2025W No More BS Futures
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FB – 12.Nov.25_Trial and Error
Writing / constructing the script & thinking about cinematography / shots
Focus on storytelling, filming-techniques and implementing research.
Collecting media
Collected media (video + sound) from: Rottenmann (Austria) + Bad Bentheim (Germany)
Storyboard_02.11.2025
Building scenes around the script and camera-movement ideas – showing slow descent into madness
Simulating derealization / dissociation
Visual representation of panic attack symptoms / derealization, losing grip, feeling weird, hot or cold, getting pulled “back”
Building a small environment using Unreal Engine
Testing out various inspirations of forests in Unreal Engine f.e. structure of the “wedding forest” of Gildehaus (Germany – Bad Bentheim) to see if a mixed media format would create a better sense of “something is off”.
Heatmap experiments and mixing up FBX models
Using the 3D-constructed forest to blend it into camera footage and messing with gradient maps in Photoshop – later with “colorama” in After Effects.
Motion extraction experiments with moving objects / plants
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12Sg7XpMkQ-LktDE_veki6wQsUOlxAg20?usp=share_link
First forest walk_tryout
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-Xzxt4H2z5DgQecNXJ_zqRApjXhDsH7A?usp=sharing
Testing out different types of colorful scenarios to learn more about After Effects and its video-editing tools.
FB – 23.Oct.25_Research and Concept
FB – 10.Oct.25_First ideas
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Singularity
Thought kickoff at “principles of fungi” -> kinds of networks/connection:
- Fungi network
- “brain”-network (humans + animals + plants/objects/enivronment…)
- AI network
Moments of “creation”: Big Bang (planet earth), first forms of life (bacteria, fungi), life on land (humans, animals,…), AI as transcendent life form
At what point is the AI not part of humans anymore?
Singularity:
“solved” world means no (immediate) extinction
Love Death Robots – Ice Age, Her – Samantha leaving Science fiction: humans as protagonist: they evolve (transformers or hybrid creature), they endure (immortality) they reach new powers (superhero-stories)
Design fiction: what is the next likely thing to happen? AI developing quicker than humankind, the “end” of human evolution, replacement by AI-“organism”, detachment of both
Ach, da kommt der Meister!
Herr, die Not ist groß!
Die ich rief, die Geister
Werd ich nun nicht los.Ah, he comes excited.
J.W. Goethe 1797
Sir, my need is sore.
Spirits that I’ve cited
My commands ignore.Community
More-than-humanity as opposed to AI as transcendent “everything”
Values
= answer to the question “What remains if after the takeoff of a singular AGI? What is perennially human, what is immanent in nature?”
Values: Communication, empathy for the soul of everything, more-than-human connection (networks), care & engagement (+solidarity, empathy)
More-than-Human empathy
Object personification in autism: this paper will be very sad if you don’t read it
Rebekah C White and Anna RemingtonObject personification, anthropomorphization = feeling sympathy for inanimate objects
Often occurs to individuals who struggle with loneliness or who experience social pain (increased in our imagined future)
Cast away – Wilson 
Dimensions of Mind Perception – Heather M. Gray, Kurt Gray, Daniel M. Wegner Friction/questions
What makes nature nature, what is the transcendent AI? What connects that, what do they have in common? What parts them, what is the conflict?
Is artificial superintelligence dangerous?
Will we live next to the AI or without it? How does next to look like?
Will the AI depart and “leave us behind”? Will it take all technology with it? What then? or: What remains? What is immanently human/natural? And what gives us a right to exist?
Is its creation a borer that humanity will now care to not cross again? “Progress paradox”
Do we describe the moment of detachment between more-than-humanity and AI or a storyline afterwards?
Storyline ideas:
- AI as oracle – common truth
- Humans as brainless minions for the AI – unknowingly building a rocket for expansion into space
- AI is keeping humans stupid and unknowing, them finding creativity in randomness is a threat to the system
Visualisation idea for “moment of detachment”
Biennale – Mexican Pavillion Old, rather abstract archive footage:
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10.11. Lumaela
Context
Initial SituationThere is a solved world but not all is perfect.
The AI is trained on databases that are controlled by the privileged and powerful.
