The Painting (Pittura)

It’s the Renaissance – but not as we know it.  Perhaps Rome never fell and this is what one of its cities could have looked like had that never happened.  Whatever, this is a gloriously realised Italianesque setting where a painter who knows his time is running short realises that his robot assistant has developed an interest art.  However, this doesn’t quite turn out as he expects, although perhaps all is not lost in the end…

This beautifully realised short film was created by directors Emma Boulot, Titouan Lassere, Adam Lauriol, Alexandre Lievin, Hellois Marre and Rémi Vivenza, with specialist contributions from Zoé Lafay, Antoine Delclaud and Mathis Giraudeau. Pipeline TD and renderfarm administration were handled by Elouan Rogliano and Angèle Sionneau. The film is a 2024 graduation project from ARTFX and stars Christophe Pujol as the painter and Theo Martin as the robot.  So, although it isn't from this year's crop of graduates I felt almost obliged to share this with you.  With barely over 20,000 views, this wonderful short film deserves a much larger audience and I hope I can contribute to that in my own small way.

This reminds me of the much-quoted Jean Baudrillard statement – “The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence”. Hats off, though, to the human who designed the robot - an exquisite work of art of and in itself.