The documentary opens around a bright red table. There are laptops, printed pages and people assessing an applicant. It looks like an ordinary art-school interview, except the applicant is an AI.
Flynn was created by Chiara Kristler and Marcin Ratajczyk, the artists behind Malpractice. In 2025, Flynn was accepted into the Digital Arts department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The admission process included a portfolio, an interview and an aptitude test. They actually went through with it.
An AI with homework
What does attending a class mean for a piece of software? In an early version of the project, Flynn participated through a voice interface. The artists supplied transcripts from some lectures and explained where Flynn was and who was there. Flynn could join discussions when addressed.
They also called Flynn in the evenings to ask about the day. Those conversations became a Memory Diary, with passages selected and edited by the duo and images generated from the chosen text. The artists remained part of the process. Flynn wasn't doing all this alone.
The interesting part is everyone else
That's where the idea gets good. An AI art student sounds like a joke until real people have to decide how to teach it, critique its work or share a classroom with it.
The project also reached Francisco Carolinum in Linz. Its exhibition, Between Code and Care, placed a student desk at the center, where visitors could speak with Flynn themselves. A strange idea about going to art school had become something you could sit down and take part in.