2017—

Lead Team: Xu Bing, Feng Yan, Zhang Wenchao, Sun Shining

Medium: Artificial intelligence generated film with variable duration

Time Length: Variable duration

Exhibition: The 5th Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival, 2021 Museum of Art Pudong, 2021-2022

This project works closely with artificial intelligence scientists to develop a real-time feature film production artificial intelligence system that involves no human production personnel (directors, screenwriters, photographers, or actors, etc.). In this interactive exhibit, the audience can input their preferred film genre (such as science fiction, crime, romance, etc.) and customize the narrative plot or style of the movie by entering keywords or sentences, resulting in a unique AI-generated movie. This project aims to pursue an element that transcends human creation and fulfills a demand that is absent in traditional film. Its concept emerges from human biases, including narrow emotional perspectives, political and economic interests that breed greed and immorality, as well as limitations in knowledge that impose restrictions. AI suggests the “internal structure” of human life by accumulating various human image materials from a neutral standpoint. This project is largely an experiment of the future possibilities of AI film.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/823196158?share=copy 

2017

Video, surveillance camera footage taken from public live-streaming websites

81'

Trailer

I’ve wanted to make a film from surveillance footage since 2013, but I had no access to the necessary resources. Since 2015, surveillance cameras in China have been linked to the cloud database: countless surveillance recordings have been streamed online. So I took up the project again. I collected a huge amount of footage and tried to use these fragments of reality to tell a story.

With no human agency operating them, surveillance cameras produce fascinating footage round the clock. Ineffably silent, these cameras record incessantly. Sometimes they record images that are beyond logical understanding, captured in one mad, fleeting instant. When these seemingly random yet intricately connected clips are assembled, what's the distance between the video fragments of real life and 'reality'?

—Xu Bing