The app begins only with the photograph, artwork or screenshot deliberately invited in.
DIGITAL INK
A WORKING ARTWORK BY ALEKSANDRS SESTAKOVS / Q888 · NATIVE iPadOS
EVERY PIXEL
CAN HAVE
I wanted digital material to feel less disposable—and more like something we might care for.
SMART INK: I was many pixels. Now I carry what happened to me.
A chosen image becomes a finite Smart Ink with its own colour, , biography and provenance. It can be used, educated, rearranged—and remembered.
NEW VERSION APPROVED BY APPLE · AVAILABLE NOW
ONE SMART INK
One colour. A growing past. No infinite
copies.
01 · THE EXISTING WORK
I wanted pixels to have consequences.
Digital Ink is both a working native iPad app and an artwork by Alexander Sestakovs / Q888. A photograph, artwork or screenshot chosen by the artist becomes a unique Smart Ink with colour, identity, memory and provenance.
The human makes the first choice. The ink then begins a life of its own inside the rules of the app. Painting spends it; erasing returns it; learning and reconstruction change what it carries. Every placed pixel remains connected to where it came from.
Many pixels collapse into one colour, one identity and an optional 192-pixel source trace.
Painting, learning, relationships, provenance and imperfect reconstruction accumulate around it.
02 · ARTISTIC INTERFACE STUDIES
The interface also became a drawing surface.
These are authored visual records made during Digital Ink’s development, not neutral product screenshots. The recorded date, interface state and rough edges remain because development time is part of the work’s provenance.
As each study crosses the centre of the screen, its artistic memory surfaces. Scroll back and the application record can return. Nothing is corrected when the two realities disagree.
03 · SEVEN FORMS OF REMEMBERING
An ink does not have one memory.
It carries distinct layers so source evidence, personal testimony, learned knowledge and machine invention do not quietly become the same thing.
Visible trace
One representative colour: the photograph reduced to finite digital material.
Source trace
An optional compressed preview, no larger than 192 pixels on its longest edge.
Descriptive memory
Machine-generated language—including its uncertainty and occasional mistakes.
Situated memory
Date, place, provenance and the artist’s own note, kept distinct from machine interpretation.
Acquired memory
Concepts encountered through selected texts and PDFs after the ink was created.
Social memory
Traceable knowledge exchanged with other inks. This remains a residency research question.
Invented memory
An AI reconstruction: explicitly an invention, never presented as recovery of the source.
04 ·
The concept has a practice—not a fixed count.
Digital Ink is used regularly, so its population changes. The lasting evidence is not yesterday’s number; it is a public app, a studio instrument, a finite material system and an open field of research.
A PUBLIC ARTWORK
A native SwiftUI artwork for iPad, approved by Apple and available now on the App Store.
A STUDIO INSTRUMENT
Used and changed by the artist. Its population keeps moving, so this page does not freeze it into a misleading count.
FINITE MATERIAL
Painting spends available ink. Erasing returns it. Every placed pixel remains connected to its origin.
OPEN RESEARCH
Biography and education work now; social learning, exhibition replay and the 116-Pixel Archive remain active questions.
Biography & education
Smart Inks can hold Vision Memory, structured visual interpretation, personal notes, learned concepts, education level, relationships, provenance and generated reconstructions. Selected PDFs teach concepts and hashtags without turning the PDF itself into AI input.
Affinity & autonomy
Inks can rearrange or group according to colour and stored information. The current system supports a general population; fully traceable neighbour teaching and exhibition-grade replay remain development work, not completed claims.
05 · THE ONLINE BOUNDARY
The ink asks before it leaves the iPad.
Built-in recognition
Apple-provided recognition can describe selected images without credits or an internet connection. Its interpretations may be limited or inaccurate.
Assist & reconstruction
With explicit permission, selected information travels through Digital Ink’s Cloudflare service to OpenAI. Online Assist costs 1 credit; AI Memory Reconstruction costs 10. Purchasing credits is never treated as consent.
06 · FUTURE RESEARCH EDITION
THE 116-PIXEL
ARCHIVE
A proposed controlled archive in which 116 photographs become 116 Smart Inks. They would form recorded relationships, exchange limited knowledge, make compositions and attempt—imperfectly—to remember what their archive once contained.
This edition does not yet exist.
Digital Ink is the working foundation. The residency process would discover the archive’s rules before a dedicated application is built.
- NOW
Define the archive protocol
Source and consent, memory rights, affinity, exchange, forgetting, intervention and what the audience may see.
- 12
Run a controlled prototype
Twelve photographs test whether the rules create meaningful differences before scale hardens them into software.
- 116
Build the dedicated edition
Only after observation: a separate, controlled population with event history, replay, backup and exhibition-safe operation.
The question is not whether the machine can recover the photograph. It is what remains after colour, testimony, education, contamination and invention have each had their turn.
A dedicated /116 process page will be added when the research
has a process to show.