The Concept: AI to Real

PIXELS → ATOMS | LIGHT → MATTER

For over two decades, the artist has processed digital footage, video clips, and cinematic archives, 

treating them like sculptural matter. 

In 2020, Silberstein embraced AI as a primary creative tool to generate new visions. 

He is now embarking on a practice that combines these methods, bridging the ephemeral screen and the permanent physical world by creating AI video sculptures.

Project Launch:

Neural Forest was launched as a semi-solo exhibition at Dead End Gallery Amsterdam, May 23-24-25

The show featured:

Two AI video sculptures (3D-printed and organic): "Life of Tree" & "Light of Tree"

A bespoke chrome screen with the work "Into the Woods"

A retrospective selection reel of my video works (2005–2025)

Two sculptures were released so far

1. Life of Tree 

2026, custom-made 3D printed chrome-plated mirror-finish sculpture, integrated video frame with changeable video screen, with unique video work, 40X28x19.2 cm, limited-edition of 6

This work epitomises a futuristic, cybernetic aesthetic, featuring a custom-made polished mirror-finish sculpture. The chrome-like structure rises like an abstracted root system or network, "cradling" an integrated LCD screen displaying the "Inner Life" video loop. As its name suggests, the video reflects the 'inner life' of the tree, while the tree nevertheless gives the virtual video a permanent physical presence.

2. Light of Tree

2026, hand-crafted organic wood+paint, integrated video frame with changeable video screen, 

with unique video work, 60X44x34 cm, one-off 1/1

This sculpture is real wood found and crafted by the artist. It is entirely covered in reflective chrome paint. Its name comes from both its light reflectiveness and aura of lightness it brings. Its liquid surface suggests the constant movement of data through a biological network, embodying the "never-ending concept" of the project. It’s holding the video "Organic Flow", a unique AI generated animation processed by glitch, creating a flowing colourful eruption of biological life.

Detailed Info 👇

Neural Forest - AI to Real

A Phygital Evolution

Neural Forest - AI to Real project represents a comprehensive artistic endeavour to bridge the ontological divide between the virtual and the physical. It is anchored in the "AI-to-Real" methodology, a pioneering process that transfixes ephemeral digital data into permanent, material sculptural forms. This evolution is a sophisticated materialisation of a practice spanning over two decades, moving from the manipulation of mass media footage to the creation of "phygital" artefacts that exist simultaneously as light and matter.

1. The Genesis: Mass Media to the AI Pivot

Silberstein’s trajectory toward Neural Forest began with an intensive investigation into mass media and internet footage. In his earlier practice, he treated digital news clips not as mere representations but as "physical matter" to be sculpted through visual effects, "glitch," and datamoshing techniques. This established the philosophical foundation for his current work: the idea that digital signals possess a tactile, sculptural potential that can be manipulated like clay or wood.

In 2020, Silberstein became a pioneering early adopter of Artificial Intelligence as a primary creative tool. This shift allowed him to move beyond the deconstruction of existing footage into the generation of entirely new "neural" aesthetics. Over five years of intense AI video creation, his work became a global phenomenon, amassing a community of over 250,000 followers and exceeding 150 million views across social media platforms. However, this viral success within the "saturated screen-based metaverse" prompted a significant artistic challenge: how to rescue the moving image from its ephemeral virtual state and grant it a captivating, eternal physical presence.

2. The Sculptural Nodes: An Evolving Ecosystem

Neural Forest project functions as an ongoing, self-regulating ecosystem of "phygital" lifeforms that act as transmission antennas for digital poetics. Neural Biomimicry: The synthetic, chrome-finished forms are meticulously sculpted through "AI-to-real" collaboration to reflect the recursive, fractal geometries of the natural world.

Life of Tree (2026): This work epitomises a futuristic, cybernetic aesthetic, featuring a custom-made polished mirror-finish sculpture. The chrome-like structure rises like an abstracted root system or network, "cradling" an integrated LCD screen displaying the "Inner Life" video loop. As its name suggests, the video reflects the 'inner life' of the tree, while the tree nevertheless gives the virtual video a permanent physical presence.

Light of Tree (2026): This sculpture is real wood found and crafted by the artist. It is entirely covered in reflective chrome paint. Its name comes from both its light reflectiveness and aura of lightness it brings. Its liquid surface suggests the constant movement of data through a biological network, embodying the "never-ending concept" of the project. It’s holding the video "Organic Flow", a unique AI generated animation processed by glitch, creating a flowing colourful eruption of biological life.

Into the Woods (2026): This video work is presented on a dedicated chrome-framed display, reinforcing the project's commitment to "transmuting pixels to atoms" by framing the digital landscape within a material boundary of light and reflection. The video itself is made from real photos of the forest, animated using AI and glitched in a datamosh process.

3. The Digital Grain / The AI Seed

While Artificial Intelligence generates the "brain" of the work, Silberstein’s datamoshing provides its "skin". The videos inherent in the sculptures are made by a unique process of combining photography, AI and datamoshing (glitch). Datamoshing makes landscapes melt into one another, a form of digital archaeology exposing hidden patterns of consciousness beneath the surface of the image. While AI builds images from noise, text and databases. Allowing for I images and motion be created directly from imagination to screen.  A form of build/collapse is created, referring to nature, forest and human own process of growth/decay in the cycle of life/death. A constant crumble/renewal.

4. Cybernetics Inspiration

Gregory Bateson · Ecology of Mind

THE FEEDBACK LOOP

For Gregory Bateson, all living systems are self-regulating circuits. Information flows, is received, and corrects behaviour. Ecology itself is one vast cybernetic network, the forest does not merely grow; it listens and responds.

MIND IN NATURE

Bateson dissolved the boundary between organism and environment. Mind is not inside the skull, it is the pattern of relations between human and world. A tree communicating through mycelium is, in this sense, thinking.

INTO THE NEURAL FOREST

The chrome sculptures are Bateson's feedback circuit made tangible. As the viewer approaches, their reflection enters the network. Observer and observed collapse into one system, the screen, the mirror, the forest, the viewer: a single ecology of information.

Conclusion: The Tree as a Neural Interface

In Neural Forest, the tree is reimagined as a neural network - a bridge between the virtual and physical worlds. By reconnecting pixels with atoms and light with matter, Silberstein invites the viewer to escape the noise of the metaverse and find solace in a hybrid reality that is deep-rooted in the digital yet accessible to physical touch. This pioneering project establishes a new species of art object: a "phygital" lifeform that preserves the dynamic culture of the future within the eternal forms of the earth.

AN EVOLVING ECOSYSTEM - THE FOREST GROWS!

With 3D-printed forms - algorithmic bio-mimicry grown from code, inspired by nature,

and with organic structures, where real trees are used for organic sculpturing.

Each sculpture is a phygital lifeform, part tree structure, part living screen. Together they form a neural forest of transmission antennas for digital poetics. With roots in both the natural and digital networks. 

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