Distortions of The Past

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Distortions of The Past – Austria

Fractal elements that resemble cosmic structures evoke the illusion of traveling through a fractal universe. Rules, in the form of prompts, and chance interact with each other to create a visual fantasy.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Visuals: Michael Sadowski
Music: Distortions of the Past by Dreamstate Logic

A Writer’s Odyssey

Seis anos após o sequestro de sua filha, um homem é contratado para matar o autor de um romance de fantasia, mas o mundo do romance parece se cruzar com a realidade. No romance, Redmane é o governante de uma aldeia que ele comanda com punho de ferro. Um jovem herói está em uma missão para acabar com o governo de Redmane. De alguma forma, o romance parece estar impactando a vida no mundo real e, portanto, a corporação quer impedir o autor de continuar seu trabalho.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a 2009 fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Charles McKeown. The film follows a travelling theatre troupe whose leader, having made a bet with the Devil, takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations and present them with a choice between self-fulfilling enlightenment or gratifying ignorance.
cinema full

AIDOL
Lawrence Lek präsentiert AIDOL, die Fortsetzung seines 2017er CGI-Films Geomancer. Mit einer vom Künstler geschriebenen und orchestrierten Partitur erzählt diese computergenerierte Fantasy die Geschichte eines verblassenden Superstars, Diva, der einen aufstrebenden KI-Songwriter für eine Comeback-Performance beim olympischen eSport-Finale 2065 engagiert. In einem Nebel-und-Spiegel-Reich aus fantastischer Architektur, empfindungsfähigen Drohnen und schneebedeckten Dschungeln dreht sich AIDOL um den langen und komplexen Kampf zwischen Mensch und Künstlicher Intelligenz. Ruhm – in all seiner Anziehungskraft und Leere – steht den größeren Widersprüchen einer Post-KI-Welt gegenüber, einer Welt, in der Originalität manchmal nur ein algorithmischer Trick ist und in der Maschinen die Fähigkeit haben, zu lieben und zu leiden.

Spring Summer 2019
Quinn’s clothes conjure a couture fantasy, with unabashedly extravagant shapes and lavish embellishments. This season the look veered between thigh-grazing confectionary frocks and a more dramatic voluminous silhouette that tumbled to the ground and swept the floor. The floral cocktail dresses of last season were even frothier this time around, bold in the shoulder and replete with handfuls of bows along the sleeves. If that sexy, legs-for-days line evoked frivolity, then the longer, grander gowns readdressed the balance.
FASHION LONDON

Dans 13 Tongues
Choreographer CHENG Tsung-lung has always been fascinated by his mother’s stories about “Thirteen Tongues”: the street artist and legendary storyteller from their neighbourhood in Taipei was known for being able to slip into various roles. With his full-length work, CHENG succeeds in becoming a modern “Thirteen Tongues” himself: He transforms Taoist rites, festive parades and the bustling street life of Taipei into a fantasy world, blurring the past and the present, the real and the surreal. Against a mysterious soundscape of Taiwanese sounds, Japanese Nakashi melodies and the electronic music of LIM Giong, the dancers stomp and tremble in ecstasy like enchanted shamans in an endless festival.

DIM

DIM’ is a music video based on the footage from the pilot episode of FJER, a poetic and freaky urban fantasy web series about the young bird-woman Crane’s emancipation from her father, ruler and lover Hawker.

FILE Sao Paulo 2019 | Anima +

Satyricon
Fellini Satyricon, or simply Satyricon, is a 1969 Italian fantasy drama film written and directed by Federico Fellini and loosely based on Petronius’s work Satyricon, written during the reign of Emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome. The film is divided into nine episodes, following Encolpius and his friend Ascyltus as they try to win the heart of a young boy named Gitón within a surreal and dream-like Roman landscape.
The film opens on a graffiti–covered wall with Encolpius lamenting the loss of his lover Gitón to Ascyltus. Vowing to win him back, he learns at the Thermae that Ascyltus sold Gitón to the actor Vernacchio. At the theatre, he discovers Vernacchio and Gitón performing in a lewd play based on the “emperor’s miracle”: a slave’s hand is axed off and replaced with a gold one. Encolpius storms the stage and reclaims Gitón. On their return to Encolpius’s home in the Insula Felicles, a Roman tenement building, they walk through the vast Roman brothel known as the Lupanare, observing numerous sensual scenes. They fall asleep after making love at Encolpius’s place. Ascyltus sneaks into the room, waking Encolpius with a whiplash. Since both share the tenement room, Encolpius proposes they divide up their property and separate. Ascyltus mockingly suggests they split Gitón in half. Encolpius is driven to suicidal despair, however, when Gitón decides to leave with Ascyltus. At that moment, an earthquake destroys the tenement.

Re-projection: Hoosac

Influenced by the utopian projects — and notable failures — of innovative artists and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, Frederick Kiesler, and Charles Eames, Tobias Putrih likens his works to experiments, or design prototypes. His use of cheap materials, including egg crates, cardboard, and plywood signify both a sense of potential and impending collapse. Many of the artist’s works reference the architecture and spectacle of the cinema: a space suspended between fantasy and reality, image and environment. With Re-projection: Hoosac Putrih distills the cinema to its most basic element: fishing line stretched across the gallery mimics the conical trajectory of a beam of light. A spotlight hits the strands of monofilament which in turn become a screen, reflecting an image in illuminated dots. Inspired by the Hoosac Tunnel just east of North Adams — a storied, engineering marvel that draws ghost-hunters to the area — Putrih’s tunnel is, likewise, both real and a representation, an optical trick that invites both wonder and investigation.

Augmented Shadow
File Festival

Augmented Shadow is a design experiment producing an artificial shadow effect through the use of tangible objects, blocks, on a displayable tabletop interface. Its goal is to offer a new type of user-experience. The project plays on the fact that shadows present distorted silhouettes depending on the light. Augmented Shadows take the distortion effect into the realm of fantasy. Shadows display below the objects according to the physics of the real world. However, the shadows themselves transform the objects into houses, occupied by shadow creatures. By moving the blocks around the table the user sets off series of reactions within this new fantasy ecosystem. In this installation, the shadows exist both in a real and a virtual environment simultaneously. It thus brings augmented reality to the tabletop by way of a tangible interface. The shadow is an interface metaphor connecting the virtual world and users. Second, the unexpected user experience results from manipulating the users’ visual perceptions, expectations, and imagination to inspire re-perception and new understanding. Therefore, users can play with the shadows lying on the boundary between the real, virtual, and fantasy. Augmented Shadow utilizes this unique interface metaphor for interactive storytelling. Maximizing the magical amusement of AR, it is embedding an ecosystem where imaginary objects and organic beings co-exist while each of them influences on each other’s life-cycle, even though it is not in use by users. Light and shadow play critical roles in this world’s functions causing chain reactions between virtual people, trees, birds, and houses. A set of tangible blocks allows users to participate in the ecosystem. Users can influence on the system by playing with the blocks or observe the changes of the shadows as if kids were playing with an ant farm.