Be Silent Touch Look Swallow

Rafal Kosakowski designed the book Be Silent Touch Look Swallow, a 384-page publication that explores the utopian potential of the analog-digital art project One Million by Uli Aigner. 706 AI images were generated by Michal Kosakowski using Midjourney prompts, based on many conversations with Uli Aigner about being physically in the world at the beginning of digitalization.

“Be Silent Touch Look Swallow was originally planned as a performance. A dinner with 150 people eating silently together from heavy porcelain vessels, which was to take place within the Brutalist architecture of the St. Agnes Church in Berlin. With handheld camera, the event was to be recorded in extreme close-ups to generate images that show the connection between the simultaneous existence of organic bodies and the inorganic materials of the concrete architecture. Eating and drinking from wheel-thrown, heavy porcelain vessels was intended to establish a connection between body and space. However, the performance has never taken place.”

—Uli Aigner

“Over time, due to the Corona lockdown and the availability of new imaging technologies, the following has occurred: The possibilities of artificial intelligence for digital image generation have suddenly created a new space in which to visualize the result of the planned action directly, accessible worldwide: Instead of an exclusive event for a few people, I now present an inclusive world, a digital public space that grants access to anyone through vision: What can be in a world we think we live in.”

—Uli Aigner

“The reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.”

—Andy Warhol