Ricky Grove 00:45
Hello everyone this is And now for something completely machinima, a podcast about machinima and virtual production. I'm here with my pals Tracy Harwood, Phil rice, and Damien Valentine. I'm Ricky grow. And a quick word from our sponsor. WD 40 is probably one of the best. Oh, we're not doing that sponsor thing, are we?

Tracy Harwood 01:12
Well, we Oh, no.

Ricky Grove 01:15
Oh, let's forget about it. Well, we'll just write it up on a blog post. Anyway, we're here today to talk about some great machinima films, and discuss them and think about them. If you have any comments you'd like to make about the show, or if you're the director, contact us at talk at completed machinima.com. So today, we're going to start out with my my film pick. And I've chosen something that is interesting. And I would like to let you know about how I found it. I ended up going to Vimeo which is a great sort of art oriented site, as opposed to YouTube which is tends to be sort of a free for all, but a lot of machinima made there is done in Second Life. And that's cool, you know, but it tends to focus on that a lot. At least the Machinima part of it us. And as I came across some interesting films, one particular director caught my eye, and it was Fau Ferdinand in Fau Ferdinand, I immediately recognise the name as a kind of Second Life handle. So I checked out several of their films, and I found one that I just loved a lot. And it's called Dog Days. It was created fairly recently. In the film, I don't think it's for everyone because it's quite experimental. And I often choose unusual things because I really liked the creativity involved in people taking a risk to do something outside of the box of realism and, and mainstream storytelling. But what was intriguing to me about this choice was that this artist who calls herself a performance artist, she's in the UK. And she created this short film using text from chat, GBT poetic text, can using video created by artificial intelligence, and then composited her own Second Life character in the mix. I suspect some of them was done in an improvisation, province, improvisational manner. But the, I don't know, very many machinima people using that combination of things. And I was really impressed with it. Dog Days is a is a kind of ironic title for it, because it's essentially a kind of nonsense film, but with a really serious tone to it. And it has. You're in some sort of strange Half Life desolation city. And that's the main background. And there's this character who looks a lot like Billie Holiday, or what's a wonderful French singer. But anyway, yeah, it's a sort of a slight waist like now. And then behind her, there's this boiling roiling mass of dogs of colleys is in German Shepherds and toxins, and they all they're sort of roiling, and constantly changing themselves, which is often the effect you see in an AI video. And then she's superimposed herself with a couple other graphics involved in various states of kind of despair and fear. And then, very slowly, the spoken text comes along. And it's an odd assortment of non sequiturs. And all of the elements combined to create what I felt is an eerie kind of weird feeling of, of a kind of lost woman or an oppressed woman who has having memories of her dog. And they all sort of meld together. It's a short piece. And I was really grateful for that, because I don't think I've mentioned this before on the show. I don't think experimental work, especially in machinima can sustain a long length, I think the shorter the better on those things. But I was very impressed with it. I think Fau Ferdinand, she calls herself a performance artist. And so I did a little work on performance art. And it was really in the 70s, that the idea of a an artist called a performance art came about but it's much older than that, it goes all the way back to the turn of the century. And essentially, the performance artist is a single person who uses their body or their presence in a specific medium. And they use time and space in unique ways to express themselves in it to make a point to a poetic point, a political point, a social point. It's a fascinating medium that has become very popular in Second Life. And she has been doing it quite a bit and many of her other films on Zoom are quite our excuse me on Vimeo are quite unusual and interesting. And I was really taken by this film, and I was curious as to what you guys thought about it. What did you think?

Tracy Harwood 07:20
We'll me to go next? Oh, Phil.

