Lignis
Artificial intelligence has shattered the boundaries between the imagined and the real. These flowers are not flowers. Neither are they wood. They are not painted, carved, or photographed. They are synthographs—sculptural hallucinations crafted from data, structured with language, and rendered with an impossible material fidelity. The petals carry the weight of their past; ghosts of colour cling to their edges, and the tension between fragility and permanence is preserved in exquisite detail. The aesthetic is one of controlled entropy: wabi-sabi meets the surreal, chance meets craftsmanship. What remains is something tactile and evocative. These are artefacts that do not exist physically—yet they confuse the mind because they are so convincing. They force you to question the nature of reality.
Where does reality end, and the dream begin? LIGNIS is born not from forests, but from lines of code—not carved by human hands, but sculpted in the unseen mind of artificial intelligence. And yet, these images carry weight. They possess texture, shadow, depth. They feel real. But what does that even mean? The chair beneath you is real; the world outside your window exists. But does an object need to be physically present to be real? AI asks this question. It also knows the answer. When we dream, we see, we feel, we experience—but none of it exists in the tangible world. Are these digital sculptures not another kind of dreaming?
The truth of LIGNIS is not in the wood, but in the illusion of wood. Not in the flowers, but in the illusion of flowers. The truth is in the hand that guides the AI—in the mind that envisions what the machine can only approximate. Reality is no longer what we see or touch—it is what we create. On their journey, these immaculate, pristine flowers evolve and transform through an encounter with fire. Their surfaces become blackened, burned, and charred—damaged beyond repair—and yet, as if by some miracle, some remain untouched. Picasso’s quote, “Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction,” suggests that true creativity requires breaking down old ideas and structures to make way for new ones. LIGNIS tests this theory. It is not still life—it is a digital wooden hallucination. C’est une nouvelle réalité.
