We see young people talking, smoking, contemplating — but what interests me are the interior spaces they inhabit, and the accumulation of objects and details in these spaces. Objects are placed on wall-size shelves, coffee tables, sofas, and other surfaces. In some cases, we can easily identify these objects, but in others, they are harder to identify. Some look like fragments, traces, and shadows of the objects that are gone. These “fragments” evoke ancient museum artifacts, but their nature is fundamentally different. While archaeological remnants are tangible pieces of past civilizations, AI-generated fragments have a distinct ontology. They emerge from AI models processing millions of images, distributing patterns across trillions of connections. This process further virtualizes and diffuses digital materiality. The accumulations of objects, shadows, and traces in these images serve as a metaphor for the generative AI process. — Lev Manovich