Argonauta

The Ship That Speaks

The shipyard

How this ship was built

Every ship tells you who built it. This page tells the choices, philosophical and technical, behind argonauta.art.

A ship built by four hands

This site was born in a few days, in dialogue with an artificial intelligence: I set the course, it proposed, drew, wrote the code, and sometimes got it wrong. It is, in miniature, the book’s first workshop: concrete proof that with AI you can build something real, as long as you keep a hand on the tiller.

The name and the harbour

Argonauta is the name I have used for years to describe myself: someone who sets out without knowing what he will find. The domain is .art because this is an artist’s project and because it pairs with giorgiopatuelli.art. And because, after all, art and technique share the same root: the Latin ars and the Greek téchne.

The colours

The palette comes from the myth and from the Mediterranean.

Marble
The warm white of temples and of the page.
Ink
The deep sea, the night, writing.
Fleece gold
The treasure the Argonauts were seeking.
Sardinian aquamarine
Shallow Sardinian water over pale sand.
Deep aquamarine
The sea where it grows deep: the colour of links.
Terracotta
The Greek vases on which the Argonauts were painted.

The typefaces

Headings are set in Cormorant Garamond, descended from the Renaissance types of Claude Garamond and the tradition of the printed book. Body text is set in Jost, a geometric sans serif inspired by German typefaces of the 1920s. Ancient and modern together, like the book: Greek myth and artificial intelligence.

The seas beneath

Every page has a slow, light animated background, tied to a stage of the voyage:

  • Home: light on shallow water, the shimmering nets the sun draws on the seabed.
  • The book: the constellation of the Argo. The ancients saw the ship in the sky, Argo Navis, the largest constellation of the heavens.
  • Logbook: the portolan chart, with the wind lines of medieval sea charts and a compass rose turning very slowly.
  • The crew: the wake of the oars, circles widening on the water.
  • About me and Contact: the waves.
  • The shipyard: a design drawing, where the outline of the ship slowly draws itself.

The drawn ship

The drawing on the Home page is a Greek galley in fine line: square sail, oars, a curved stern as on ancient vases. On the prow there is a small gold dot: the beam from Dodona, the voice of the ship.

Choices of respect

  • No tracking and no profiling cookies.
  • Typefaces are hosted on the site, with no calls to outside services.
  • Joining the crew requires a double confirmation, and you can leave with one click.
  • If your system is set to reduce motion, the backgrounds stay still.
  • The site is hosted in Italy.

Two languages, one crew

The site speaks Italian and English: the book is born in Italian, but the sea has no borders. At the top right, IT and EN take you to the twin page in the other language.

The tools on board

WordPress for the site, Aruba for hosting, Polylang for the two languages, MailPoet for the crew. The book is written in Obsidian, in my «second brain», where every chapter is linked to the ideas it grows from.