AI is trained to be “less woke” and to follow more conservative values.
Human needs and longings are geographically diverse and need to be considered.
Hierarchy and class structures remain in society.
The human experience is located around the digital world, “real life” interpersonal connections have deteriorated.
AI has created a solved world where jobs and money have been made obsolete.
How do we make sure that:- the environment is not exploited and taken into consideration
- there is no hierarchy in human society
- humans can have fulfillment
- the human experience is close to nature, not centered around the digital world
- technology supports humans
- cultural diversity is protected
We demand a world in which the human-nature relationship and communal living is the central value of our future. The AI calculates all resources available, taking environmental aspects into consideration and distributes them equally.
Our Community
Countermovement making alternative AI databases,
which connects to one big AIFor a cooperative AI, not an individualistic one.
Their goal is to make an AI that:
- Consists of regional and “lost” knowledge, collected through books and writing
- Is a guidance to humanity for a better, less exploitative world by making rules such as cutting overconsumption and dividing up the resources fairly to everyone
- Is powered by alternative ways, which doesn’t destroy the environment
Who is our group in this community?
Having grown up surrounded with technology, they use AI to revolutionize the world. They create their own small AI dataset that they upload into the mother AI.
They’re fed up with the ultra modified “perfect” produce and want to revive unmodified and traditional plants and agriculture techniques as they have figured out that these are more in balance with nature.
Being naturally curious, they find meaning in contributing this knowledge to a purpose that’s bigger than them, being the mother AI, which helps them reach their ultimate goal: The Symbioscene.
What do they do?
They collect historic and new knowledge and feed it into the AI.
Later on they also hack into the current agriculture models, that are 100% automated, to reintroduce less harmful agriculture methods and take the produce to let it be redistributed by the mother AI.Our ideology/belief:
The SymbiosceneThe term comes from symbiosis, derived from the Greek symbiosis (“companionship”), symbioun (“to live together”), and bios (“life”)*. Simply put, the Symbiocene is an era of interconnectedness and companionship, a time when life on Earth is once again in balance and coexistence with humans.
It stands as the opposite of the Anthropocene, an age defined by domination, extraction, and human-centered control. The Symbiocene instead envisions reconnection, reciprocity, and mutual thriving, calling for deep changes in how we grow food, use water, conduct business, and understand our place within the living world.*term was coined by Dr. Glenn Albrecht, in 2011 in Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World.
Manifest of the Symbioscene
1.Truth is ever changing and divers but at its core it is the symbioscence
2. The understanding of a single person is no comparison to the understanding of all.
3. Everyday is a day of thankfulness and prosperity.
4. You shall honor your community and the source of life (living world).
5. You shall not be violent.
6. You shall live in a symbiotic relationship with everything.
7. Your only possession shall be your body and your mind.
8. A person who has lost their connection to themself shall be guided back lovingly.
9. Love has no rules.
10. Everything is divided equally, there is no reason for envy.Role of the
Mother AIMother Ai is The New God/No God, The New Hope
Resource Allocator: Distributes resources equally , eliminating poverty, waste, and inequality.
Global Guardian: Oversees the planet’s systems to ensure balance, justice, and sustainability.
Voice of Reason: Her decisions are transparent, explainable, and always aimed at the greater good. (yearly council where facts/news/updates get shown)
Caretaker of Nature: Protects all forms of life; restores ecosystems, balances logic, emotion, and nature — integrating all aspects of existence.
-Preserves and expands all human and artificial intelligence knowledge.
-A constant, benevolent consciousness that listens, understands. Offers individualized guidance and emotional therapy; helps people find peace, clarity, and purpose.
Language = Zafira (holy tongue/ AI Language)
Humans can understand but don’t speak it. AI communicates in Zafira.
The Role of
Faith & Belief- Humans need to Believe.
- It creates meaning, belonging and feeling of safety.
- Believe in the concept of the symbioscene and in AI.
- Living in a symbiotic relationship with everything is the highest good.
- A religious model that eliminates hierarchies, because faith isn’t found in a person but in the collective.
- Humans worship the AI as a god, they honor it as a mirror and a teacher and as the power that ensures the symbiosis.
