Artificial Friends (AF) is a digital work created in Microsoft Excel. The piece shows two doll-like figures standing together in an open space, surrounded by loose marks, grids, and fragments of color.
While making the work, I was thinking about artificial companionship and the idea of human-like dolls or AI figures made to become friends with people. At the same time, the image can also be read as two human figures who appear social, decorative, and close to one another, but remain emotionally separate.
The figures are playful but slightly uneasy. Their clothing is built partly from visible grid patterns, connecting the image back to the spreadsheet itself. I was interested in the difficulty of friendship — whether between humans, or between humans and artificial beings — and the strange gap between being near someone and truly knowing them.
The work uses Excel as a drawing space rather than a spreadsheet, pushing a rigid digital tool into something more personal, awkward, and expressive.
Medium: Digital artwork created in Microsoft Excel; fine-art pigment print under acrylic glass.
