The meeting point between Entrepreneurship and Art

08 September 2022

The event was opened by Amos Elad, VP of Public Affairs, Resource Development & Alumni Affairs at TAU, who said:
"I would like to thank all of you for joining and coming to this event and for being part of the Tel Aviv University alumni community, which allows our thousands of current students, the next generation of TAU alumni, to continue to develop and research and be whoever they want to become."

Prof. Eran Neuman, dean of TAU’s Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, led the guests on a tour in the The Genia Schreiber Art Gallery through the exhibition "Primary Sources", which included various displays from the faculty's fields of research and creation. In his speech, later in the evening, he noted that "even in an era of advanced technology, we see that we cannot do without the art that develops a mankind’s creative thinking.
Our faculty promotes thinking outside the box, and creativity based on historical knowledge and in-depth research. We are proud and happy to establish the Center of Israeli Arts, which includes the archival collections of leading artists who worked here."

The event included a panel, with the participation of:

Gigi Levy Weiss, General Partner, NFX, Alumnus of TAU’s Coller School of Management
Sigalit Landau, Israeli Artist, specializing in Sculpture, video Art and installations
Roni Gilat-Bahrav, moderator of the panel, International Senior Director & MD Christie's (Israel) Ltd. 20th Century Art specialist, Alumna of TAU’s Faculty of the Arts and Faculty of Social Sciences

Gigi Levy Weiss noted that:
"In my opinion, every artist is a type of entrepreneur, because they take something that burns inside them and carries it out despite all the difficulties, and on the other hand, every entrepreneur is a type of artist, because they take what they want to create, and executes it in their own unique way, which is often Very different from the advice they receive from the environment.

The connection between technology and artistic creation is an area that fascinates me. Sigalit Landau has been using various technologies for many years, but we are currently experiencing an acceleration in the use of machine learning in the creative process, in various production technologies, in digital art and in the representation of ownership of art through NFTs. All of these are in the swing of development.'

"There is a problem with the consumption of art by the younger generation - art is supposed to evoke emotion, provoke intellectual curiosity and take us out of our comfort zone, while TikTok videos have been engineered by thousands of engineers to release as much dopamine as possible in the brain and lead you to watch the next video and the next. It will be interesting to see how the younger generation who grew up like this manage to consume more complicated works of art.

Just 3 days ago, a painting called "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" won at the Colorado State Fair 2022, which turned out to have been created by the artist Jason Allen who used a machine learning program called Midjourney. In the future, as programs will know how to produce visual images, the thing that will constitute the uniqueness of an artist is the choice of software, its 'training' and the sentence that the artist will enter into the software to create the most unique image.
I don't think the introduction of AI will replace the creative world, but it will certainly enrich it.”

While playing live with the software Dall-E, Gigi Levy-Weiss and the artist Sigalit Landau tried to create works of art based on sentences they invented at that moment, and Sigalit pointed out how much respect this technology gives the spoken words, in a way that could become the great hour of poetry.

To the question of what the future of the art world is in the next decade, Gigi Levy-Weiss answered:
"In the past, before the industrial revolution, art was only the property of the rich. After the internet revolution, there was an expectation that art would be for everyone, but on the contrary, art became a more elitist and closed club that only caters to those with big money. I think this cannot be the future of art, and believe that the way our children will consume art - digital, online, in the Metaverse, produced by or with the help of machine learning - will be completely different from what we know today, which may lead to true democratization."

Siglit Landau wanted to mention that behind every sketch in the wonderful exhibition now on display at the gallery there was/is an Israeli or an immigrant artist who apparently experienced a situation that is not simple and does not support creative work, and it is important to remember that. Culture is struggling and an artist needs a lot of persistence to realize and continue to create under conditions that in many cases seem impossible.

"I invented a new word that plays with the words Entrepreneurship and Contemplation in Hebrew - it comes from what I plot with the desire to initiate, although sometimes entrepreneurs have the ability to be more creative than artists.

Artists, or at least I - sometimes don't know how to come and ask for things. I'm used to giving everything right from the start to later maybe get something back from society, especially since sometimes the museums don't even have a budget for racks to hang my works on. But art is not necessarily a political act, but simply a desire to do something because it will be really cool and it burns in me to find out if it could be realized successfully, and we need to find a way to finance it.'

Among the alumni who attended the event:

Dafna Meitar-Nechmad, Chairwoman of the Tel Aviv University (TAU) Board of Governors
Dov Kotler, Chief Executive Officer at Bank Hapoalim
Yossi Ben Shalom, Co-Founder, Co-Owner and DBSI Investments Ltd.
Aviad Meitar, Businessman, Social entrepreneur, and a philanthropist. Co-founder and Chairman at ‘Music for Dialogue’, and his spouse Dr. Ravit Cohen-Meitar, Executive Director of the Eli Hurvitz Institute of Strategic Management
Tamar Landesberg, VP Business Development at Sano
Adi Ofek, CEO of the Mercedes-Benz Tech Hub in Tel Aviv
Adv. Ran Fuhrer, currently serves as VP of business development at the Neopharm Group. Serves as a Board Member at Bezeq, Israel's largest and leading Telecommunications group, Representing the controlling Shareholder, who arrived with his spouse Dr. Odelia Fuhrer, Medical Doctor Specializing in pediatric surgery and a TAU alumna as well
Anat Starik-Dahan, Deputy CEO of the Setai, Herbert Samuel & Orchid Hotels Group
Karen Schwok, Owner, Founder and CEO of Lucid Investments, Alumna of the Coller School of Management
Dan Karmon, CRO, Temdrop
Keren Mimran, Founder, VP Business Development & Marketing at Edete Precision Technologies for Agriculture
Sigal Naim, Founder of "Haverim" (Friends), a psychological institute dedicated to helping mainly children and adolescents who are interested in improving their social skills in a professional and supporting environment.
Amir Schor, Entrepreneur, Manager and Business Development
Guy Rosen, Vice Chairman at Tnuva
Ori Israely, Managing General Partner at Magenta Venture Partners
Oded Agam, Managing Partner & Co-Founder at NextLeap Ventures
Ziv Ben-Barouch, Founder and CEO of Pereg Ventures
Tal Menipaz, Founder&CEO of Foriland Investments
Lina Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister’s Office
Lisa Shiloach-Uzrad, CEO at Shaked and Dolev Ltd.
Shmulik Leshem, CEO of TBC Group
Erez Bahat, Co-CEO at EquaWeb
Ilan Avital-Zorman, Chairman at Nu Tek Medical
Nurit Rosiansky Laufer, Co-Owner and CEO at Synergy Integration Ltd.
Yoel Feldman, Co-Founder of AVIA home
Eran Ron, Founder and Chairman of Rinsberg Holding Ltd.
Yariv Mozer, Film Director and Producer, owner of ‘Mozer Films Ltd.’
Eyal Assa, Chief Business Officer at Prisma Photonics