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Electrical arcs created at Sandia’s Particle Beam Fusion Accelerator II [2000 x 1357]

Hidden Portraits: Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was an inventor, engineer, physicist and futurist. He arrived in the U.S. in 1884 and quickly catapulted his career by working with Thomas Edison, creating more than 700 patents and making major breakthroughs in modern alternating current (AC) electricity.

He’s featured in the Art with Watson series, Hidden Portraits. 15 artists teamed up with Watson to discover and illuminate the unknown essence of seven of history’s greatest thinkers using data. 

What Watson thinks: Watson’s analysis of Tesla’s works revealed a new side of the famed inventor – as an artist at heart.

About the artwork: The Artist Inside was inspired by Tesla’s conflicted, dual personas: the scientist and the artist. The mirrored cube represents Tesla’s mind, with the inner electric grid representing his fame as a well-known scientist. The generative art that come alive inside the cube speaks to Tesla’s lesser-known artistic side, uncovered with Watson.