ACQUA – Forward Edizioni

AI\IA – n.01 - ACQUA

We are now immersed in a visual landscape in which images generated by artificial intelligence occupy an increasingly significant space, both on our screens and in publishing products. This growing presence raises questions that go beyond simple technological fascination or mistrust of the new.

The AI\IA fanzine project therefore stems from a necessary reflection: Is it still possible today to bring together craftsmanship and artificial intelligence without one overwhelming the other? Can manual skills and creative error, which are inherent to human activity, coexist with the algorithmic precision of artificial intelligence?

The AI\IA series sits precisely on this line of tension, investigating what happens at the edge of the dialogue between craftsmanship and artificiality and observing the infinite outcomes that can arise from this dialectical relationship.

To do so, he chooses the fanzine as a space for comparison, recognising its creative potential: a free, direct, democratic format, capable of giving voice to both experimentation and the contamination of languages. Each issue will be a sixteenth in which two artists – different in terms of training, techniques and sensibilities – will interpret the same theme, sharing the same space on paper and staging a comparison that does not seek to establish hierarchies, but to open up possibilities.

The project

The question that runs through the project is therefore radical and fundamental: instead of seeing themselves as rivals, can two creative approaches often considered irreconcilable coexist and enrich each other? Can imagination unite the new with the old, lead the human towards the non-human, hold memory and future together?

The first issue is dedicated to WATER: a mobile, fluid and constantly changing substance. Everything flows and transforms, and we can only observe this incessant movement, a mirror of the dynamics that also animate contemporary visual culture.
AI\IA begins here: with an invitation to navigate between the currents of two different imaginations, with the conviction that publishing is still the route that can lead to the construction of a critical cultural space, driven by ever-changing winds and capable of generating living ideas.

LUDOVICA FANTETTI

This story is a notebook lost among the waves. An imaginary journey that stems from notes collected by the sea, which has always been the guardian of unexpected encounters. The fanzine transforms into a wall of paper within which we recognise things that exist and things that could exist.
Between the pages, the world is regenerated. Between the folds, the past and future fit together in a single new sign.

PESCI MISERABILI

In the silent depths of our society, the “Miserable Fish” swim. Through artificial intelligence, the project explores this oxymoron, an image of the contemporary human condition. Anthropomorphic figures with fish heads, wrapped in an almost alien luxury, stare at us with an unchanging expression of melancholy. They are a mirror of our obsessive pursuit of appearance, a glittering shell that hides a deep void. Each portrait is a crack in the façade: the epiphany of one’s inner misery, revealed in a glimpse and immortalised forever.

AUTHORS

Ludovica Fantetti

Ludovica Fantetti is an illustrator who lives and works in Rome. Over the years, she has worked in the field of editorial graphics and illustration and has collaborated with various graphic design studios and companies, including Corriere della Sera (Futura), Il Manifesto, Editori Laterza, Amazon Prime Video, Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone in Rome, Editori Gruppo Albatros il Filo, Non ti seguo records and This is not a love song. After graduating in illustration and comics from the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata, she continued her training by specialising in editorial graphics and illustration at ISIA in Urbino.

His creativity is deeply rooted in analogue printing techniques, a field he explores with passion and a desire to experiment. He is always searching for materials, surfaces and tools to create new stories. His images reveal a strong connection with ancestral and mythological forms, which often feature in his visual narratives, in a fusion between tradition and the present.

Pesci Miserabili

The identity of the artist is irrelevant.

Operating anonymously, the author presents himself as a simple chronicler of the present, a silent observer who tries to find his way through the currents of our daily dystopia. He uses artificial intelligence as a scalpel to dissect the contemporary human condition: opulence that masks emptiness, appearance that suffocates essence.

Anonymity is the ultimate statement of the project itself: in a world obsessed with “who”, his work forces us to focus solely on “what” and “why”.

AI\IA – n.01 – Acqua will be available online from 4 September and presented at Zines, Palermo on 6–7 September 2025.