I am not an artist, and my profession plays an important role in this project: I am a software developer and work in the field of language technologies. One could then say that my main interest is language, as in both programming and natural languages.

The project draws inspiration from a book about creative writing that stands out for its engineering-like approach: Grammatica della Fantasia ("The Grammar of Fantasy") by Gianni Rodari. Rodari encourages learning through play and proposes a series of exercises that encourage both adults and children to play with words. The goal is, as the author explains, to make everyone, regardless their social status, able to use language in all sorts of ways, including creatively. "Not so that they all become artists", he writes, "but so that nobody becomes a slave"¹.

In my opinion, this reasoning can be applied to any art form, and anyone can benefit from practicing one. With this project, then, it is my objective to learn to work with photography systematically, and speaking of systematicity another literary work comes to mind: Raymond Queneau's Exercices de Style² ("Exercices in Style"), where the same story is transformed and told in 99 different ways.

The word transform is important, because my "exercises in style" of choice are achitectural transformations. Photographs, showing non-touristic builings and landmarks in Gothenburg, are taken in pairs: an experimental picture, where the subject is transformed, and a "postcard" or reference picture.