Semiotic theory and code production, now half a century old, has already synthesized the rules that distinguish the recurring specific traits of an author and render his style identifiable. In the notion of the “aesthetic idiolect,” Umberto Eco provides the definition: the aesthetic idiolect is the internal rule governing a single text. An artwork (a novel, a film, a painting) does not merely employ existing codes; it creates its own. The mechanism operates as follows: within the work, novel correlations are established between expression (the way a word is uttered or an image is presented) and content, correlations that are valid only within that specific context. When an artist’s stylistic pattern recurs across multiple works, the textual idiolect expands into an authorial idiolect. If this mode of signification is subsequently imitated by an entire movement, the idiolect further expands to become the code of an artistic current.
For machines that process the logical mechanisms of codes, this task is already feasible: they must be instructed by the author and trained to implement that idiolect, then reproduce it in various declensions, drafts, or “semi‑finished” forms that remain amenable to intervention, modification, refinement, or simplification. In this second phase, the artist functions as a director, cutting, selecting, and discarding elements that do not satisfy the project’s conception. Thus, the author remains upstream of the entire process and at its final stage. The “shop apprentice,” the worker performing pure manual labor, may be an appropriately trained algorithm. This applies equally to graphic, painting, or sculpture works assisted by digital technologies.