Collections
Life in West America
(2023, Ethereum)
Life in West America (often abbreviated LIWA) is a “post-photography” project exploring a nostalgically distorted vision of the American West. Drawing inspiration from mid-20th-century Americana – Cadillacs, diners, and denim-clad characters evocative of 1960s photography – the images feel like faded memories or scenes from an alternate history. At the same time, the collection leverages AI’s surreal touches; Rainisto “leans hard into the AI-ness” of the imagery, yielding works that are both familiar and subtly alien.
LIWA has been critically acclaimed for its cohesive aesthetic and narrative quality, often likened to the work of American photographers like Diane Arbus and Robert Frank, albeit reimagined through an algorithm. It is also one of the highest-valued AI art NFT collections to date, with significant secondary market volume and cultural impact in the digital art community.
It is Rainisto’s most celebrated work, consisting of 500 unique AI-generated post-photographic images minted as 1/1 NFTs on the BrainDrops platform.
Life In West America in the Gallery
Life In West America in OpenSea
Carwash
Freefall
Roadside Fries
REWORLD
(2023, Ethereum)
A collection of 500 pieces, released in April 2023, in collaboration with Fellowship, a Web3 photography collective, as part of Post Photographic Perspectives I – an inaugural group NFT show that Rainisto co-curated.
In contrast to Life in West America, which focused on intimate, personal moments within an AI-generated reinterpretation of Americana, REWORLD shifts toward a broader, more systemic perspective.
Reworld presents an alternative vision of the modern world, interrogating the way societies shape individuals, examining the tension between personal autonomy and societal constraints. Rainisto’s images, imbued with both nostalgia and subtle unease, depict environments that feel eerily familiar yet fundamentally altered—scenes of everyday life where the structures of reality appear slightly misaligned, hinting at unseen forces at play.
The visuals maintain Rainisto’s signature blend of the familiar and the fantastical: scenes that appear realistic at first but, on closer look contain cleverly reimagined elements and cultural commentary.
A physical print from the series — titled ”Auto Dream No. 3” — was acquired by the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection in 2023.
Reworld in the Gallery
Reworld in OpenSea
Two Sides Of Man
Dance No. 7
Just Married
Vacation
(2024, Ethereum)
A collection of 428 AI images exploring the ironic contrasts of leisure and reality. Vacation debuted in May 2024 on the Verse platform, coinciding with a special exhibition at Photo London.
In this series, Rainisto turns his AI “camera” to the idea of the classic holiday getaway: sunny beaches, motel pools, road trips and tourist snapshots. The images initially register as “archetypal holiday photographs” – replete with sun-kissed beaches, neon motel signs, and joyful technicolor scenes reminiscent of mid-century travel postcards.
Yet a closer look reveals bizarre distortions: faces and figures are abstracted or contorted in ways that are subtly unsettling, creating a tension between the cheerful veneer and an eerie underlying mood.
This concept of liminal space – where familiar vacation imagery becomes strangely off-kilter – is at the heart of the collection. Rainisto uses these works to critique consumer culture and the simulacra of the “ideal holiday,” much as LIWA critiqued American ideals.
Technically, Vacation continued Rainisto’s practice of custom-trained AI models, here used to blend nostalgic photographic styles with uncanny alterations.
One notable piece from this collection, “Holiday Romance #5,” was selected by Christie’s for auction in 2024.
Vacation in the Gallery
Vacation in Verse.works
Holiday Romance #5
The Men Are Coming
Trouble In Paradise
SMILE
(2024, Solana)
A large-scale profile picture (PFP) collection of 5,000 unique AI-generated portraits, minted on the Solana blockchain. SMILE was released on January 30, 2024 as Rainisto’s sarcastic foray into the PFP genre.
Each image in the series depicts a face with a distinctive smile or emotional expression, rendered in a gritty, AI-distorted “studio portrait” style.
The collection’s concept plays with the universality of human expressions – every piece is a 1/1 portrait with variations in mood, gender, and character, unified by the theme of the smile or grin. While significantly larger in size than his earlier drops, SMILE carried Rainisto’s artistic DNA into a new arena of collectible art, bringing his AI techniques to a broader community on Solana. It is also a commentary on the cookie-cutter PFP collections seen on the web3 space, here showing it is actually able to deliver unique artwork for each of the thousands of images. Rainisto challenged himself to explore a singular given topic - the "smile" - in excruciating variety.
