In the beginning, there was a floating rock evolving between worlds, with no fixed location named A-δῆλος -meaning the “non visible”. When Leto, one of Zeus’ mortal lovers, gave birth to Artemis and Apollo, this island became Delos “the visible”, preserving the young gods from the wrath of the goddess Hera. In Ancient Greece, this 3.5 sq. km islet was for centuries one of the most sacred places, as well as an extremely prosperous and cosmopolitan Hellenistic centre. The Cyclades archipelago form an imaginary circle around Delos.

In the VIth century BC, tyrants from Athens decided to seize power on Delos and to give it back its symbolic and mythological power. During the “Purification of Delos”, they thus excavated the numerous tombs of the local inhabitants, and transported them in a pit on the neighboring island of Rineia.
From now on, it was forbidden to be born and to die, on Delos.

Since 2018, aurèce vettier has trained GANs as part of the Potential Herbarium series, on more than 4 million herbarium boards, and generated many fascinating imaginary plant shapes. These shapes are quite anti-darwinian, and are a seminal constituent of their visual research.

Here, using AI-generated, imaginary leaves, they recreate their ideal archipelago. This can also be seen as a tribute to Offert Dapper, a Dutch physician and writer who wrote books about world geography, including the Cycladic islands, although he never traveled outside the Netherlands.