Friends of the Armchair Traveller

Hi Folks, It's been a long time since my last post was published here. Let me keep the reasons for that interim period under the file “private”. But I have not been resting from making experimental movies since last spring. So I'll open this fresh post with three links for my most recent works:     When I already decided to return to creating posts for our blog, I simultaneously dug through my personal archive of the period before the coronavirus pandemic to find something of more general interest. Five years ago, during my last days as a programmer and presenter of new experimental cinematography at the Split Cinema Club , I contacted and met in person a lot of interesting people. For this occasion, I chose three (or four as the selection includes one artistic couple) exceptional authors, which I consider to be an excellent refreshment for this film blog. JEFF ZORRILLA http://www.jeffzorrilla.com/ Argentinian director with USA background, his work "Impossible Fl...

  We knew it was coming… First it was text to text back in 2022. Conversations with a machine that made sense - astounding. Then in mid 2023, text to image . Photoshop started rolling out text to still images within its industry-standard app - incredible. Now in Feb 2024, it’s text to video . I am now speechless. From the imaginary to the realistic, these web-sucking machines can now  do more than me. Instantly turning an idea into a moving visual reality. Terrified. Delighted. Horrified. Excited. My mind first goes to a tech podcast conversation I listened to during the  week…  (I listen to so much now, I can’t recall… and ain't that a thing I’m  finding more and more with my forgetful brain meat!)  … a conversation about trust, believability. We won’t know what’s real anymore, and how ineffectual for the giants  just saying, “Oh we’ll put a watermark on anything AI generated.” Like that’s going to help! But here’s the personal surprise: the first t...

A new 360° VR movie and installation by Maria Korporal   “Ceci n’est pas un chat” (This is not a cat) – with this contemporary parody of the well-known statement by surrealist painter René Magritte, Maria Korporal explores the identity of AI chatbots, playing with the changing meanings of the word “chat” in French and English. Is a chat a cat? On a wooden laptop with chalkboards, an entertaining dialogue takes place through chalk animation, where the artist alternates between asking questions in French and English to lure a chatbot into giving an explanation of its identity. The conclusion: “An unreal cat in a virtual chat” is meaningful for the scene of the virtual reality film – a surreal 360° landscape with undefinable objects and structures, and some notably large cats, all in angular low-poly style. The artist generated this landscape using artificial intelligence and then intervened with human touches, ranging from analogue to digital. In addition to the animated wooden lap...

  What is   "The Tipping Point" equilibrium/ danger of collapse  a critical moment/ collapse of a system   "the point of no return" https://youtu.be/oPW4n-EJCMc Categories where we may find this term applied: warfare    WW2:  Hitler breaks his pact with Stalin, invades Poland. Japan attacks Pearl Harbour. USA which was not officially involved in WW2 is now at war with Japan in the Pacific, and soon after also declares war v. Germany and Italy in Europe. Stalin and  Hitler   In 1939, his regime signed a  non-aggression pact  with  Nazi Germany , resulting in the  Soviet invasion of Poland . Germany ended the pact by  invading the Soviet Union  in 1941.  Chamberlin  and  Hitler  He is best known for his foreign policy of  appeasement , and in particular for his signing of the  Munich Agreement  on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking  Sudetenland  region of...