Trigger Warning Flashing Images

I did not set out to make this video unsettling. However, that is what it became. I can’t understand why the result feels unsettling; it’s just a visceral reaction. A data set with 500 images of people from my life were used in a styleGAN through Runwayml, this resulted in two latent spacewalk videos which I then layered over each other. I also included the 500 images from the data set, played in rapid succession. This, again, was layered over the two latent spacewalk videos. A variety of opacities and effects were used to make the final edit. 

For the audio track, I recorded the words “isolation,” “distance,” “separation,” “time,” and “being.” Using Audacity, I cut the words, looped them, stretched them, and adjusted pitch and speed. The result sounds very mechanical and dark.

The result feels like it was pulled from the characters’ minds in Harlan Ellison’s short story ”I have no mouth, and I must scream”. 

I’m not in a terribly good mood after having watched/created it; viewer discretion is advised.