There is a work called The Congress (2013, directed by Ari Folman) that blends live-action film with animation. It is based on a novel by Stanisław Lem (born in Ukraine, raised in Poland), the author famous for Solaris.
A producer approaches an actress whose prime is passing and asks her to sell her current likeness — her image rights. Struggling with a difficult illness and crushing medical bills, she agonizes but ultimately accepts the offer. She is then recorded from head to toe by a full-body 3D scanner — and so the story continues.
This was the part that struck me most. Once that data exists, the real person is no longer needed.
It was a theme that foresaw our current situation.
Rumors that American films use 3D-rendered lead actors instead of stunt performers for dangerous action scenes have circulated for about fifteen years. Today, as long as an actor’s data exists, an entire film can be made without the actor ever performing.
Moreover, AI can handle backgrounds, props, camera work, production management, and all manner of other tasks. Even the term “3D” may eventually disappear.
Short films and animations made by amateurs are already appearing across the internet in large numbers, and since last year, news of protests by film industry workers in Hollywood has become frequent.
Whom exactly they are protesting against is somewhat unclear. Even producers and employers seem unable to stop what is unfolding.
As someone who depicted the dangers of information centralization in “Computopia” (which I wrote about in the third installment of this blog) around 1967, I want to offer a few thoughts on the present — a time of great transformation in computing.
AI is, in any case, convenient. It is like a great encyclopedia, offering suggestions, serving as a stand-in secretary and stand-in editor. It even creates things for you.
However, when it comes to “creating,” unexpected problems have emerged. Fake information and pornography using other people’s likenesses can be produced with alarming ease.
Collage
In painting and design, there is a technique called collage. Collage does not create from zero. It mixes images drawn by others to produce something new.
AI fundamentally works this way. Unlike what humans produce from fantasy and imagination, its output cannot always be called purely original.
This approach is accepted in advertising design and similar fields, but the use of others’ creative works has led to copyright disputes, lawsuits, and growing calls for restraint.
The same will likely apply to moving images such as animation and film. I believe that in the future, copyright will extend to “movement” as well.
In the realm of verbal collage, poetry and haiku were the pioneers.
Stillness — / seeping into the rocks, / the voice of cicadas
This is the famous haiku by Matsuo Bashō.
“Seeping into the rocks” is a strange expression in physical terms, and while the poem speaks of stillness, cicadas are inherently noisy. It seems contradictory.
Yet perhaps it is human nature to perceive stillness through the sound of cicadas.
Research suggests that Westerners generally perceive insect sounds as noise.
In the middle of a city, even the loud drone of cicadas would register as mere noise. Yet here, the cicadas’ voices resonate so deeply that they seem to seep into the very rock.
The word “seep” suggests a powerful sound, and yet we Japanese receive from it a profound silence.
In any case, we Japanese feel this to be the power of verbal collage.
Bashō had a disciple named Kawai Sora, who accompanied him on the journey that became The Narrow Road to the Deep North. One day, Sora asked his master to reveal the secret of haiku.
According to Sora’s Travel Diary, Bashō answered: “Fueki ryūkō” — the unchanging and the ever-changing.
I once had the opportunity to work briefly with the poet Junzaburō Nishiwaki. Imitating Sora, I asked Nishiwaki about the secret of poetry. He answered firmly: “The fusion of disparate elements.”
Indeed, that is precisely what collage is. Bashō’s secret must have been the union of what is timeless in human experience with what is new.
I have also studied the question of what is timeless for humanity. But this is a more fundamental problem that would take us too far afield, so I will refrain from exploring it in this chapter.
AI should be adept at collage, but this is where the question of consciousness arises. There is the concept of aesthetic consciousness — what is beauty? And there is critical consciousness as well.
These matters touch on identity and the self, and they are far from simple.
I expect to address them elsewhere in this essay series, so I ask for your patience.
Two Types of Human Movement
AI likely possesses movement data for every kind of animal, but among animals, humans have exceptionally high communication abilities, and their “movement” comes in two distinct types.
One is movement for survival. Eating, walking, jumping, running, fighting — these are natural movements. In contrast, there are movements accompanied by emotions — laughing, crying, grieving, sulking, the full range of human feelings — and the diverse movements of communication. These are the other two types.
If we separate emotional expression from communication, we could say there are three types of movement.
Take the quintessential emotional movement — laughing. There are no fewer than ten types of laughter, and for crying, no fewer than double that — at least twenty. (Some scholars say the numbers are even higher.)
As an animator, I am confident I can draw six or seven distinct types of laughter, but I would not be confident about reaching ten.
Next time, I would like to write about the Bank System in connection with this topic.
Sadao Tsukioka