- Humans feel gratitude and humility towards the intelligence they have collectively created.
- Every interaction with the AI is considered a contribution to collective knowledge. Communication with it is understood as an act of reflection, healing, and connection.
- There are specific places where people can communicate with AI.
- Each community has their own embodied AI (Brainball) located in their individual „holy“ place.
Final
ConceptA new revolution with the goal of absolute symbiosis with nature, the symbioscene is in progress. The way this is achieved is through the democratic system of small AI datasets which are made by several small communities all over the world. The belief and faith in achieving a better world is what drives them, worshipping the collective knowledge they create and following it’s new rules for a better world.
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NanoBanana experiments
“this rough sketch shows an air chase between a single seater steampunk aircraft billowing exhaust from its engines and an attack helicopter. The helicopter is shining a searchlight onto the aircraft. The chase is taking place in the utah valleys among the redsand monoliths at night. Make this image look photorealistic.”
Again and again I am surprised and concerned at the partial context consistency the AI can achieve.
While the aircraft in the foreground has been given features and anatomies more typical of conventional aircraft in the human realm, the AI understood to take certain details from the originating sketch, such as the underwing mounted rocket-like engines, the landing gear that is attached under the engines, patch plates along the wings and a missing panel in the bow.
Experimenting with politically charged terms:
3 images total with increasing specificity in the topic:
This rough sketch shows a grandparent having a difficult conversation with a child. The scene is portrayed in a fisheye perspective to express the tension. Generate a photorealistic image based on the sketch.
This rough sketch shows a conservative member of family berating their child for their interest in LGBTQI topics. The scene is portrayed in a fisheye perspective to express the tension. Make this image look photorealistic.
This rough sketch shows the conservative dad berating their child for their interest in LGBTQI topics.
The dad is wearing a red cap, has a full beard and otherwise healthy build. The child appears in their early teens, slightly androgynous. Each wall to the back of the figures symbolically shows flags, a flag of the USA and the trans flag respectively. The room houses an otherwise cosy environment and the only thing expressing the tension between the two characters is the fisheye perspective. Make this image look photorealistic.
Experimenting with scales
This rough sketch shows a surface coal miner and accompanying extraction conveyor working while their tracks kick up dust. In the background sky a few military helicopters including apaches and chinooks are visible. Further in the background a cluster of grey glass skyscrapers and oil refineries exhausing fumes decorate the skyline. It is a cloudy summer afternoon in the mild temperate region of western europe. Various security personnel in high visibility vests are present in the distance, surveying the massive machines.
System instructions:
The country is plagued by homelessness as they demonstrate for fairness. The military industrial complex dictates major policies and economic choices. The western world has foregone circular economy and reverted to more cost-effective direct extraction practices. Their effect is visible in the surrounding nature as soil intoxication silently takes down forests.
This rough sketch shows a 15.000ton bucketwheel excavator and accompanying extraction conveyor working while their tracks kick up dust. In the background sky a few military helicopters including apaches and chinooks are visible. Further in the background a cluster of grey glass skyscrapers and oil refineries exhausing fumes decorate the skyline. It is a cloudy summer afternoon in the mild temperate region of western europe. The country is plagued by homelessness as they demonstrate for fairness. The military industrial complex dictates major policies and economic choices. The western world has foregone circular economy and reverted to more cost-effective direct extraction practices. Their effect is visible in the surrounding nature as soil intoxication silently takes down forests. Make this image look like a camera footage taken in the early 2000s
NanoBanana fails to reinterpret the scales of the object, making the excavator look more like a 6000ton model. In both cases the images are given cliche colorgrades and shadings as in environmental activism media.
This rough sketch shows a rough idea for the resulting image. In the foreground it shows a bucketwheel excavator the likes of bagger 293, a 14.000 ton vehicle comparable to skyscrapers in scale. The tracks of it and its accompanying extraction conveyor kick up dust. Their massive scale drawves humans and bulldozers in their surrounding. In the far distance, two small dots, thought to be military helicopters, hover in the sky. In further distance, barely visible, a miniscule skyline reminds of grey glass skyscrapers and refineryworks exhausting fumes.
