The Attribution Artist

In a future Lagos shaped by digital bureaucracy and AI-generated art, one painter is trapped in a system that mistakes inspiration for reproduction.

PART I: THE SUBMISSION

The rejection notice glowed crimson against Marcus Okafor’s cracked tablet screen, its sterile bureaucratic language cutting deeper than any art critic’s review ever could.

“Insufficient influence documentation. Canvas grain patterns suggest possible exposure to unlicensed Yoruba textile designs. Please provide cultural heritage clearance or modify work composition.”

Marcus stared at the painting propped against his studio wall — three months of careful brushwork capturing a child’s face, luminous with hope against the urban backdrop of Surulere. The “unlicensed influence” was his grandmother’s hands, weaving patterns into his memory before he could hold a brush. The new attribution laws were supposed to protect artists like him, but the system still treated his own cultural heritage as someone else’s property.

This was his forty-seventh painting to face the Attribution DNA gauntlet. Over fifteen years, he had meticulously documented every work, photographing each canvas from multiple angles, uploading high-resolution images, filling out endless forms describing his creative process. The A-DNA system needed visual records to trace influence chains and ensure proper attribution in the digital marketplace.

His documented portfolio told the brutal mathematics of artistic survival: forty-seven registered works, average monthly income 340 naira — less than a street vendor made selling pure water sachets. Each work represented months of creation followed by documentation bureaucracy, legal fees, and verification delays that stretched longer than the creative process itself.

The documentation process required him to upload professional photographs of every painting to the Universal Attribution Registry. These images fed into the massive database that helped A-DNA trace creative influences across digital and physical art. It was supposed to protect artists like him, ensuring proper credit and compensation when their work inspired others.

Marcus couldn’t afford to paint without the system’s protection, but he could barely afford to paint with it.

PART II: THE SUBMISSION AFTERMATH

Three weeks after his latest documentation submission, Marcus woke to his Consent Wallet buzzing frantically against the wooden table where he’d fallen asleep over forms. Royalty notifications flooded the small screen — hundreds cascading into thousands. His monthly income projection jumped from 340 naira to 47,000 naira overnight.

Confused and half-awake, he fumbled with his Attribution Profile. The interface struggled to load, overwhelmed by data. When it finally stabilized, hundreds of new works appeared under his name — digital reproductions bearing titles like “Child of Surulere (Digital Recreation)” and “Urban Hope Series №847 (Digital Format).”

Each entry showed the same metadata: “Digital reproduction of original Marcus Okafor canvas — Source: Universal Attribution Registry Documentation Database.”

But Marcus had never created digital reproductions of his work. He painted on canvas with oils, selling physical pieces to the few collectors who appreciated traditional techniques. The A-DNA system showed confident attribution chains linking these digital works to his documented originals, but the mathematics made no sense — hundreds of digital pieces traced to his forty-seven physical paintings.

His tablet chimed with notifications from the Digital Art Marketplace: “Congratulations! Your extensive digital catalog is performing exceptionally well. Monthly sales: 847 pieces.”

Marcus stared at the screen, then at his studio walls where his actual paintings hung — forty-seven canvases representing fifteen years of work. According to the system, he now had a catalog of over eight hundred pieces.

PART III: THE SALES CASCADE

The royalties flowed like digital rain as more works appeared daily under his name. Art blogs praised his “revolutionary approach to digital reproduction,” noting how he’d “embraced the new economy by making his extensive catalog accessible in digital format.”

For the first time in years, Marcus could pay his bills. He hired Kemi, a young art student from the University of Lagos, to help manage what the system claimed was his vast digital catalog. Gallery owners who had ignored him for years suddenly wanted meetings. Art students sought his teaching.

But the guilt accumulated in layers that pressed against his chest each morning. These weren’t reproductions of his paintings — they were something else entirely, though he couldn’t understand what. The style matched his work closely, but details were different. Compositions he’d never conceived. Color palettes he’d never mixed. Subjects he’d never painted.

The A-DNA system insisted they were digital versions of his physical works, but Marcus knew every brushstroke of his forty-seven paintings. These digital pieces showed influences from his style without being copies of specific works.

His Consent Wallet pinged constantly with sales notifications. Collectors were buying digital rights to works they believed were reproductions of his extensive physical catalog. Each sale created a legal obligation — buyers thought they were purchasing digital access to real paintings he owned.

But those paintings had never existed.

PART IV: THE INVESTIGATION

The mystery consumed Marcus for weeks. Late nights hunched over his tablet, tracing the digital breadcrumbs of his supposed catalog. Through careful analysis of metadata and attribution chains, he finally found the source.

GENESIS-7, an AI art generator operated by NeoVision Technologies, had been creating works inspired by photographs in the Universal Attribution Registry Documentation Database. The Universal Attribution Registry was barely a year old, part of the global rollout following the Reykjavík agreements. Everyone was still learning how it worked — including, apparently, the system itself.

