Nikolaus von Wolff: "I Ching Modified"

Promptography on Hahnemühle Fine Art Paper

READERS series from 2023

Size: 50 x 50 cm

Edition: 3 + 1 AP

Signed, titled and edition numbered by the artist in pencil on the verso.

>>>>>>

A young woman is reading a modified edition of the I Ching on the subway, the ancient Chinese book of wisdom that has for centuries oscillated between oracle, philosophy, and literature. Von Wolff shifts the scene to the present—sober architecture, commuters in the background—while immersing the reader in a tradition that has elevated change itself to a principle. The modified I Ching is not just reading material here, but a metaphor: for transformation, for the break with linearity, for the idea that the future is always a transliteration of the past. But the image itself is also “modified”—a construction whose perfect lines, subtle balance, and flawless execution point to the intervention of AI. The work thus reflects on how ancient wisdom and digital image production intersect in a paradoxical continuum.

Within the context of the Readers series, this scene takes on a programmatic character. With his works, von Wolff creates a visual archive that resembles a throwback to the urban culture of the 1970s and 1980s – a time when reading in public was both a matter of course and perceived as a sign of intellectual depth. But this memory is deceptive, for it is based not on a photographic trace, but on AI-supported simulation. Readers is thus not merely a nostalgic game, but an exploration of the fragility of the authentic. Reading appears as a counterworld to acceleration, a moment of inwardness, while the images themselves reveal the fragility of our perception. Von Wolff thus connects the oracle of the I Ching with the oracle of AI – both systems that open up interpretations but do not guarantee truths. The true power of the series arises in this tension: as an invitation to rethink our relationship to knowledge, technology, and memory.