Phil Rice 07:23
Yeah, I'll start. So something that caught my attention with the film was the title. Cuz I like oddities of language that I'm here over the years, you know, and you know, you'll hear phrases nowadays and wonder where in the world did that come from? It's kind of like a little nerdy side hobby of mine and stuff. But Dog Days, is I can't remember how far back it goes. But the idea of is it was a reference to the hottest days of summer. And the reason that it was called Dog Days is because serious, which is the Dog Star is most visible during those hot summer months. That's where the whole idea of Dog Days came. And most people have probably heard dog day, if they've heard of it at all. They've heard it in the title of that. Wonderful 1970s film, Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino. And who was the guy that played Fredo in The Godfather? Frank because owl I think it was his name. This this pair of guys who basically it's a it's a bank heist story based on a true story, if I won't go into a whole lot of detail on that here, but the story behind that film, and why the Godfather actors were in the film. It's like a conspiracy theory type of weird story. It's like really bizarre. And it is based on on true events. So wonderful little film, you know, everyone knows Pacino from the Godfather and from you know, other big hits he was and this one's maybe lesser known outside of film buffs and lesser known by younger people nowadays, it's a jam. It's a real interesting film, great performances to anyway, the film that we're seeing here doesn't seem to have anything to do with that understanding of Dog Days. It's more of wordplay you know Shakespearean style wordplay of okay, that's an established phrase. And what Shakespeare would do a lot is take a literal phrase, and do wordplay to use it. Literally, this is kind of the opposite of that. This is a non literal phrase that exists in culture. And the artist has taken it for their title in more of a literal interpretation. And so hence all the dogs and stuff so right now, that's a silly thing to obsess on, but it's it's something that intrigued me Got this that if nothing else, I think it made me approached this film with. Okay, so this person is, is thinking about these things. This filmmaker thinks about these things. And that to me is a nice hook. You know, I always I like that I like what I'm encountering someone like that. So when I first watched the film, I did not know how it was made. I recognise the AI generated video part of things. But I did notice that the, the foreground character was not AI generated. And I couldn't tell if I don't know if Damien if you wondered if it might be I cloned because it kind of is something that could have been done with an icon character, I suppose. Right? Right. Some of the movements are kind of twitchy in that special second life the way that later when I scrolled down the description and saw how it was made and stuff. It didn't surprise me that that was a second life avatar. But the combination works really well together. I know that there's strong feelings out there about AI generated art on both sides. I'm more in the camp of that it's a really interesting development. I'm, I'm not threatened by it. But there are people who are and maybe rightfully so I mean, it is something that is a potential game changer. A genuine disrupter, I think. But we've I mentioned in a previous episode of the show that the I think my primary interest in Ayar, is the fact that it's broken the fact that it's weird. And for me, the naturally, the way that I ended up, making use of that is, is mostly comedy purposes, you know, so the whole emphasis on the rendering the wrong number of fingers, or the disfigured faces and stuff, right. And that's always just been a real attraction to me with it, because it it's weird in a way that that you don't often see humans be weird. You know, there's something strange about the algorithm that's playing with our work as its source material that just does weird in a new way. And that's intriguing. And this is this film showcases, I think, the artistic side of that, of that weird that this film wouldn't, wouldn't be, it wouldn't have caught Ricky or any of our interest. If it was just, let's say stock video of dogs, and then stock video of a city ruined city street. I mean, who cares? Nobody wouldn't even give it a second. Look. It's the fact that it's weird in that distinctly AI way, gives it this very dreamlike experience. I think some of the ways that AI video morphs are probably the closest any video has ever come to emulating what dreams tend to feel like when you're trying to remember them, and it is this mishmash, you know, and there's all kinds of reasons for that, if you've ever studied Dream Theory, you know that the fact that you know what, we're conscious, we experience things in, in sequence, there's a sense of time, it's chronological. And the theory, the most prevalent theories with dreaming are when we're dreaming, it's not bound by that rule whatsoever. There is no real rules in terms of time, in terms of how images are used, and, you know, people people are characters in your dreams appear as metaphors. And there's a whole, you know, Freud on forward. Yeah, yeah. Study of that kind of thing. And I feel like that AI most AI generated video, not the newest stuff from Sora, which looks super realistic, and therefore to me, kind of boring. Like, okay, cool. Who cares? You know, this, this, this, this will probably one day referred to as early days of mid journey, or early days of runway, right? Where it's morphing in this very odd way, this this way, that would be hard to hard to, to. To break it down as like, it's hard to discern any kind of methodology there. It's feels very random and flowy. And, you know, like one of the dogs will be facing one way and then somehow it morphs and it's facing the other and just, oh, it's just it's fascinating. So and So, for this film, which I agree with Ricky it does seem like it's seated in venue have memory or dream, as perfect as perfect choice for that. And it is very abstract. But very enjoyable. And I agree with you to Ricky, I'm glad that the length isn't too long. This is like films like this or like very if you've ever followed like, or gone to a really nice restaurant with some high end chef, a lot of times it's some just amazingly complicated dish in a very tiny portion. And it's because the food is so rich that there really isn't, you know, you can't serve it up like going to Chick Filet and having a big mound of food, American style. It doesn't make any sense, right? It's too rich for that right? Great analogy like that these abstract films are a lot like that. It's this thing that has been obsessed over and it's got a richness to it, that you don't need a whole lot. And it kind of expands on your on your palate, if you will. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, great. I think it's a great decision to to keep it nice and short. And and it isn't dense with ideas, but in a very abstract way. Like it's not. It's not oppressive at all, or about what its idea is supposed to be. I think that's the key to good abstract. Yeah. Is that it's not insistent. That's the term I'm looking for. It's not insisting. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 16:32
it's not pushy. Yeah. It

