Six Characters in Search of an Author is an iconic Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, written and first performed in 1921.The origin of this series of persona is in a paragraph from this play, (see the text below) typed as prompts on Midjourney, an(AI) application. Questions are evoked about the relationship between the author and the characters he creates, written as a mirror-image to exactly the same issues that AI would raise a hundred years later. The algorithm (AI) identified the canonical text and offered in response a series of characters in the image of the author himself. His figure consists of triangular and cylindrical shapes that allude to Pirandello's hallmarks, the beard, the hat and his tweed coat. Surprisingly, Midjourney offered all the versions of the author with no face as if knowing that Pirandello criticized his own hypocritical audience for wearing a mask.

“The Father: (Act 3, Page 77)
You have never met such a case, sir, because authors, as a rule, hide the labour of their creations. When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him; and he has to will them the way they will themselves-for there’s trouble if he doesn’t. When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him..”

 

Details of the source of the quote:
Six Characters in Search of an Author
By Luigi Pirandello, 1921.
English version by Edward Storer, 1922. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922.
This LATEX-based PDF version was prepared by Ron Burkey, from an HTML version of Eldritch Press.