm excited to continue expanding Valyss, including developing "Evolve Art," where a user's daily activity data—such as distance traveled, heart rate, and more—shapes personalized artwork that evolves each day, incorporating artwork from human artists, and creating additional social and community features.
Thank you again for providing this incredible platform to share my passion project and please do provide any feedback or insights you might have!
Also, if any artists or programmers are interested in collaborating or being a part of Valyss, please let me know!
Grip Strength = The Secret Strength Within & A Global Symbol of Vitality and the Key to a Century of Life
#GoodNewsArt inspired by the art of #WayneThiebaud
I submitted my application to @lumenprize under the category of Identity & Culture.
@ValyssAI is my submission - a new form of interactive art that asks the questions:
- What does it mean to be human when AI increasingly mirrors human capabilities?
- What happens if you design an AI to explore how to help humanity find purpose, meaning, and community amid rapid technological progress that simultaneously challenges our sense of humanity?
- What will such an AI create? What will it develop?
The journey continues.
Thank you @clairesilver@sashastiles@amadon for inspiring me to submit🙏🧡