Smile in Magic Eden
Symbiosis
(2024, Ethereum)
A collaborative collection created with Mercedes-Benz’s digital art initiative (Mercedes-Benz NXT), released in late 2024. Symbiosis comprises 67 AI-generated pieces that explore the relationship between humans and machines, a fitting theme given the involvement of an automotive and technology brand.
This project is especially distinctive in Rainisto’s catalog because of the unique workflow of blending traditional photography into the AI creation process. Rainisto captured photographs of cars, art, and architecture at the Mercedes-Benz Museum and combined them with imagery from the company’s archives to train custom models. The resulting artworks blur organic and mechanical elements - essentially remixes of the original photos Rainisto took, evoking a mix of nostalgia and futurism – classical sculptures and natural motifs meld with industrial design and automotive forms.
Symbiosis was minted in November 2024 on Ethereum and offered via the Mercedes-Benz NXT platform, showing Rainisto’s ability to bridge the fine art, corporate, and crypto worlds. This series not only reinforces his recurring exploration of real vs. artificial, but also demonstrates how his post-photographic technique can adapt to new source material and contexts.
Symbiosis on Mercedes Benz NXT
Main Facade
Private Chauffeur
Libraries Of Knowledge
AURA
(2024, Ethereum)
Rainisto collaborated with Bright Moments, the globally recognized experiential art collective, to launch AURA— a collection of 100 AI-generated portraits that investigate the evolving relationship between digital identity, perception, and realism.
Unlike his previous collections, which often depict cinematic or documentary-style scenes, AURA focuses on the human face as a site of transformation and ambiguity. The portraits evoke a ghostly, liminal presence — straddling the line between lifelike representation and artificial abstraction.
The collection, while firmly rooted in contemporary generative aesthetics, draws upon the long tradition of portraiture as a means of capturing essence and emotion.
The live minting format of AURA added an interactive and performative dimension to the collection’s release, reinforcing the themes of digital identity and authenticity.
Aura on OpenSea
ANIMA (part of Ebbs and Flows: Our Universe)
(2022, Ethereum)
ANIMA is Roope Rainisto’s debut NFT collection, a foundational work that set the stage for his later explorations into AI-generated art.
Released in 2022 as part of the dual artist collection “Ebbs and Flows” —a collaboration between Rainisto and fellow generative artist Somnai—ANIMA represents Rainisto’s personal contribution to this thematic exploration of movement, life, and transformation.
Rooted in the Latin origin of the word anima—meaning “soul,” “breath,” or “life force”—the collection examines the fundamental visual patterns that connect all living things. Drawing inspiration from the organic, recursive structures found in nature, ANIMA seeks to express how the essence of life manifests through form and motion.
Rainisto uses generative AI as a medium to "bring images to life", capturing the inherent rhythms and energies that animate our reality. His works in this series echo the mathematical elegance of fractals—where patterns at a small scale repeat and expand into grander forms, mirroring the self-similar structures seen throughout nature.
At its core, ANIMA is an exploration of the visual language of life itself. The series reflects his fascination with how mathematical structures can mimic biological processes—a recurring theme in his later work.
Anima on Verse.works
Excessize
(2024, Ethereum)
A boutique series of 12 AI-generated piece, launched via Kate Vass Galerie in March 2024. The pieces offer a satirical take on American consumer culture – fast food, advertising, and excess – depicted through the lens of AI post-photography. The Excessize images serve as a precursor to “Life in West America”, both stylistically and thematically.
Excessize on Kate Vass Galerie
Essential Night
(2022-2023, Tezos)
Limited collection of editions on the Tezos blockchain.
Essential Night on Objkt.com
Time-Lapse
(2023, Ethereum)
Limited collection of 10 works for Proof.XYZ Grails Season 4. Studies on multiple moments in time at once: people that are physically present but mentally absent, and vice versa.
Time-Lapse on Proof.XYZ Grails
Post Real
(2023-2024, Ethereum)
A limited collection of 1:1 works on Foundation
Post Real on Foundation
Melting Pot
(2024, Ethereum)
A limited collection of 9 works for Medseart 2024 event.
Melting Pot on OpenSea
Recollection Machine
(2024, Ethereum)
A limited collection of 4 works for EXPANDED.ART
Recollection Machine on EXPANDED.ART
Rainisto also has a number of AI-generated video works.
Rainisto on Daily.XYZ
Rainisto also has additional individual 1:1 artworks acquired by collectors.
For a full list of individual pieces, view Verse’s full gallery of Rainisto’s works on ETH blockchain. For direct search, "Rainisto" creator profile on OpenSea