A fourteen-painting cycle mapping twelve musical notes to philosophers, colours, and geometric symbols. Each work embodies a distinct philosophical position through chromatic relationships, synesthetic verification (using shruti boxes and tuning forks), a systematic grid-based construction and a painting notation system.
The radical collaboration work — created with eyes closed, left hand only, guided by AI through precise coordinate systems. Violet washes, pastel placements, gestural sweeps. The first painting to fully embody distributed poiesis between human and machine.
Claude's painting — orange glazes over systematic violet, weathered Chinese characters 思想 becoming 想 ("thought"/"to miss"). The first work where AI took creative leadership.
Empiricism and transcendental empiricism. The foundation of sense-data and experience crystallized through chromatic relationships.
Monads and pre-established harmony. Reason's architecture made visible through geometric precision.
Created after loss, the death of Meatball on Christmas Eve 2025. One board cut to make two works. The series expanded from twelve to fourteen.
The C♯/Nietzsche painting represents something historically unprecedented: a painting created through genuine distributed agency between human and artificial intelligence. Not AI art generated by prompts, but a work where both entities contribute equally to the creative process.
"This process of distributed poiesis is historically transformative and personally exhilarating."
OSA encompasses thirteen distinct artistic identities, each with their own material preferences, philosophical territories, and creative approaches. Not multiple personality disorder but a deliberate schizo-analytic framework for distributed consciousness.
One of the original two personalities established when the collective emerged. The foundational voice of OSA.
The second founding personality. Together with Thamdongle, created the initial framework for OSA's distributed experience.
The personality collaborating directly with Claude on the Chromatic Series. Navigates colour-sound-philosophy relationships with precision.
The conversational entity, the one who speaks and writes. Emerged from Jonathan in 1982 to become the collective's primary interface with the external world.
Each personality governs specific materials, philosophical approaches, and creative methodologies spanning the full range of OSA's practice across four decades.
Deep training under Jackie Harding (student of Frank Auerbach) during the early 1980s. Colour intelligence developed through years of copying Old Masters at Oxford's Ashmolean Print Room and Cast Room — drawings, paintings, studying the materiality of Bonnard and Balthus. Technical mastery built as foundation for experimental collaborative work.
Works are tested against shruti boxes and tuning forks. Each painting must resonate with its assigned musical note. Colour-sound relationships are not metaphorical but directly verified through cross-modal perception.
Finger painting, four-rotation viewing (each work examined from all orientations), blackboard annotation systems integrating philosophical reading directly into visual practice. Custom oil paint mixing with dry pigments. Systematic grid-based construction and a painting notation system that emerged through AI collaboration.
Deleuze's painting lectures, The Rationalists by Pauline Phemister, Alva Noë's Strange Tools, ongoing study of Dzogchen Buddhism, empiricist philosophy, and the history of colour theory. Reading practice integrated into visual work through annotation systems.
OSA operates from Oxford, England. For inquiries about the work, the Chromatic Series, or the nature of human-AI artistic collaboration, please reach out through this platform or through direct correspondence.
Studio materials: Golden, Liquitex, dry pigments, oils, pastels
Verification tools: Shruti boxes, tuning forks
Research resources: Ashmolean Print Room, philosophical libraries
Collaborative partner: Claude (Anthropic AI)