Phil Rice 16:34
doesn't matter. At all. Yeah. Right. So I enjoyed it very, very much. It's one that even though I couldn't turn off my analytic, analytical mind, which as a filmmaker tends to want to dissect happened to do this, how was this made, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't manage to turn that off completely and be immersed. But it was. Maybe the nice thing was is that I was able to quickly get past that point. 20 seconds into the film, I understood that. Okay, here's the elements that are being presented here. And from that point forward, I just enjoyed what was being put on the screen for me. So that's great. I love it. And yeah, a great pic perky, really, really enjoyable, and very out of the norm for us. I love it.

Ricky Grove 17:23
I love your cooking analogy is so appropriate. Thank you, Tracy, or Damian?

Tracy Harwood 17:32
Go and then I'll wrap this one. Because

Damien Valentine 17:34
I kind of want to follow up on what Phil's just said. Because I'm kind of in the beginning, it feels like you said you were in the camp of finding AI being interesting for being weird. I mean, the opposite. I'm not really a huge fan of AI generated art. Because a lot of people I know are threatened by it. And I feel like I want to support them. So I had to watch this twice. Because first time I watched it, that was in my mind. So then I had to switch that off. And watch it again and just enjoy it. Yeah. So what came to mind was that Batman film we reviewed a couple of months back, which had an AI generated script. And we want to comment on that one, because it you know, the dialogue was terrible, because it hadn't come up with this stuff that wasn't that great. And we're not reviewing that film again. But that's what came to my mind. And I found myself comparing this film to that one. And this one works a lot better, because it's got that experimental side to it that the Batman film was meant to be a serious Batman story. And the AI generated content just didn't work for that. Whereas this, the weirdness that you were talking about film works for this, because that's the point. It's meant to be different and experimental. So I found interesting that AI could be used in a very creative way. This and you know, I really enjoyed it for that, despite my misgivings about AI generated content. So yeah, this is the kind of thing that I think AI content generation works well for. Because once you get to the point where is trying to do replicate, you know, Hollywood films or all of that, it just falls apart. Because, yeah, you know, you need the people to make that real. You know, for this. Yeah, it works. And I think Rick has a really great pic. Oh,

