The Sea Dreamed of Me by Thiago Britto
What dreams might have crossed the Atlantic before Columbus? What memories live in our bodies that history books have forgotten? These questions ripple through “The Sea Dreamed of Me,” a four-part film by Brazilian artist Thiago Britto.
Unfolding along the Bantu-Kongo cosmogram, the story reimagines Black travel to the Americas — drifting through the webs of time in cycles rather than lines.
“The Sea Dreamed of Me” is a work of critical fabulation that treats AI as “synthetic memory.” By crafting prompts that subvert algorithmic biases, Thiago moves beyond colonial narratives to produce images of Black freedom.
01. MUSONI [NASCIMENTO]
In Musoni [Nascimento | Birth], an African child and his family embark on a journey across the Atlantic before Columbus’s arrival. More than a physical crossing, their journey is a spiritual passage — the sea, a womb that signals the start of a new life.
02. KALA [CRESCIMENTO]
In Kala [Growth], the child enters the realm of stone guardians where ancestral memories are preserved, discovering that memories don't disappear but transform, waiting patiently to be found by those who are ready to listen.
03. LUVEMBA [MATURIDADE]
In Luvemba [Maturity], the child's dreams transport him to Palmares, where he meets leaders who teach him about resistance and the enduring struggle for freedom through celebrations, battles, and sacred rituals.
04. TUKULA [RENASCIMENTO]
In Tukula [Rebirth], the child awakens on the boat, his journey nearing its end. But now he understands a profound truth—the crossing never truly ends but is a continuous cycle of birth, memory, struggle, and renewal.
ABOUT THIAGO BRITTO 🪷
Thiago Britto is a photographer and researcher with a career that includes work in musical, documentary photography, and film cinematography. He explores the intersections of technology and creativity, dedicating himself to research that investigates and subverts the relationship between emerging technologies, Black memory, and the history of Brazil. His work seeks to redefine technological interactions, creating visual narratives that not only capture or fabricate reality but also evoke new forms of sensory and cultural understanding.
REFLECTIONS ON ANCESTRAL AI: SYNTHETIC MEMORY, DECOLONIAL FUTURES, AND GEN AI FOR CRITICAL FABULATION
At AIxD, we've been investigating the capabilities and limitations of generative AI (what is it good for and what is it absolutely not good for?) and what makes its outputs meaningful and impactful (what makes it good). In collaboration with Ancestral AI Research Artist Thiago Britto, we've deepened our observations and insights on AI in relation to cultural memory, decolonial futures, and ancestral wisdom.
GENERATIVE AI FOR CRITICAL FABULATION
Critical fabulation - the practice of imagining and creating narratives that challenge dominant historical perspectives - is emerging as a powerful application of generative AI.
This tension between colonial influence and decolonial imagination becomes a central theme in exploring how AI can be used to revisit and reimagine erased histories.
"Inserting this baggage of questioning into emerging technologies, which both facilitate the construction of images and reproduce limited imaginaries about Black existence, is also an act of subversion."
— Thiago Britto
CREATING WHAT WE WISH TO SEE, BUT HAVEN'T
One of the most challenging aspects of this project was using AI to visualize what has been historically erased or never documented. How do you prompt for images of transatlantic travel before Columbus when such imagery doesn't exist in historical records? This challenge led us to explore different approaches to prompting that go beyond visual references.
Prompting from Memory, Senses & Imagination / Multi-Sensory Prompting / Prompting in Textures, Rhythm, and Scent
We discovered that effective prompting often needs to engage multiple senses and memories. In Thiago's words, this involves:
💙 "Using narration, orality, breathing, pauses, rhythm, temperature"
💙 "Popular textures, color, and the taste of fruit"
💙 "Thinking about mixing organic sounds"
This multi-sensory approach to prompting helps create images that feel more unique and authentic to lived experience, rather than merely reproducing existing often trope-y visual references. This approach to prompting becomes not just a technical exercise but a form of cultural preservation and resistance, drawing on traditional practices of encoding knowledge in ways that preserve their meaning while protecting them from colonial appropriation.
