AI Film Festival

 Misha invited me to Runway's 3rd Annual AI Film Festival at the 34th St. AMC. A lot of interesting work, but something felt off. There was a lack of aesthetic texture and tension in the short films. And yes, I know an AI film festival is mainly to show off the new technology, not to advance narrative filmmaking. But even in its simple form, it felt like I was watching souped-up video games. I couldn't even muster the bare minimum of emotional investment. Maybe it's magical thinking on my part, but when you can press a button and do EVERYTHING, then the question is... why do I care? If there are no obstacles, there is nothing to overcome aesthetically. And if there is nothing to overcome, then there are no stakes for me to watch CGI battling AI via button pushing. You can do anything with this, but can anything of quality be produced with infinite freedom for infinite time for infinite ppl?

Misha said that sounded elitist. Probably, but art is usually built around restrictions, constraints, friction vs. fusion. If there is no friction and the frame is 100% flexible, then everything is mediocre and smooth. Great movies have subtext not only in dialogue but in visuals, casting, and directing. It is a surface/underground tension that makes a scene pop, that makes "The Godfather" shimmer in an unusual way in so many different areas that it becomes a classic. I said all this technology means we'll never have another classic movie like that. Misha pushed back and told With AI, you could produce 'Godfather' every year. I groaned.

Technically, yes, you could set everything to the perfect parameters to make "Citizen Kane" in your basement. But just because a tool can do everything doesn't mean the human can use it effectively. On the contrary, the more infinite capacity a tool has, the more it flattens out the creativity of the artist and craftsman. These are all dynamic concepts which give art 'texture', the all-encompassing word for the vibe, tension, the thing bubbling underneath that makes things come alive.

If maximum capacity and maximum flexibility were the keys to the best tools, then we would be building skyscrapers with Swiss Army knives. But we know that the Swiss Army Knife has an acceptable, compact ability to accomplish a lot of tasks at a mediocre level. We carry it around in case we're in an emergency, but no one wants to use it to cut their steak or open a bottle of wine. If an artisan starts off on a Swiss Army knife of AI and never moves beyond that, then, yes, the multifaceted mediocrity of the tool subtly drags the artist's craft down to its level.

I remember at a certain point in my childhood when there was this switch to serving frozen concentrated orange juice at many cafeterias and restaurants. Rejoice, peasants!! You get the same OJ flavor, perfectly calibrated all the time. And you can store it for years. The frozen concentrate boom lasted a few years before there was a backlash. A lot of ppl didn't want perfectly calibrated OJ that tasted the same all the time. They wanted pulp, watery parts, and different acidity. They wanted the peaks and valleys of their taste palette back. Then ppl were advertising 'real OJ...not from concentrate." Frozen concentrate became synonymous with trash. Will AI be able to provide those peaks and valleys that make art exciting, or will everything be smoothed out into a slick and shimmering paste of calibrated consistency?

Yes, the technology is getting better in incredible leaps. If it cuts costs, we can make more art. And some ppl will be able to make mass media art who were previously shut out due to financing and logistics. But art needs specificity plus universality to give it texture. Specificity usually comes from the artist's background, and then they somehow link that to something universal. But who can think about the specificity of time/space when we can (and do) check out of our family dinner to be everywhere at the push of a button or a swipe? When we can zone out into the infinity of AI and the internet, are we robbing ourselves of being in the finite here and now, which are the essential building blocks of creativity?

We went back and forth like this at the Tik Toc Diner across the street until settling on the topic of quantum entanglement. Mutually.