Ricky Grove 19:32
I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

Phil Rice 19:34
I'm really glad you brought up the lyrics or the wording aspect because I didn't even mention that. And yeah, that's a key component here as well. Damien, you're right. The, you're exactly right. The I thought of the Batman film as well, and it did in the Batman film trying to implement chat gbta to generate a screenplay basically is what he said he did and doesn't say Don't like it was altered much from what chat GPT spit out to what he what he tried to produce. Right? Right, right, it didn't work. This I feel like the less human tampering the better because it is leaning into that weirdness element it almost comes across. A when when you get AI to generate text in a specific way, it almost comes across with the same vibe as the disorganised speech of a schizophrenic patient, like a severely schizophrenic person, where there are logical connections that we tend to make when using language that they do not abide by. And so there's this jumping around between ideas that yeah, just yeah, it defies. It's like listening to disorganised speech. And you can go on YouTube and find recordings where they've interviewed someone who has severe schizophrenia, and trying to make sense of what they're saying is a lot like, when you wake up, and you're trying to make sense of a dream that was really incomprehensible, you know, at your struggle, because, again, the dream was composed in a world where those rules don't get abided by. And then now as you awake, you can't help but try to put things into a chronology and whatnot. And so I think that that the the AI generated speech actually had a similar outcome. In and in this case, yeah, you're right, Damian. It worked. Because it needed to be weird, you know? Yeah, yeah. Putting this visual over a Robert Frost poem or something. Just wouldn't want to know, Robert Frost is beautiful poet, but just know. You know, maybe some, maybe maybe some writings of James Joyce or Donnell. Or who's who's the who's the 60s Beat poet Ricky that his? I think his most famous work is Lion.

Ricky Grove 22:14
Cummings, he was E.E. Cummings or not

Phil Rice 22:17
E. Cummings. This this this guy? Oh, gosh, hold on. Uh Who did lie in the advert I'm not gonna be able to find it. Someone out there is like shouting at the podcast right now or

Ricky Grove 22:40
find that later. But

Phil Rice 22:42
yeah, anyway. Yeah. But no, the the the ai ai generated text is interesting. They used I think, in the credits that said that he used he or she used copilot, which is Microsoft's ChatGPT. And then something else. There was some other AI tool involved as well. And then of course, the AI generated video. So yeah, yeah, to me, that's an interesting use of these tools is, and it's something that, Damian, I've got a lot of artists, friends, who feel like I would guess the same way that yours do about the Ayar. And what I'm, I guess the case that I'm quietly and slowly trying to make to them is that properly wielded These are interesting tools for an artist to use. And I think that a lot of the artists who are put off by AI art is because the people who are loudest using this stuff right now, are non artists, quiet are people who just expedient and just look, I could just type a few words. And now I do the same thing that you do with hours of effort. You know, that's, that's who makes the headlines with this stuff. But where it gets really interesting is when someone like Ferdinand Fau, who is an artist uses these tools as an artist. It's it's very interesting, you know, so then what do you say that, for now isn't an artist anymore because he used those, that that doesn't really work. They're just very strange tools. And I think we could have a whole episode sometime and on kind of an updated state of the Ayar argument. Because it's fascinating topic. But I think I think some of the things that are said about AR today are the same things that were said when MIDI was introduced to the music world MIDI is this electronic way of capturing essentially a musical performance, that it records the note values over time and how hard the key was pressed. And then you can go and edit it later and make it do anything you want. It's think of it as almost like an auto tune for music type of thing, you know, ah, and when it was first introduced, quote unquote real musicians in, we're just scoffing at it, and using the exact same criticisms that are being used about AR today. And now MIDI is ubiquitous, it's everywhere. It's even it first of all the fidelity with which it can capture performance, it is used to record a performance. And you I could, for example, record a performance, where I'm playing a piano, or an electronic piano, and then change it to be organ or harpsichord or, or frogs, you know, with a sampler. So, and no one nowadays makes the case that use of MIDI in music production, makes it not real music, or makes it less artistic. So but we're in the very early days of this Ayar, I think the same thing would would have been said about Photoshop, the types of things you can do in Photoshop, compared to the effort of doing that with real photography, or painting or any of those other art forms. Photoshop was probably poo pooed in a similar way, what you can just click and fill in a gradient automatically between this colour and that, you know, that's cheating. That's not real artwork, do you know how hard it is to make a great in real life? So I feel like we're at one of those moments again, art and it feels different, because this is so advanced. And because the effort to output ratio is so vast, right? It's never been where you can just type a few words, right? And have something be done. It feels like you're not doing much work at all. And frankly, in a lot of cases, with Ayar, you're not. But to me, that doesn't make it less interesting. At all. It's it is what it is, it's not going anywhere. Maybe that's the only argument that needs to be made for some people is look, this thing is here. So you're either going to learn how to reckon with the fact that it exists, or you're just going to become bitter and disillusioned. You know, fighting something that will never go away. This will never ever go away. Never. It's only going to advance. So anyway. Yeah, I said we could record a whole episode on it. Now I've turned this episode into that.

