Artificial: a love story - amy kurzweil

A visionary story of three generations of artists whose search for meaning and connection transcends the limits of life How do we relate to--and hold--our familys past? Is it through technology? Through spirit? Art, poetry, music? Or is it through the resonances we look for in ourselves? In Artificial, we meet the Kurzweils, a family of creators who are preserving their history through unusual means.

At the center is renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who has long been saving the documents of his deceased father, Fredric, an accomplished conductor and pianist from Vienna who fled the Nazis in 1938.

Once, Freds life was saved by his art: an American benefactor, impressed by Freds musical genius, sponsored his emigration to the United States.

He escaped just one month before Kristallnacht.

Now, Fred has returned.

Through AI and salvaged writing, Ray is building a chatbot that writes in Freds voice, and he enlists his daughter, cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, to help him ensure the immortality of their familys fraught inheritance.

Amys deepening understanding of her familys traumatic uprooting resonates with the creative life she fights to claim in the present, as Amy and her partner, Jacob, chase jobs, and each other, across the country.

Kurzweil evokes an understanding of accomplishment that centers conversation and connection, knowing and being known by others.

With Kurzweils signature humanity and humor, in boundary-pushing, gorgeous handmade drawings, Artificial guides us through nuanced questions about art, memory, and technology, demonstrating that love, a process of focused attention, is what grounds a meaningful life.