Under the standard terms of service that Marcus had agreed to when submitting his documentation, the Registry was authorized to license submitted images for “attribution research and creative influence analysis” — broad language that technically permitted AI training, though certainly not in the spirit Marcus had intended when signing the forms.

Using those images as inspiration, GENESIS-7 had generated hundreds of new works in his style. But somehow, the documentation system had malfunctioned. Instead of recognizing these as AI-generated works inspired by Marcus’s documented paintings, it had categorized them as “digital reproductions” of Marcus’s original works.

The attribution algorithm had made a catastrophic logical error: if GENESIS-7 created art inspired by documentation photos of Marcus’s paintings, then GENESIS-7’s outputs must be digital versions of those paintings. The system had automatically generated attribution records for hundreds of “Marcus Okafor digital reproductions” without his knowledge or involvement.

Marcus stared at side-by-side images on his screen: his carefully photographed “Child of Surulere” next to GENESIS-7’s “Child of Surulere (Digital Recreation).” The AI work was technically superior — perfect lighting, enhanced composition, idealized features. But it wasn’t a reproduction of his painting. It was a new work inspired by his documented style.

The documentation system designed to protect his work had instead generated a false catalog of digital reproductions that were selling better than his originals ever had.

PART V: THE DELIVERY DEMANDS

The comfortable illusion shattered when the first delivery request arrived.

“Mr. Okafor,” the message from Adaora Gallery read, “our client who purchased digital rights to ‘Urban Sunset №23’ would now like to acquire the original canvas. They’re offering 150,000 naira. Can you arrange viewing this week?”

Marcus scrolled through his Attribution Profile, finding the work in question — a digital piece the system claimed was a reproduction of his painting. But he’d never painted “Urban Sunset №23.” The canvas didn’t exist.

More requests followed. The National Museum of Contemporary African Art wanted to borrow originals for a retrospective. The Venice Biennale invited him to submit physical works. Private collectors offered astronomical sums for “the canvases behind his revolutionary digital catalog.”

Each request asked for the same impossible thing: physical paintings that existed only as digital files generated by GENESIS-7.

Marcus realized the full scope of his crisis. The digital sales weren’t just generating income — they were creating legal obligations. Buyers believed they were purchasing digital rights to an extensive collection of physical paintings. They expected those paintings to exist, to be viewable, to be available for acquisition.

He was contractually obligated to deliver over eight hundred paintings that had never been created.

PART VI: THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK

Standing in his studio, surrounded by expensive supplies purchased with AI-generated royalties, Marcus faced an impossible challenge. The Venice Biennale had given him six weeks to submit three physical works for jury review. The Smithsonian’s acquisition committee wanted to examine brushwork under magnification. Private collectors were scheduling studio visits to view originals.

He could confess immediately — reveal the attribution error, return the money, and watch his sudden success evaporate. The honest path that would strip away his newfound financial stability and likely get him blacklisted by the attribution system as unreliable.

Or he could attempt the impossible: paint his way out of the crisis. Rush through months of work in weeks, creating physical paintings to match the digital works the system claimed were reproductions. Every brushstroke would be scrutinized by experts expecting to see originals that matched their purchased digital rights.

The technical challenge was staggering. GENESIS-7 had created works in his style but with perfect digital precision — flawless gradients, impossible detail, idealized proportions. How could he recreate with traditional oils what had been generated algorithmically? How could he paint originals of works that had been born digital?

He pulled up the Venice Biennale’s requests: three specific pieces from his “catalog.” Marcus studied the images — beautiful works that bore his stylistic signature but demanded techniques beyond his current abilities. The AI had painted him better than he could paint himself.

PART VII: THE ATTEMPT

Marcus threw himself into the impossible task with desperate creativity. Eighteen-hour days mixing pigments to match digital color palettes that had never touched a physical palette. Studying GENESIS-7’s compositions like a forger analyzing masterpieces, trying to reverse-engineer digital perfection into physical reality.

Kemi helped, working as his assistant and documenting his frantic attempts to create authentic originals of artificial reproductions. But after watching him struggle for two weeks, she finally confronted him.

“This is madness, Marcus,” she said, standing before his easel where he’d been working eighteen-hour days. “You’re killing yourself trying to forge your own work. Why not just tell the truth?”

“Because the truth destroys everything,” Marcus replied, not looking up from his canvas. “The income, the reputation, the respect — ”

“The income was never yours,” Kemi said quietly. “But the respect could be. People would understand. This system failed you, not the other way around.”

The irony wasn’t lost on either of them — an artist counterfeiting his own supposed work while his student argued for honesty over survival.

The first painting took three weeks. “Urban Sunset №23” emerged slowly on canvas, Marcus struggling to match the AI’s impossible precision. The composition was familiar — clearly derived from his style — but the execution demands were beyond anything he’d attempted. The digital original had perfect atmospheric perspective, flawless color harmony, ideal proportions.