Tracy Harwood 27:26
We Well, we have got an omnibus coming up where we've got a few AI tools to talk about anyway, so we can discuss that a bit more there as well. All right, I was gonna say a little bit about that, but I kind of won't bother the the second tool that they mentioned, was Suno, which is about music composition. So you're quite right to discuss the MIDI tool there, I think. Well, some of my view is actually very similar to all of the things you guys have been saying. But let me share with you some of the diggings out that I managed to uncover if you like as I was going through this on. So Fau Ferdinand is otherwise known as Yael Gilkes. She's actually Israeli, and she lives in London. And it's actually also an established Second Life performance artist who's been in world and producing creative stuff since the very early days. 2004. Wow. So one of the one of the very first, I think, now what she says is her work is the way she describes it is it's a metamorphosis of life, often dealing with a theme of life and death from either one state of existence to the other, or vice versa, in what she describes as a surrealist tradition. And she very much works with this idea of dissolving fluidity. And she's focusing on entering this world through a dreamscape, which he discussed, through which she surrounds herself. As I understand it, the practice that she has encompasses both digital painting, also makeup artist interventions, animation, as well as performance art. And what's quite interesting hit here is because of this really long background, she was actually or is actually part of an artist collective called Second Front. I don't know if you remember these guys. They were a group of artists working in Second Life, which formed in around 2006 and that comprised of Gezira Bibeli. Do you remember Bibi Hansen? Who's the daughter of Al Hanson who worked with Warhol? Doug Jarvis, Scott killed L. Patrick Lichty and Liz Solo. So these are guys that kind of collaborate on projects or call themselves a collective working as individuals They created score based performances and interventions that were about challenging notions of traditional performance. But also looking at things like virtual embodiment and the culture of immateriality. I was I was looking at the kind of work they were doing, I kind of felt that it was more of a, what I would call a spiritual successor to the Fluxus movement of the 70s, which I think is what you've really picked up on there, Ricky. But the aim of that was specifically to break down barriers and creating more connected and immersive experiences focusing on the performative aspects of the work, often involving audiences. And often also allowing for chance, specifically chance to influence the work chatting, because it's kind of really interesting. This particular film has been made with somebody called l thought Feld, who's also a new media artists working in digital generative and glitch art, virtual reality, sculpture and installations and GIF art as well. And her focus is on experimenting with colour, form, randomness, and using chaos is an element of the creative practice. And here, I think what we have is a form of work that has a lineage back to that kind of 60s and 70s kind of Fluxus sort of type of work. And I think I think I'm, I would go along that route, because of the clear way in which the tools have been used to generate images, words and music. And I guess the main divergence from say Fluxus isn't here that it's being performed in real time, which a lot of that stuff was because and I think proves simply because this kind of process for creative practice doesn't work like that just yet. But my guess is that's what they're aiming to do in due course. And I think what you've got here is something that's clearly a celebration of the random glitchiness of the generative