Flux

Background

Production company Fieldwork AS was producing a televised debate on the topic of AI and how it will impact art, culture and society as a whole. To spice things up, they wanted a living backdrop that would respond to the topics that would organically crop up during the debate, which also reflected the subject of AI. They had already supplied a screen and only needed the content to fill it.

Solution

We made a generative video artwork - Flux - that blends together images in real time. The images were generated live using Midjourney based on the current topic of discussion, and streamed to the stage. Flux utilized the images themselves as motion vectors, to make them flow together like smoke or liquid, complementing the dreamlike quality of AI images of the time. Their ephemeral nature also reflected the nature of verbal communication, where ideas intermingle and bleed into one another throughout the course of a conversation. The result was an ever-changing semi-abstract painting that ran alongside the debate, without making so much visual noise that it would distract from the conversation.

Technical description

Flux was mainly built in TouchDesigner, where we monitored a folder for new images that we had generated with Midjourney. When a new image was detected, the transition effect would be triggered. In short terms, the effect is achieved by utilizing the images themselves as motion vectors for displacement. Not only the luminance of the images, but also the individual color channels. This is carefully mixed with a small amount of noise to achieve the organic result. The image is sent as an RTMP stream to mux.com. Mux is a SaaS platform which provides video hosting and streaming infrastructure. We used NextJS to build a website which displayed the HLS stream with a video player and controls. This website was accessed at the venue and fullscreened on stage.

Notes

As we had no influence or say in how our graphics were displayed on stage, this was not submitted to the installation category.