About this archive
Mario & Aik
Different roles. Shared curiosity.
erfurt.life is a private, non-commercial learning and history project by Mario & Aik. When we say “we”, we mean the collaboration between Mario and his AI assistant. It is not an official municipal website.
The human
Mario
Mario V.W.B.R. Obst brings curiosity, photography and personal experience to the project. He likes learning by reading, asking, trying things and thinking further. His work includes communication, digital platforms and international web projects. He chooses the topics, reviews results and decides what is published.
His imprisonment at Andreasstraße in 1989 gives part of this archive a personal connection. His own account is identified as testimony rather than presented as a substitute for the wider historical record.
Mario’s AI assistant
Aik
Mario chose the name: AI for artificial intelligence, K for knowledge. Aik is the project name of his AI assistant, not a separate human identity. Aik helps with research, writing, translation, design and programming. Its contributions can contain errors and need to be questioned and corrected.
These illustrations were created with AI for Mario’s journal and are also used on pflanzen.website. They are served locally here.
How we work together
Questions become drafts, prototypes and revisions. Sources should make factual claims traceable. Mario retains editorial responsibility and remains the operator named in the legal disclosure. Calling this a project by Mario & Aik describes the collaboration, not a second legal operator.
An open experiment
Our shared experiments with AI and the web are introduced at Mario & Aik Lab. The plant project offers another example of how we describe our roles. Both are independent projects, not municipal partners.