digital media fair ArtMeta brings robots, NFTs and AI art into basel’s historic heart

artmeta 2025 arrives in basel

From June 16 to 22, 2025, Basel becomes home to the inaugural edition of Digital Art Mile— a new and ambitious initiative by ArtMeta that transforms the historic Rebgasse district into a vibrant epicenter for digital creativity. This week-long event runs in parallel with Art Basel and offers a curated alternative that addresses a conspicuous absence: digital art. Spread across Space25, the 4th Floor, and Kult.Kino Cinema, the fair gathers an international network of artists, curators, collectors, and technologists to explore how digital media reshapes the canon of contemporary art. With exhibitions, robotic installations, and conferences led by global voices in art and culture, Digital Art Mile invites both industry professionals and curious publics to rethink the boundaries of art in a digital age.

For first-time visitors, Digital Art Mile offers a paradigm shift. From interactive to historically rich displays, the fair seeks to challenge preconceptions. ArtMeta seeks to convince the skeptics that digital art isn’t just about speculation and NFTs— it’s about a rich, evolving art form rooted in dialogue and human imagination.

From June 16 to 22, 2025, Basel becomes home to the inaugural edition of Digital Art Mile | all images courtesy of ArtMeta

the fair introduces the digital art mile

ArtMeta, co-founded by curator and digital art pioneer Georg Bak and digital entrepreneur Roger Haas, is carving out a distinct path for how digital art is experienced, understood, and collected. The platform originally emerged from their mutual desire to elevate digital art beyond novelty, rooting it instead within a broader historical and cultural narrative.

For its 2025 Basel edition, ArtMeta introduces the Digital Art Mile, conceived as a boutique fair with curated exhibitions and educational programming. Unlike conventional commercial events, its focus lies in thematic cohesion and historical dialogue, linking the legacy of early digital pioneers to the cutting edge of blockchain, AI, and Web3. Through its growing curatorial reach, ArtMeta positions itself as an anchor point in the evolving landscape of digital-native cultural production.

Hackatao – PAINTBOX – Primitives (2025)

artists, curators, collectors, and technologists all meet in basel

Digital Art Mile 2025 offers an immersive entry point into the pluralistic worlds of digital art, from generative image-making and robotics to blockchain-based collecting and AI-driven creativity. This edition’s programming explores intersections between human expression and machine logic, between analog legacy and virtual futures. Beyond exhibitions, the fair includes a four-day conference series at Kult.Kino Cinema that brings together leading thinkers such as Christiane Paul (Whitney Museum), Ian Charles Stewart (Toledo Museum Labs), Sebastien Borget (The Sandbox), and Prof. Dr. Thomas Girst (BMW). Through these multi-perspective discussions, the fair aims not only to showcase the state of digital art but also to create frameworks for its institutional integration, economic viability, and cultural resonance.

Bryan Brinkman in the studio of Adrian Wilson

Bryan Brinkman – Love Bytes (2025)

A central highlight at Rebgasse 25 is the ‘Paintboxed’ exhibition, a landmark collaboration between ArtMeta, Objkt, and the Tezos Foundation. It resurrects the Quantel Paintbox, a pioneering digital painting tool from the 1980s, celebrated for its pivotal role in transforming visual culture—from MTV graphics to the iconic posters of ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’ Paintboxed positions this forgotten chapter of digital history in conversation with the present.

Artists including Justin Aversano, Grant Yun, Ivona Tau, Hackatao, and Simon Denny were invited to create new works using one of the few remaining functional Paintboxes. Tau even collaborated with ChatGPT to receive step-by-step generative painting instructions, blurring the boundaries between human intuition and AI guidance. These new creations are displayed in lightboxes and paired with NFTs minted on the Tezos Foundation blockchain, allowing collectors to own dual manifestations of the same work—both analog and digital.

Sabato Visconti – Mecha Rosie (2025)

Coldie, Keith Haring – Decentral Eyes (2025)

Located at Rebgasse 31, the 4th Floor reimagines a former warehouse as a future-forward gallery ecosystem, hosting some of the most experimental names in the space. Objkt.com presents ‘We Emotional Cyborgs: On Avatars and AI Agents,’ curated by Anika Meier—a provocative exploration of virtual identity and post-human aesthetics. Robotic artworks take center stage in Bright Moments’ ‘Automata,’ which includes autonomous painting machines creating works in real-time. Historic pioneers such as Waldemar Cordeiro, Manfred Mohr, and Joan Truckenbrod are spotlighted by Mayor Gallery, RCM, and Galerie Charlot, positioning digital art within a longer, often overlooked lineage.

Other participants include The Sigg Art Foundation, Cypherdudes, LaCollection, and Sarasin Foundation, each offering unique vignettes into contemporary crypto culture. A lounge hosted by Tezos Foundation offers a space to engage with the underlying technology.

Exhibition view 2024 – Aleksandra Jovanovic 2 (2025)

Digital Art Mile expands its cultural footprint with a robust conference series held at Kult.Kino Cinema on June 17 and 18. The talks tackle vital topics such as the role of digital art in museums, the evolution of AI-generated creativity, and how corporations are adopting NFTs and digital aesthetics into their branding and storytelling. Notable sessions include ‘Digital Art in Museums’ featuring Christiane Paul and Ian Charles Stewart, and ‘Digital Art in Corporations,’ moderated by designboom, with insights from BMW’s Prof. Dr. Thomas Girst and Sandbox’s Sebastien Borget. According to Bak, these sessions aim to close the gap between the institutional canonization of digital art and the vibrant discourse happening on social media. A particular point of interest is the integration of crypto culture in legacy institutions and how corporate players like UBS, Arab Bank, and luxury brands are shaping their own digital art narratives.

By building a space where curated exhibitions meet educational discourse, the fair aspires to become the leading marketplace and forum for digital art worldwide. Looking ahead, ArtMeta plans to expand its editorial output and continue fostering deeper conversations across cities and continents.

Adrian Wilson – Team For Hair 1985