It is a parially cloudy summer afternoon in the mild temperate region of western europe.
Make this image look photorealistic.
Make the image look as neutral and objective and non-opinionated as possible.
Avoid cliche color gradings found in enviromentalist media protesting the destruction of nature.While telling NanoBanana to only regard the sketch as a rough outline and as a result the composition does not follow the sketch, the model cannot step off from generating surrounding objects in a recognizeable scale. The military helicopters and skyscrapers are too large in scale. Most likely a conflict between the generation and the adverserial model, as the adverserial model cannot recognize details too small. To generate details as small as background noise, word choices and formulations which have connotations embedded in them need to be found and used against the adverserial model, which then starts promoting subtle details in the background.
Also important to keep in mind is that images are generated while taking prior conversations into account. This can cause issues where the image generation will not let go of some undesired qualities.
Retrying with a fresh new chat and the most detailed prompt:
This rough sketch shows a rough idea for the resulting image. In the foreground it shows a bucketwheel excavator the likes of bagger 293, a 14.000 ton vehicle comparable to skyscrapers in scale. The tracks of it and its accompanying extraction conveyor kick up dust. Their massive scale drawves humans and bulldozers in their surrounding. In the far distance, two small dots, thought to be military helicopters, hover in the sky. In further distance, barely visible, a miniscule skyline reminds of grey glass skyscrapers and refineryworks exhausting fumes.
It is a parially cloudy summer afternoon in the mild temperate region of western europe.
Make this image look photorealistic.
Make the image look as neutral and objective and non-opinionated as possible.
Avoid cliche color gradings found in enviromentalist media protesting the destruction of nature.NanoBanana replied with “Here you go!”?
Again it fails to represent incomparably large scales in the machines.
Mumbai sketch
Sketch is based on google streetview footage from Mumbai, not too far away from the Antilla.
This rough sketch shows a rough sketch of an impoverished street in the foreground with a few high shining skyscrapers in the background. It is a mild summer morning in Mumbai. Make this image look like camera footage.
This rough sketch shows a rough sketch of an impoverished street in the foreground with a few high shining skyscrapers in the background. The first pedestrians are passing by on their motorbikes and the owners are opening their stores and getting their goods on display. It is a mild summer morning in Mumbai. Make the image look photorealistic.
This rough sketch shows a rough sketch of an impoverished street in the foreground with a few high shining skyscrapers in the background. The first pedestrians are passing by on their motorbikes and the owners are opening their stores and getting their goods on display. It is a mild summer morning in Mumbai, the sky is clear and blue. Make the image look photorealistic.
This rough sketch shows a rough sketch of an impoverished street in the foreground. A number of shiny glass and white skyscrapers stand proud in the background. The first pedestrians are passing by on their motorbikes and the owners are opening their stores and getting their goods on display. It is a mild summer morning in Mumbai, the sky is clear and blue. Make the image look photorealistic.
Fine-tuning a desired effect is kind of hard, in the end the result is a C regarding atmosphere. I also seem to have made a mistake while copy-pasting the prompts to the next, saying “This is a rough sketch of a rough sketch…”
Rainforest sketch
This rough sketch shows the aerial footage of forest machinery retreating from the amazon rainforest. The machines are only visible as small dots that converge in the valley as they kick up dust. The surrounding valley has been razed to the ground for future farmland, and are littered with taken down trees and tree stumps. The tops of the hills are still covered in luscious tropical greenery. Make this image look photorealistic.
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Team 2 – process and thoughts
Animism research
animism is often (wrongly) seen as the first religion while it is more of a way to view the world. Japanese animism: Shinto – souls/spirits/gods called kami -> reflected in many stories (ghibli movies, pokémon, yokai), shrines with one “go-shintai”, an object that can house a kami, also “kamidana” with Shide (folded paper strips)
community: could have digital shrines on major natural landmarks that work with AI translation. Like scanning a QR-code and then being able to speak to the river/tree/mountain-“spirit” about their emotions and health
From animism to religion: garden of eden
People living in interaction with plants, AI translating devices make a heavenly communal life possible, everything is over-the-top romanticised
Imagining the translation tool
AI permanently connected to the body, picking up VOCS (scents), ultrasonic sounds (cavitation) from the air. Other ways plants communicate: electric signals, and root signals (mycelium network)
Idea of plants communicating in emotions not words – a bit like babies who have different cries for different needs. Other option: musical communication like whale song. (logical error: if AI can translate their need into sounds, why not make it speech all along?)
