
The Arquà Manuscript
The debut work of BGGB is an inquiry on speculative evolution through the means of AI, inspired by medieval bestiaries. At Collectible Brussels, the studio presents the centrepiece of the collection, the Arquà Manuscript Tapestry, within the context of the Curated section.
Speculative evolution is a common trope in sci-fi literature, focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life. What would animals look like in the far future on Planet Earth, long after humanity has vanished? With Earth's ecosystems undergoing extreme transformations due to millennia of unchecked evolution, climate shifts, and new symbiotic relationships, new species will emerge.
Challenging common dichotomies between scientific and symbolic knowledge, epistemic and aesthetic modes of visualization, the Arquà Manuscript Collection presents dream-like scenarios inhabited by fantastic creatures, moving on the foreground of a post-human world, where new balances have come to establish as a result of the diminished influence of the human species on ecosystems.

Chimera Mosscrawler
Coryphoderma symbiota

Lurking Silkmaw
Pendacris velutina

Plains Titan
Magnastropha ponderis

Wobblepod
Gelibolus rotundus

Puffaroo
Vellicapodus saltarius

Glasswing Behemoth
Chrysomorphis titanis

Tree Squid
Dendrocephalus tentaculata

This imaginary journey in Time is ideally entrusted to Artificial Intelligence, which, just like pre-modern explorers of exotic lands, reports (more or less) reliable descriptions of what it finds on this unknown Earth, eroding the treshold between perceived and imagined reality. Another generative Artificial Intelligence is then asked to translate these descriptions from text to image. Similarly to what happened in the Middle Ages in the compilation of Bestiaries, the passage from text to image through AI also involves frequent loss of information, and remixes of stock repertories of familiar animals.