THIAGO ON DOING ADDITIONAL RESEARCH TO FEED INTO HIS PROMPTS:
“After I started the project, I developed the habit of opening Google Maps and exploring places in Africa, observing aerial textures, dirt roads, major cities, and the coastal region. These are incredible records for feeding the imagination, especially when looking for general aesthetic references about a place you’ve never visited. However, the idea of something static bothered me, with no movement to suggest the passage of time. A map, in truth, should be alive, reflecting not only geography but also the direction and dynamics of an inhabited space.
During these explorations, I came across images of a river near a town called Nzambi. In Candomblé, Nzambi means God, and the name piqued my curiosity. It’s a village hidden in the coastal forest of the Congo. I started thinking about the possibility of navigators having set out from there, given that the nearest river flows into the sea.
As I dug deeper, I discovered the structure of the village and began shaping my prompts based on that space. I managed to create images that referenced the region, applying the color palette of the map to the production of the photos.”
PROMPT VIBING AND THE MASTER’S LANGUAGE
We also explored how different approaches to prompting - particularly through poetic language and local terminologies - can access different aspects of the AI's latent space.
Drawing inspiration from Nêgo Bispo's approach to breaking colonial thinking by changing imposed names ….
A key discovery was how prompting in different languages led to markedly different results. Using local or indigenous terms often produced different outcomes than their colonial language equivalents, suggesting that the colonizer's language might inherently limit our ability to break free from colonial imagery.
This became a way of reconciling personal memory with the collective knowledge embedded in the model, raising questions about how we can access and utilize these different data stores meaningfully.
"Creating prompts comes from attempts and dialogues: simple signs that translate my imagination. Sometimes direct, literal; other times figurative, reaching for the playful. A prompt, after all, is not the conclusion of a thought, but a piece of a series. The complete series is the true prompt."
— Thiago Britto
THE EMOTIONAL LABOR OF BREAKING COLONIAL CODES
In approaching this project, Thiago brings a powerful perspective on the relationship between memory, technology, and decolonial imagination. As he reflects:
"Even while striving to expel colonialism from my imagination and subvert its influences, it still manifests somewhere in the process. Whether in the aesthetics of a film, the rhythm, the script format, or the way I learned about my past."
One of the most challenging aspects of using generative AI for decolonial work is the way colonial perspectives are embedded in the technology itself.
"Creating images of a free Black child, the system collapses. First, because there are no records of such a performance; second, because we are denied the possibility of fabulating. The image backup insists on subjugated bodies, marginal aesthetics, and representations of the slave trade."
Through the project, we discovered how certain combinations of certain words go on to trigger deep and problematic associations with other qualities that need to be actively countered to be "broken".
💙 Black bodies + water → slave trade / dead bodies in sea → requiring explicit prompting for "alive, elegant"
💙 Asian + women → sexualized → requiring intervention to break stereotypes
These patterns reveal how colonial perspectives and biases are encoded in AI systems, requiring conscious intervention through careful prompt engineering. The emotional labor of encountering and having to actively break these associations became a central part of the creative process.
LOOKING FORWARD
This collaboration reveals both the potential and limitations of using generative AI for decolonial work. While the technology carries embedded biases that must be actively confronted and subverted, it also offers new possibilities for exploring, preserving, and creating cultural memory. By approaching AI as "synthetic memory" and combining it with traditional knowledge systems and practices, we can begin to imagine and create new narratives that honor both ancestral wisdom and future possibilities.
Through this work, we're learning how to use AI not just as a tool for creation, but as a means of exploring and expanding our understanding of memory, time, and possibility. As we continue this research, we remain committed to finding ways to use these technologies in service of decolonial futures.
On the right to imagine:
"Imagining a Black crossing before Columbus, towards the Americas, escapes my references. Even in childhood imagination, the heroes were always the white conquerors from the cartoons. Creating a space free of colonialism requires me to fabulate about this freedom, facing shame, insecurity, and fear, until I finally reach the right to imagine."
Thiago opens crucial questions about the relationship between artificial and organic memory.
"Is the creation of synthetic memory capable of reaching the organic sensory body? Do images created by AI gain a sense of existence by touching some feeling in the viewer? What keeps the images in a place of mutual creation is the existence of the organic imaginary?"
Raising these questions to think about images, aesthetics, textures that enable the dialogue between the mechanical and the organic, in terms of provoking senses using images. Provoking the idea that everything that is felt is memorized.
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