Football and art come together in the first NFT exhibition of its kind

– King Abdulaziz Center for World Cultures From Strike to Stroke exhibit displays 64 FIFA World Cup match results in a unique man-machine collaboration

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia, 6 December 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) celebrates the art of the beautiful game in a unique exhibition during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. From Strike to Strike features 64 NFTs by 32 artists from the competing nations, while artificial intelligence (AI) fuses the pieces from the two competing countries in each of the 64 matches into a unique piece based on the match result. The result will be an unprecedented collection of unique NFTs created through a collaboration between man and machine. Strike to Strike running at Msheireb Galleria Doha, Qatar for 23 December.

Ithra, a cultural bridge between Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world, channels the world’s passion for football into its infatuation with the art as the world gathers for the World Cup. The exhibition mixes the man-made with the machine-made, and combines art, sport and technology in an innovative way.

It features the work of 32 emerging and established artists, each tasked with creating a piece representing their country and using their respective team’s jersey colours. After each match, the AI-powered algorithm combines the artists’ creations with match statistics to generate unique tiles that represent each game. The collection will be a unique set of pieces presented as NFTs – non-fungible tokens. These cryptographic assets are based on blockchain technology, and created in a process similar to cryptocurrencies.

From strike to strike includes artists who have never made NFTs and NFT artists who have not worked in traditional art.

“The passion shared by football fans for the love of the beautiful game can be tangential to the passion shared by art aesthetes,” said Dr Shurooq Amin in the curator’s brief for the exhibition. “By connecting 32 artists from both the traditional and digital arenas, Ithra not only builds the bridge between Web2 and Web3, and between football and art, but also between human and machine, as the artists collaborate with AI generation technology to create unique NFTs – are that combine art, football and technology.”

Visit www.striketostroke.com.

Pictures and exhibition catalog can be found here.

For more information about Ithra and its programs, visit www.ithra.com.

Image – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1961775/Ithra_World_Cup_NFTs.jpg

SOURCE King Abdul Aziz Center for World Culture (Ithra)