Domenico Distilo: While working on ‘Authentic Dolls,’ a series of 24 images, my storytelling instincts guided me, deeply influenced by my background in screenwriting. This journey initially led to the creation of Velasquex, a chatbot and artistic persona intended to transcend conventional artistic roles. The genesis of Velasquexˆ involved the training of an artificial intelligence entity — a chatbot — endowing it with a carefully crafted psychological profile. Velasquex didn’t serve solely as a canvas for my artistic expressions but evolved into a distinct character through a deliberate process. I worked to inject my innate curiosity and a robust ethical foundation into this digital entity: art history, photographic theory, and cinematic knowledge. This curated material acted as a foundation for the chatbot and as a catalyst for discussions on photography and art. The creative voyage unfolded through immersive brainstorming sessions, where ideas took root and evolved. It was within this rich discourse that the visual elements of “Authentic Dolls” began to emerge, aiming to reflect the synthesis of ideas and creative visions encapsulated in the discussion with Velasquex^. The series comprises 24 synthetic, post-photographic images, a medium that offers a fresh lens through which to explore art. At its core, ‘Authentic Dolls’ seeks to ignite the notion that ‘the Art is in the Maker.’

In the shadows of the Wild man The Akeloo’s Tribe comes alive again New wild men and wild women, they do arise With primal urges and animality in their eyes

In 1985, Italo Calvino gave a series of lectures at Harvard University titled "Six Memos for the Next Millennium." The book, published posthumously, includes five memos on the themes of Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity as they relate to literature and writing. Calvino's sixth and final memo, titled Consistency, was never written. In an attempt to speculate on this missing memo, an AI named ChatGPT was trained on Calvino's writing style and fed prompts and hints about the unknown memo. The resulting text, written by the AI and accompanied by AI-generated images, explores the concept of consistency in literature and the opposition between consistency and multipotentiality. The text remains in its original form, including grammatical quirks and errors, and serves as a playful exploration of new tools available to writers and storytellers.