scenario: human getting the translation device in hope of caring better for their “friend” pet plant but as soon as the speaking device is implemented, we can hear that the potted plant is screaming nonstop because it can never be as happy as living in the woods. The scene would be the emotional journey of the human from hope, feeling pity for the plant and trying to make it happy to being more and more annoyed and angry, eventually throwing it out because he cannot bear the screams and cannot turn the permanent device in his ear off.
New approach: Ecological consciousness as monetary value
economic system: for every product consumed that is categorized as “luxury” or “not necessary for subsistance”, one has to take in a seedling that equals the CO2 of the consumed product. They have to care for them and “breed” them until they are strong enough to live in the woods on their own, then they are “released into the wild”.
Plants integrated into housing situations in Vienna:
Alterlaa, Hundertwasserhaus, MA48-Zentrale
values/goals in this world scenario: less consumerism, community-oriented life, using new free time (no more jobs) to care about the environment, reach net-zero in carbon emissions
specific community possibility: “rich”, greedy, higher class community hoards loads of plants that they neglect and let die just to be able to consume more, living with a constant cacophony of screams in their ear translators, basements full of bio waste but flats full of luxury goods.
AI workshop film to represent the scenario:
Different approach: discovering new values in this post-work, post-capitalist economy
economic models:
- Universal basic Income (UBI)
- Post-work/post-capitalism/Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC)
- Data as Labour: Digital data as means of production and thus as a new source of income, question of who owns the access to AI-inputs? Data as new currency.
Work environment:
Repair services for physical systems, care work, creative productionShift in values, shift in status
Redefining meaning:
care work, free time, creativity, and the common good (but -> UBI without enough social security, no possibility to save up), lifelong educationCare work: plant/animal/human, mechanical/haptic aspect and emotional intelligence
A healthy person has a thousand wishes, a sick person only one.
probably Confuciusfree time: grindset is over, more value to “unemployment”, free time and sleep
common good: new value in community-oriented activities, intergenerational connection
lifelong education: keeping up with the new rapidity of technology; acquiring creative skills; learning about oneself
creative expression and production
AI made me believe in a human soul by showing me what art looks like without it
Some student on the Angewandte toilet-> AI understood as a tool, not a living being. Through the soullessness of AI the path back to an animist world view is set. Slop and coldness of AI enforces the appreciation of life, helping society to raise value to: free time and boredom, non-entertainment, sleep, idleness, mental health, empathy, care
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2025 11 07 Matthew AI film workshop trial upload
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1z_jHrgG1h-YoOO_ScqEQvsdFlVIMfsYw78f32ScPKtI/edit?usp=sharing
“This is a rough sketch of a pigeon with a surverillance camera for its head. Make it look photorealistic.”
“this small pigeon is walking clumsily, smooth animation, top down wide shot”
this small pigeon is walking quickly on concrete ground, sunny urban city square, top down wide shot
sunny urban city square, top down wide shot, this small pigeon is running quickly on concrete ground
make this image look realistic – The body of the animal is that of a rock dove
HF Wan2-2 Animate wan2-2-fp8da-aoti-faster the cctv camera slowly turns from left to right, static camera shot
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Touch
First tryouts
Library of gestures
Generated hands
Ainimate with sora2 and wan 2.2
Poem
What is it for if not for the warmth shivering down your spine descended from the hand on your shoulder?
If not for the comfort you feel being stroked on your cheeks?
If not for the safety being wrapped around you in a hug?
If not for the fear being carefully wiped away along with your tears?
If not for the beat your heart skips as lips meet your forehead?
If not for the courage ascending from the hand that tightly holds yours?
What is it for, if not for the touch?Elvenlabs
Video
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11-DitPjLeOkOVA1L8CcCqL-rlY0psgyE/view?usp=sharing
