Artificial Intelligence

Intertwining associated experiments in image and sound generation using AI, Nearest Neighbor focuses on language acquisition and mimicry between humans, birds and machines, asking fundamental questions about consciousness, learning and understanding. The film is a contemporary reflection on the state of technology in relation to the natural world. It asks us to think about what we want from inter-species communication and what we expect from technologies that aspire to substitute for living beings.

Intertwining associated experiments in image and sound generation using AI, Nearest Neighbor focuses on language acquisition and mimicry between humans, birds and machines, asking fundamental questions about consciousness, learning and understanding. The film is a contemporary reflection on the state of technology in relation to the natural world. It asks us to think about what we want from inter-species communication and what we expect from technologies that aspire to substitute for living beings.

"In late December 2020 I began making videos of bouquets of Anemones using a microscope lens. The very limited focal length of the lens requires that the lens touch the subject to obtain focus. This imaging process developed into an odd intimacy between subject, apparatus and my body as I moved the handheld camera through the bouquets. The audio is made up of processed sync sound, samples from the Forbidden Planet soundtrack and computer voiced words from the Algorithms for Indeterminacy series.

This film is a recording of a live signal analog video/audio synthesizer performance with a voiced narration made in collaboration with an AI program. A speculative machine guided psychedelic broadcast of an astral floral projection. A fictional telepathic transmission that saturates the boundaries of perception with interlacing signals of interconnected consciousness.

— Les LeVeque