Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: Amy Kurzweil, artificial, graphic novel

Artificial: A Love Story OGN by New Yorker Cartoonist Amy Kurzweil

Artificial: A Love Story is a new graphic novel coming out in October by New Yorker cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, from Catapult.

Artificial: A Love Story is a new graphic novel about artificial intelligence coming out in October by New Yorker cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, best known as the author of Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir. She was a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow with the American Academy in Berlin, a 2019 Shearing Fellow with the Black Mountain Institute, and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Djerassi, and elsewhere. She asks "Care for a romp through artificial intelligence, large language models, love, family, art and memory? My graphic memoir, labor of love and tears for half my adult life, is available for preorder now."

Artificial is a meta narrative that sees renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil asks his New Yorker cartoonist daughter to help preserve his father's memory via AI, in a family memoir that ponders questions of originality and inheritance.

A visionary story of three generations of artists whose search for meaning and connection transcends the limits of life How do we relate to—and hold—our family's past? Is it through technology? Through spirit? Art, poetry, music? Or is it through the resonances we look for in ourselves? In Artificial, we meet the Kurzweils, a family of creators who are preserving their history through unusual means. At the center is renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who has long been saving the documents of his deceased father, Fredric, an accomplished conductor and pianist from Vienna who fled the Nazis in 1938. Once, Fred's life was saved by his art: an American benefactor, impressed by Fred's musical genius, sponsored his emigration to the United States. He escaped just one month before Kristallnacht. Now, Fred has returned. Through AI and salvaged writing, Ray is building a chatbot that writes in Fred's voice, and he enlists his daughter, cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, to help him ensure the immortality of their family's fraught inheritance. Amy's deepening understanding of her family's traumatic uprooting resonates with the creative life she fights to claim in the present, as Amy and her partner, Jacob, chase jobs, and each other, across the country. Kurzweil evokes an understanding of accomplishment that centers conversation and connection, knowing and being known by others. With Kurzweil's signature humanity and humor, in boundary-pushing, gorgeous handmade drawings, Artificial guides us through nuanced questions about art, memory, and technology, demonstrating that love, a process of focused attention, is what grounds a meaningful life.

Artificial: A Love Story will be published on the 17th of October by Catapult.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!