From Traces to the Mythopoietic Co-Optation of AI

Abstract

Drawing on Aaron Betsky’s principle of ‘rebuild’, the figurative tradition from François De Nomé to Piranesi, and Marc Augé’s reflections on ruins and rubble, this contribution explores the reuse of the pre-existing as a process of ‘artificial exaptation’. Within this framework, artificial intelligence is conceived not as a tool for generating something from scratch, but as an interpretative machine: a device for reading, deforming and rewriting historical and visual traces, capable of amplifying the narrative potential of the fragment. The material and contextual residues of the existing – understood as complex palimpsests – move beyond their mere utilitarian function to take on a mythopoietic significance, capable of generating new spatial configurations and forms of memory. The project thus becomes a practice of cultural co-optation in which the existing becomes a creative matrix, redefining the relationship between history, ruin and AI. This analysis forms part of the contemporary debate, drawing on the strategies of creative reuse developed by Dimitris Pikionis, Lebbeus Woods and the duo Anne and Patrick Poirier. Through these references, the essay highlights how the reinterpretation of existing residues and data can transform ruins into a powerful tool for design imagination.