Red Apple, Seyahatnâme. Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, 1630s.
Evliya Çelebi was a 17th-century Ottoman traveler who wrote a ten-volume travelogue, Seyahatnâme. Red Apple uses AI to reinterpret Çelebi’s writing on Hagia Sophia, Istanbul’s first imperial mosque.
“an image of Mother Meryem (the Virgin Mary), holding in her hand a carbuncle as big as a pigeons egg, by the blaze of which the mosque was lighted every night. This carbuncle was also removed in the birthnight of the Prophet, to Kizil Almà (Rome), which received its name (Red Apple) from thence.”
Joelle McTigue
I’m an artist living in and exploring the Mediterranean. My work encapsulates the idea of historical and cultural shifts by mathematically altering source material.
My work is a part of the Rubell Family Collection, The John Paul Getty III-founded Siena Art Institute Library Collection, and the inaugural NFT Biennial.
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Yellow Tulip, Seyahatnâme. Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, 1630s.
The yellow tulip symbolizes hope and new beginnings.
Evliya Çelebi was a 17th-century Ottoman traveler who wrote a ten-volume travelogue, Seyahatnâme. The volumes detail his travels throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond. The Evliya Çelebi’s Travelogues series uses AI to recreate passages from his travels.
He describes the Ottoman court’s vast gardens as “Delightful as the garden of Irem, planted with twenty thousand cypresses, planes, weeping-willows, thuyas, pines, and box-trees, and among them many hundred thousands of fruit trees, forming an aviary and tulip-parterre, which to this day may be compared to the garden of the Genii (Jin).”