The images look like AI made them. A Barcelona studio called RETOKA made them in Photoshop and prints “100% Photoshop, no AI” on the project pages.
The disclaimer exists because nobody looking at the glitch portraits can tell what produced them. When oil painters signed canvases, they didn’t need to specify “100% linseed oil, no acrylic.” The media were distinguishable by the surface. Now they aren’t, and provenance can no longer be read off the object — someone has to tell you.
The Open Press Project makes etchings on a press that was 3D-printed from open-source files. The etchings look like etchings. Nothing in the ink on paper reveals whether the press was cast iron or PLA plastic. The 3D printer is invisible in the final print, erased by the medium it produced.
Both cases describe the same event: the tool drops out of its own output. When that happens, provenance becomes testimony. And testimony has a different failure mode than observation – you can verify a material trace by looking, but a declaration requires trusting the declarer.
“100% Photoshop” declares where the work stands. The method has gone silent in its own output, and the artist has to speak for it.