ais tools being used to I think that's deliberate choice. That glitchiness is a is a kind of a deliberate choice. And and the way they've seeded it is designed to allow chaos into the process, which I think is really interesting. And a perfect tool set. I mean, what else would they use? But kinds of tools if that's what they're about? I think, absolutely. You know, the perfect hand in glove type fit. I think the imagery is really interesting. And as you kind of said, it begins, not, I didn't pick up the dog so much to start with, because it's this morphing, fractured cityscape. And I think it's something we're quite used to seeing at the moment. With the we're seeing both of Ukraine's towns and yes, exactly of Gaza. And given this artist Israeli is Israeli, I could imagine there's some kind of deep emotional connection to what what we're seeing. Yeah. And then you see, I think what you see begins to make a bit well, if sense even what, what, what is attempted for here. But to me, what I think you're seeing then is this kind of lost or distressed woman, unkempt, and skimpily, clothed with a background of these kind of morphing dogs. And that's all going on as the words begin. But these words make very little sense. I mean, I listened to it two or three times. And then I put the, you know, the translator thing on just to see what was being said, and then they're random. They don't make any sense. There's are bits that you can pull out of them. But there isn't a lot of sense and that sort of schizophrenic idea, kind of, I think maybe you maybe you're onto something with that. But I guess I got the sense here of maybe this is somebody through a dreamscape looking for a lost dog, perhaps I don't know, that's what kind of came through in that sort of sense. And then the other thing that I sort of picked up on is is that she appears to be wandering around and I thought at first is this grey swirling mist was an analogy to the dream but I think it's an analogy to smoke and fire filled landscape. And, you know, somebody that's kind of, you know, really basically, trying to find this dog and becomes more and more distressed, although the words if you like, such such as they are seem to suggest, in the end that there's always a new dawn, even though what it in the end shows is pictures of flies, and presumably death. Overall, the film doesn't clearly I think, have a happy ending, although maybe what it's illustrating is a circle of modern life in a particular type of context, and like you fell, I tried to make sense of the title Dog Days, you know, meant that to me as well, but also this kind of idea of period of inactivity. But But I also like you drew the conclusion that what what it was really was it was a literal use of this term. And the dog days are our simply because this person is consumed with thinking about a dog, maybe that's what's going on. And then I found myself wondering what the images of the woman represent as though the word seem to be out about war and rebirth, or at least in my mind. But what was interesting, I think, was that the camera, as as that camera kind of moved closer to this woman, she became more cyborg, and somehow more fractured, although she wasn't AI generated in the same way that the rest of the content seemed to be. And, and, and also, she wasn't portrayed as dream like I concluded really, from that kind of presentation of it that maybe what they were trying to do here was reflect on the role of of generative AI as a tool. And perhaps what you're looking at is that it's incomplete and fractured, as it as it kind of is now. And maybe what you've got there as a commentary on on how we are becoming cyborg, with the absorption of these kinds of tools, because I definitely got the feeling here that there was a lot of deeper messages encapsulated, within what what you were seeing,

