DAVIDE VICHI

My name is Davide Vichi: software engineer, father, husband, and movie buff.

I'm not a nerd. Let's just say computers and I speak the same language. It's a companion that puts food on my table and one that has allowed me to express myself artistically — and still does. At 20 I didn't have a recording studio, but with a PC I produced entire pop music albums. Never in a million years would I have thought that, twenty years later, I'd be making actual films on a small computer!

I first crossed paths with Artificial Intelligence long before transformers and LLMs were even a twinkle in anyone's eye — people were just starting to talk about machine learning. What drew me in was the philosophical idea behind it. The possibility of creating a thinking being like us... I wanted to take on that challenge and was dead set on making my mark. So I pushed myself to stand out in my studies. I ended up in Brussels, training neural networks inside a swarm of robots to recognise visual patterns on the floor. Love brought me back to Italy, where I shelved AI and let it gather dust... until 2023.

Generative AI... generative AI applied to media hit me like a bolt of lightning. It struck me that I finally had all the tools to communicate something whole. Not just music anymore, but visuals too. Music, sound, and images. A thousand stories woven over melodies. Because for me, artistic inspiration starts with music first. Chords give birth to images, sequences, and then the story that holds it all together.

When I feel the combination clicks, something wells up inside me — an urge to get it out. Almost a bodily need. I have to make what I've imagined real, tangible, and I just can't stop myself. We all chase beauty; at 40 I can no longer afford to let it slip away. I try to bring every engineering trick in the book — process, time management — to carve out space for this, for my family, and for my day job.

Along the way, a few awards and recognitions came in. Some from festivals with no dedicated AI category — which honestly meant a lot to me. I'm also part of Escape AI, a selective community of around 350 AI filmmakers from across the world. Nothing earth-shattering, but enough to tell me I'm heading in the right direction.

What follows are fragments of who I am — my attempts to reach out and touch life, and finally look it in the eye.