The work
Every mark is his. The arrangement is yours.
Every Rebirth work is unrepeatable by construction. One sitting produces one work, built from more than a thousand marks Steve Baylis has physically extracted from his own paintings, each one pigment on panel before it was anything else, stacked ten layers deep inside a circle.
Which marks, and in what order, is decided by the sitting. Seven questions, answered out loud or not at all. The room listens the way a stranger in the dark listens: to pace, to pitch, to the length of your silences, never to a single word. From that it forms its impression, and names what it believes it heard.
The portrait may be wrong about you. Rebirth insists on that possibility: to be read by another, human or machine, has always been to be read imperfectly. What is never in doubt is the object: the pattern that produced your print is retired in a permanent ledger the moment it exists, and can never be issued again.
Works
Made by the system, in full
Each title is the record of what its sitting surfaced, in the order it appeared; beneath it, the name the room chose. No name is invented, and no work is made twice.
These five came from test sittings run to prove the engine. No person sat for them, which is why they are credited to the work rather than to anyone. A real sitting is credited to both people, as Steve Baylis × the sitter's name.
Sit for it
The sitting, here, in about four minutes
This is the room's own sequence, shortened. You give your name, the same recorded voice asks the same seven questions, and you answer out loud in any language or stay silent. After the last one there is a moment of quiet. Then the room tells you what it heard, names the work, stacks it layer over layer in front of you, and gives you the file to keep.
- Your name, for the plate. It stays on your machine.
- Allow the microphone once, when the browser asks.
- Seven questions, twenty seconds to answer each.
- A short silence, which is also part of the sitting.
- The reading, the title, and the work arriving.
- Your copy, downloaded, and an order code for the print.
Nothing you say leaves this page. Your voice becomes ten numbers per answer on your own machine, the reading runs here, and the sound is erased the moment it has been read. Open your browser's network tab and watch: no request will appear.
You will need a microphone and about four minutes. Headphones help. In the cedar room this takes twelve minutes in the dark, and ends with a print in your hand.
Seven questions, about four minutes, and a work at the end.
Nothing is recorded, nothing is kept.
The sitting
Twelve minutes, alone
The door closes
Low light. For a minute and a half, nothing is asked of you.
Seven questions
A recorded voice, one question at a time, with long silences after each. You answer out loud, in any language, or you don't. Silence is a valid answer.
Stillness
Forty-five seconds of dark and quiet before anything happens.
The work resolves
Layer settles over layer on the screen. No progress bar, nothing to read. Just the work arriving.
It is named
The finished image holds in silence. Then a single word appears: what the room believes it heard in you.
It is printed
Out loud, on paper you can hold, with a certificate carrying the work's name and the statement that its pattern has been retired.
Particulars
What you are actually given
A sitting ends with an object, not a file: one square archival pigment print, thirteen inches on a side, carrying a sealed receipt that names every layer that went into it. The 7006 pixel master is held for whoever owns the print. Then the pattern is retired in a ledger and that work cannot be issued again, by anyone, including the artist.
- One square archival pigment print, 13 × 13 inches
- Master
- 7006 × 7006 pixels, held for the collector
- Uniqueness
- One work per session. The pattern is retired, permanently
- Provenance
- Each work carries a sealed receipt naming every layer used
- Source
- Marks extracted from the artist's physical paintings
- Privacy
- Nothing spoken is ever recorded, stored, or transmitted
One work, of one person, once.
Sit for it, and the room will make you something that has never existed and will not exist again.