2024

VIDEO

Taken Pictures 6m33s

Found footage image sequences were compiled using a Python script written in collaboration with ChatGPT and Aider. Voice acting was constructed using Eleven Labs.

Imagery collected and curated, sound collage, and dialogue written by Jeff Townsend.

 

This film dialogues with digital media's transient nature, drawing upon digital decay's aesthetic to probe philosophical questions about memory, reality, and the narratives that shape our understanding of both. Inspired by the aesthetic principles outlined in Hito Steyerl's "In Defense of the Poor Image," it employs the visual and auditory textures of degradation to symbolize the erosion of memory and the impermanence of digital existence.

Hauntology—particularly as explored by Mark Fisher—becomes a resonant theme, serving as an undercurrent that guides the film's exploration of the ghosts of an unrealized future that lingers in the present. These spectral presences are expressed as data's impermanence. Relying on found archival footage and sound while collaborating with AI to achieve this aesthetic furthers our labyrinthine relationship with time.

The film invites contemplation of perception and reality. This contemplation is rooted in the philosophical inquiry into how our understanding of the world is shaped by the narratives we construct and how memories behave. It reflects the idea that our grasp of reality is always mediated, always subject to the distortions of personal and collective memory, and always in a state of becoming.

Drawing on contemporary theories of psychoanalysis that emphasize the importance of narrative, the film suggests that our identities and perceptions are constructed through stories—personal and shared. These narratives are not fixed but constantly rewritten in the face of new experiences and insights, a process mirrored in the film's approach to visual storytelling. The use of digital decay as an aesthetic choice underscores the fluidity and fragility of these narratives, suggesting that just as digital media can degrade and lose clarity, so too can our memories and the stories we tell about ourselves and our world.

 

2023

 
 

VIDEO

Memory Palace 003 - The Lighthouse

DESIGN

 

2022

 
 

Video

 
 

3D Modeling

 
 

2021

Video

 
 
 
 

2D


2020


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