Arquivista IA: Antologia de Franciscos Francos
Nestor Pestana
Free admission
Francisco Franco, a sculptor from Madeira, exhibited alongside Pablo Picasso in Boston (USA) in 1927. It is not known which works he exhibited, or if he went to Boston. It is also unknown if he met with Picasso and how this exhibition influenced him, personally and artistically. Little is known about his story. Using GPT, a generative AI tool, Nestor Pestana tries to fill in the gaps of what we know about the Boston exhibition. To do this, he engaged in a kind of dialogue with GPT, using an online platform designed for this purpose.
Drawing on words, phrases and texts related to Franciso Franco’s life, GPT generates alternate stories. The result was 110 versions of what could have happened, of which Nestor Pestana chose five to expand on. Arquivista AI is a multimedia installation in which the artist presents the images and artefacts that tell each of these five stories.
Nestor Pestana
Nestor Pestana is a Venezuelan-Portuguese multimedia artist based in London, where he teaches at the Royal College of Art and the Bartlett School of Architecture.
Pestana develops research-based artistic projects in collaboration with scientists and technologists, using worldbuilding, design fiction, and storytelling methodologies. His interests include new and emerging technologies and their future social and technological implications. Interweaving the digital and the physical – using digital fabrication technologies such as 3D and CNC printing, combined with digital animation, video, sound and interactive technologies, Pestana creates multimedia installations that aim to actively and critically engage audiences with the narrative that is being presented.