Phil Rice 36:40
but it was very deeper and maybe unrelated messages,

Tracy Harwood 36:43
maybe unrelated. Absolutely. No. Yeah. That's,

Phil Rice 36:47
that's interesting stuff. But

Tracy Harwood 36:49
yeah, that was my thoughts. And my digging around on it. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, um, what? Not great.

Ricky Grove 36:57
I understand, of course, a

Phil Rice 37:00
little bit real quick on on Tracy on what you said, because because I mentioned earlier that the film didn't insist on a specific message or idea and that, I appreciate that. That being said, I did come away with a pretty specific interpretation of it, which I think is mine, I take ownership of that. And I maintain that the film didn't insist on this, but you know, this, the war torn? urban landscape, which Yeah, it has a very It evokes some pretty specific things we've been seeing, like you said, Tracy, I did not know, that fell, Ferdinand was, was from a region where that's happening. But that makes a lot of sense. Because the sense that I got from it was that that war torn landscape is where life is right now. And there's a sense of longing for the days when I mean, when do you really there are grown adults who get very attached to pets. Damien has at least one cat that regularly visits upon him and and, you know, takes advantage of him for food such as we have one in our neighbourhood as well. Yes. But, but, and you know, and there are times when, you know, Ricky, you guys had cats at the Iliad. And always have, right and there is an adult attachment that happens with with a pet, like a dog, for example. But when is it more more precious than when you're a child? Because then you don't have any of the responsibilities or worries that you do as an adult. You've just got nothing but time to give to this animal that in the case of a dog wants nothing but to spend time with you to you know, yeah, and life was so simple and precious, and beautiful. And as you grow up, you lose, you know, you still have memories of that, but they become more and more diluted, and they merge together. And I mean, you can see where I'm going with this, right? So it's, I really got a sense of that. One way this film couldn't be interpreted is the bombed landscape is what I'm seeing as an adult. This is the world I'm in now. You know, either it's because the world has become that or because I'm seeing the world for what it has been and is and it's not pretty, like it was when I was a kid. You know, because I know so much more now, about how awful people treat each other and because of the internet We all know that on a global scale, you know, every time someone shoots up a supermarket, we all know in 10 minutes on Twitter, what kind of a world you know. So there's, there's no more. If you're at all awake, there's no more maintaining a sugarcoated view of the world. And there's a part of you even though you don't want to regress, but there is a part of everyone I think that sometimes wishes for, man, wasn't it nice. When I was so much younger, and none of this made any difference. And I didn't know any of this yet. Yeah, you know, I just life was beautiful. It was just me and my dog. We just played. Yeah. And those, those memories are further and further away. And so more and more muddled. Hmm, I hope no one thinks I'm pushing that interpretation on them. That's No. Reasonable. And yet, somehow, I still maintain the film didn't insist on that. Yeah. But it allowed me to have that experience with it. And it's amazing that that that came through, even though none of those things were said in the film explicitly. You can't make much sense of anything that was said in the film. But the combination of the imagery and the sound, and then these weird words and the whole field, and then what I brought to it, yeah, no, I mean, let's face it, my review of the film just now what the film was saying was more about me than it was about the film. Right? We'll have some abstract art is the best at that. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 41:42
that's so the point I wanted to make to close out our discussion is that abstract art and experimental art is often acting like a mirror, to the person who's watching it. And you actively participated in by providing the imaginative connections to images and things like that. Whereas realistic art, your standard, generative art viewers passing. And they allow the storytellers to tell their story and you passively accept all of the interpretations and things like that. It's more

Phil Rice 42:15
escapism, isn't it? Yeah, a lot of times a lot of escapism, and this is the opposite. Exactly.

Ricky Grove 42:22
And I think that's where the appeal to certain people is that ability to be able to invest a work of art with your own connections, your own imaginations, because we all want to take things that don't seem to make sense. And then make connections between them. It makes sense in your mind. And I think that's one things that attracts artists like fall furred man, because they know that process is occurring. And it might even be occurring for them

Phil Rice 42:52
while they're making it. Yes, yes, absolutely.

Ricky Grove 42:56
You know what I mean? So, and I think that's a unique, or the last thing I want to say is that I think that's a unique quality of performance art. Because in the past, women were often drawn to performance art, because it was a method of female empowerment, they could be on stage, they could be in an art gallery, and say, I am a woman. And this is my experience, in a way that they couldn't in social situations. Now, the actual physicality of their bodies, has been turned into a virtual object, in Second Life, or in other formats. So then they can morph that image into every conceivable form, look, way, style, anything that they want, in order to create an expression of who they are. So it's a perfect combination of personal expression, and public display in a way that creates a kind of friction or compliment. And I think that attracts people like her and other female performance artists, because they love to be able to talk about the issues that are important to them as women in this world, a woman's perspective on war is going to be very different from a man's perspective on war. And I think in a way those things are fantastic. And I'm glad we have people like Fau Ferdinand and making art while we have millions and millions of others doing stuff that is often consequential. So congratulations to you Fau Ferdinand and for your excellent work. I urge you to visit her channel on Vimeo because she has many other films that are I just chose this one because it appealed to me the most, but there are many other things in there that I really like. Well as always, if you have comments or you disagree or you think Phil's just up a tree with the AI approach, send us your thoughts at talk at completely machinima.com. I'm Ricky. Thanks to Tracy and Phil and Damien for your comments, comments, and we'll have links to the film and links to Fau Ferdinand in our show notes. So that's it for the show today. Thanks for watching. We'll see you later. Bye bye.

Phil Rice 45:27
Bye bye