Cortometraggi

Ruined World: An AI Elegy

Logline:
Artificial Intelligence creates a visual poem about a post-apocalyptic world where human civilization has been erased by environmental collapse.

Synopsis:
“Ruined World” is a short experimental film generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in collaboration with award-winning contemporary artist and director Zoran Poposki, FRSA. This is the first ever short film where all the elements (visuals, text, and music) have been created utilizing artificial intelligence. In a post-apocalyptic world where humans have been eradicated due to planetary-wide environmental collapse, an artificial intelligence ruminates on the nature of existence through a visual poem.

The visuals are a series of AI-generated artworks created by Polyptech (Poposki’s creative alter ego in the Metaverse ) through text-to-image synthesis utilizing a neural network. The neural network has been trained by Polyptech through thousands of iterations to generate visuals based on a string of keywords associated to climate change, such as the Anthropocene, ecology, nature, etc.
The text is an AI-generated poem co-written with Poposki, based on the text of Henry David Thoreau’s reflection upon simple living in/with nature, “Walden”. The AI uses a generative text model developed by Open AI, leveraging machine learning and deep learning to achieve the generation of natural language. The resulting AI poem is then read by an AI text-to-speech voice generator.
The music in the film is a generative sound piece created by an AI music algorithm trained on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chorale BWV639 (Choral Prelude in F Minor).

Regia

Zoran Poposki FRSA, MFA, PhD is a multi-award-winning transdisciplinary visual artist, curator, and filmmaker in Hong Kong.

His work has been shown in more than 100 exhibitions, screenings and festivals worldwide, including Ars Electronica, Crypto Art And Digital Art Fair (CADAF) in Paris, 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana, XIII Cairo Biennale, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Xi’an Art Museum in China, Minsheng Art Museum Beijing, Art Basel Hong Kong, City Art Museum Ljubljana, Sergey Kuryokhin Modern Art Center in St. Petersburg, CICA Museum in South Korea, National Gallery of Macedonia, Xi’an Art Museum in China, Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, National Museum of Montenegro, Museu da Vila Velha Portugal, Museo de Arte de Ponce San Juan in Puerto Rico, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, Art Stays Festival of Contemporary Art in Slovenia, and the University of Sharjah. His public art projects have been presented on urban LED screens, video billboards, posters and billboards in NYC, Skopje, Dublin, Hong Kong, and the demilitarized border zone between South Korea and North Korea.

Awards include: CEC Artslink Award (New York), ArtSlant Prize (Los Angeles), Rise Art Prize Shortlist (London), Global Art Awards Finalist (Dubai, in association with The Wall Street Journal), ArtRights Prize Finalist (Italy), Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA, London), etc.

Poposki’s work is collected in the Luciano Benetton Foundation’s Imago Mundi collection (Italy) and in the Videotage Media Art Collection (Hong Kong). His work is archived in the AUP archive (a project of e-flux in collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery London), the Ocean Archive by TBA21-Academy, and Google Arts & Culture.

Filmography: Peace Piece (2022), Ruined World: An AI Elegy (2022), Rain (2020), Crisis (2020), The City Alone (2017-2020), We Immigrants (2017), Hong Kong Atlas (2013), Portrait of the Artist (2010), Different (2009), Here / The Border (2007)