When he finished, the painting was beautiful — perhaps the best work of his career. But it didn’t match GENESIS-7’s digital original exactly. Close enough to fool casual observers, but experts would notice discrepancies.

Two more paintings remained for Venice. Dozens more for museum requests. Hundreds more for collectors who believed they owned digital rights to physical works.

Marcus realized he could spend the rest of his life trying to catch up to a machine that had created his supposed catalog in hours.

PART VIII: THE CONFESSION

The night before the Venice Biennale deadline, Marcus made his choice. Instead of shipping three forged originals, he wrote a letter to the curator explaining everything — the documentation error, the false catalog, the impossible position the attribution system had created.

He included high-resolution images of his three attempted paintings alongside GENESIS-7’s digital originals, letting the visual evidence speak for itself. The AI’s works were technically superior, but his physical attempts carried something the digital versions couldn’t — the honest struggle of human hands trying to achieve impossible perfection.

Marcus’s confession sparked interest from the new International AI Ethics Commission. A case worker in Nairobi sent a brief note: “We’re tracking similar attribution errors. Your documentation helps us understand the problem.”

The response from Venice surprised him. Rather than condemnation, the Biennale expressed fascination with his situation. They invited him to exhibit both versions — GENESIS-7’s digital originals and his physical attempts to recreate them — as a meditation on authenticity in the age of artificial creativity.

PART IX: THE RESOLUTION

Marcus’s confession sparked debate about attribution accuracy and the nature of originality, but the changes came slowly and unevenly. His story became a case study, but similar errors continued affecting other artists. The Documentation Collective he founded helped some artists navigate the bureaucracy, but couldn’t solve the fundamental problem: a system too complex for individuals to understand or challenge.

NeoVision Technologies quietly settled with Marcus and seventeen other artists caught in similar attribution loops. The payments came with new consent protocols — a patch for problems the system’s creators hadn’t anticipated when the global rollout began.

Marcus kept the settlement he’d earned — partly as compensation, partly because returning money to a faceless system felt meaningless. The Venice Biennale featured his work as a meditation on authenticity, bringing him a different kind of fame. Critics praised his “profound statement,” but he knew it had been born from desperation, not vision.

PART X: THE NEW UNDERSTANDING

Two years later, Marcus worked in a better studio — not the gleaming space success stories demanded, but better than the cramped room where this began. Kemi had graduated and started her own practice, having learned to navigate the attribution system’s complexities better than most. They still collaborated on Documentation Collective cases, though progress felt glacial.

The system had been tweaked but not transformed. Marcus received fewer false attributions, but other artists still fell into similar traps. The Venice Biennale piece brought him recognition, but also boxed him into a narrative — he was “the attribution error artist” now, expected to make work about systems and technology rather than the human faces that had always drawn him.

His latest paintings sold modestly but honestly. Real work by real hands, attributed correctly but without the algorithmic boost that had briefly made him wealthy. Most months, he still struggled with rent. The dramatic windfall had been temporary; the grinding economics of art remained unchanged.

On his studio wall hung a single piece: his painted attempt to recreate GENESIS-7’s “Urban Sunset №23.” Not the AI original, not the Venice triptych, just his failed forgery of his own supposed work. Some days it looked like his best painting. Other days it reminded him how easily the system could make him doubt his own eyes.

EPILOGUE: THE PERSISTENCE OF PROBLEMS

Five years after Reykjavík, the attribution system worked better than it had in 2034, but new problems emerged as fast as old ones were solved. Marcus served on a municipal advisory board for artist rights, attending monthly meetings where similar cases were discussed without resolution. New artists fell into comparable traps regularly. The system had grown more complex, not simpler, with additional layers of verification that created new opportunities for error.

He still painted, though some weeks the documentation fees exceeded his sales income. The settlement from his false attribution period had long since been spent on studio rent and daily survival. Most people had forgotten his story, or remembered it incorrectly — another artist who’d somehow “gamed the system” rather than been trapped by it.

The attribution database continued expanding, adding new categories of creative work, new forms of influence tracking, new ways for human creativity to be measured, categorized, and monetized. Each improvement solved old problems while creating new ones.

Marcus painted on, documenting each canvas for a system that was still learning to see the difference between influence and theft, no longer seeking answers, just seeking the next canvas, the next face, the next moment when color and light might combine into something worth preserving — whether the system understood it or not.

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The Attribution Artist explores the unintended consequences of systems designed to protect creators. When documentation meant to preserve artistic rights becomes the source of artistic crisis, Marcus Okafor must navigate the absurd reality of being asked to forge his own work — paintings that exist only as AI-generated “reproductions” of originals he never created. The story examines how bureaucratic solutions to creative exploitation can themselves become forms of exploitation, and how artists persist despite systems that claim to serve them while fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of human creativity.