The Seeker and the Artist

By Robert David Duncan

The stories of a damaged piece of code that develops a fascination with the digital remains of an artist. Companion piece to the Seeker and Artist collection of films from experimental film and media artist Robert David Duncan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert David Duncan
• Release date: Nov 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223192299

Robert David Duncan

Robert David Duncan is an artist, actor and writer living in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Book preview

Foreword

Welcome to the world of The Seeker and the Artist!

My work on this project began as I pondered what might happen if a piece of artificial intelligence code became damaged, and through a set of circumstances developed sentience, feelings and even sentimentality. At the same time, I was thinking about the digital residue that we leave behind after our lives are over, and what happens to our digital remains. It was early pandemic times, and I was sitting alone on a folding chair in a wooded area of Stanley Park, scribbling away in a notebook. Mortality was in the air, and creativity seemed to offer a bit of a way out of a gloomy time.

As I wrote, two characters emerged. One, the Artist, was a vanished artist who had consciously sought a form of digital afterlife, by seeding the digital space with their films and other art. The other, the Seeker, was the piece of damaged code that became, in a word, obsessed with the lost artist.

The initial story world was built around a series of thirty short