All About Francis
A.I. Artistic Project
August 2023. While the world focused on the Pope’s arrival in Lisbon for World Youth Day, the narrative was reimagined: what if Francis—only the man—moved freely across Portugal, without an agenda?
On the very same day, in the very same hours, this photography-driven system began. Treating A.I. as my camera, I art-directed an alternative journey of Francis across 22 real locations in Portugal, exploring a human pursuit of freedom.
This project is an authorial creation with artistic objectives, independent of political, religious, or brand ideology. All About Francis explores universal themes such as time, recognition, behavior, and identity, while deliberately integrating artificial and inorganic resources as part of the creative process.
https://www.instagram.com/all_about_francis/
WYD 2023 - World Youth Day - Lisbon happened between 1 and 6 August
https://www.lisboa2023.org/en
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The allegory of the image and the present: a Pope digitally created by a machine, manipulated for an experience and visit he did not make, will not make, and paradoxically reveals his most human and vulnerable side - in a machined fiction work about a man who is Pope, and not about the Pope who is a man, visiting the four corners of the country. This was the thought and challenge, in an aesthetic and philosophical exploration of the construction and codes of identity, juxtaposed with the moment of Pope Francis's visit during the World Youth Day in Lisbon, emphasizing questions surrounding the most anticipated presence and dominant pursuit of the moment - around a figure, a Pope, who embodies a faith, and a man who wants to be flesh and blood/live.
In this embodiment, precisely, semiotic questions arise that Paulo Oliveira sought to resolve in the direction of parametrized art for Artificial Intelligence optimization. The image generates confusion, doubt: Is it documentary? Is it artistic? Is it purely utopian? Is it real? Is it him? What makes him be him, or what makes us be us - because we recognize him as Pope Francis, an ethereal/distant figure who now lands here? The parameters and commands to generate simulations led to photos interpreted by a non-human system, which traverses everything aesthetically available in terms of digitally searchable and stored data about this man and this tag: Pope Francis.
This search is local, it's in Portugal. "All About Francis" brings another journey and systematizes a Francis who travels a long route, from his digital birth: from Douro to Alentejo, from the singularities of Vila Franca to Lourinhã, in the beaches, grape harvests, or views that this official route will not reach. Here, there is a normalized, close Francis, fictionalized in manifestations that place him today, as a man, among us. The "All About Francis" gallery and journey is available on Instagram, and Paulo Mariano will continue to explore his art direction in communion with the machine, the A.I.
DEEP DIVES INTO EACH IMAGE // CULTURE, TRADITIONS, MUSIC, CLOTHES
Clothes: The campinos and their colorful gala costumes are a traditional presence in any Ribatejo party. The photos show the fearless knights of Ribatejo during the National Agriculture Fair throughout the 1980s, in the old Campo “Emílio Infante da Câmara”, still on the plateau of Santarém/Ribatejo.
Music: Fandango By Folkloric Ranch Os Camponeses, founded on 14 January 1958. The Fandango is arguably the most publicized dance of Ribatejo folklore.
MEDIA COVERAGE // LINKS
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