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Numero Zero

IT

The project

Numero Zero is a quarterly digital periodical about multimedia languages (video, generative art, sound, web), built by a community and published, issue by issue, as an interactive scrolling page.

The project sits where three fields meet: the tradition of independent publishing and zine culture, editorial formats native to the web, and the use of artificial intelligence as a collaborator in the design process.

It grew out of Fiori d’Inchiostro, a first-year project that imagined a Florentine collective and its free periodical without ever actually building it. One insight survived: a community that meets regularly, shares its work and sees it come together in a shared publication.

The name states what the work is: a number zero is the dress rehearsal of a publication, before it becomes periodical.

The question

How can artificial intelligence work as a design collaborator in a digital editorial design process, extending the technical skills of a single designer without replacing their authorial control?

“Collaborator” is meant in an operational sense: a tool that proposes, executes and speeds things up, while intent, selection and direction stay with the designer. Whether that distinction holds in practice is, in part, what the research puts to the test.

The aims

  • Design and develop Numero Zero, a participatory quarterly digital publishing system based on multimedia languages.
  • Document the collaboration with artificial intelligence in design and development: prompts, decisions, corrections.
  • Find where AI extended the technical reach of a single designer and where human intervention and judgement were needed.
  • Position the project against editorial precedents, between zine culture and participatory digital platforms.
  • Test the system in practice, with a pilot issue made together with a real community.

The method

Practice-based research: theory and the analysis of case studies move forward together with practical development, each informing the other. The work runs in three phases: research and theoretical positioning, design and development of the system, testing with a pilot issue.

Each issue is published with Readymag, a no-code tool for interactive editorial pages; the more complex parts (generative elements, effects, small widgets) are written in code with the help of AI. Every significant interaction with the tool is documented, to tell what was generated from what was chosen or changed.

The scope is deliberately limited: one designer, a small community, one issue. Not a general verdict on AI, but one case observed closely and told honestly, limits included.

From zine culture

Community as origin
The publication comes from the people who take part in it, not from an editorial board speaking to an audience.
The issue as a unit
A closed whole, with a theme and an order, the opposite of the endless feed.
Periodicity
The quarterly rhythm is not just a calendar: it is how often the community comes together.
Declared curation
Selection exists, and it should be visible and in the hands of people, not of opaque mechanisms.

Where it comes from

Numero Zero is Gabriele Sarteschi’s thesis project for the academic diploma in New Technologies of Art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, academic year 2025/2026. Supervisors: Prof. Carmela Pignatelli and Prof. Laura Mangiavacchi.

Sources

  • Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Verso.
  • Bolter, J. D., Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press.
  • Bourriaud, N. (1998). Esthétique relationnelle. Les presses du réel.
  • Duncombe, S. (1997). Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. Verso.
  • Floridi, L. (2022). Etica dell’intelligenza artificiale. Raffaello Cortina.
  • Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture. New York University Press.
  • Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. MIT Press.
  • Mollick, E. (2024). Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. Portfolio.
  • Piepmeier, A. (2009). Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. New York University Press.
  • Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. Basic Books.
  • Triggs, T. (2010). Fanzines: The DIY Revolution. Chronicle Books.
  • Case studies: Ōpĕra, The Pudding, doppiozero, Snow Fall (New York Times), Are.na, A24 Zines.