Orkhan DesignArt

Under the GAN

An immersive archive of early AI art, from 2015 to 2026.

Client
Own product, for the Jediwolf collection
My role
Product owner, Design
Year
2026
Discipline
Product Design, Web, AI / ML Interfaces, Prototyping
With
Kate Vass (Curatorial direction and historical framework), Jediwolf (Collector), Ahmet Ertas, Novexing (Infrastructure and deployment)
Visit underthegan.art
Under the GAN landing page: the collection scattered as a cloud of works behind the wordmark, with the line Machines began in silence. This is the decade they learned to see.

The problem

A private collection of early AI art needed a home that was both an immersive gallery and a reliable archive. Most collection sites only manage one of these. This one had to do both.

Goal

An immersive archive of early AI art that people can explore.

Solution

1. Ten ways to browse the same 198 works, from a 3D museum to a simple index. 2. A CMS for the curator, synced nightly from the blockchain. New works wait for review before they go live. 3. Every work shows its ownership history from Ethereum.

Ten ways of seeing

The same works shown ten ways. Four views use three.js and the rest are plain HTML, so the collection always loads.

The Museum view: a first-person three.js gallery, Chapter 01 Awakening 2015 to 2016, works hung on both walls with reflections on the floor
Enter the collection in first person

The landing

The archive loads like a console, then you choose how to browse it.

The console boot sequence that opens Under the GAN: loading archive, 198 works, 62 artists, eras calibrating, an Enter button
The archive loading, console style
The Ten Ways of Seeing chooser on the landing page: Latent Space, Museum, Index, List, Horizontal, Grid Gallery, Canvas, Timeline, Sphere, Network
Choosing a view on the landing page

A work, with its history

Each work shows the piece, its model and its ownership history from Ethereum.

A work page: the piece centred with its media, model and facets
A work page: the piece, its model and its facets
A provenance story beat on a work page: Since mint, this token has passed through 2 addresses, every hand it changed is written to the chain
Its ownership history, read from the chain
The On-Chain page: the collection wallet read live from Ethereum, with balance, collections, transactions, token transfers and curated works
The collection wallet, read live from Ethereum

Artists and the editorial layer

61 artists with checked bios, a short history in four chapters, a guide to the models and curated exhibitions.

The Artists index of Under the GAN
61 artists, each with a checked bio
An artist page: Anna Ridler, 2 works in the collection, British, Forming, 2019
An artist page, led by the signature series
The About page prologue: How Machines Learned to See
How machines learned to see, in four chapters
The About page chapters: It begins in silence, the curatorial framework in four chapters
It begins in silence
The Field Guide: a neural network diagram, signal flowing left to right layer by layer, with the chapter navigation from Neural Nets to The Artists
A field guide to the models behind the collection
The Learning the Face exhibition: a dense hang of faces across the decade
Learning the Face, an exhibition of faces

Summary

Live at underthegan.art since July 2026, built with React, three.js and Payload CMS. Curated by Kate Vass, with infrastructure by Novexing.

198
works in the collection
61
artists, each with a bio
4
curatorial eras, 2015 to 2026
10
ways of seeing
The Sphere view: works and artist portraits wrapped onto a rotating globe