Childhood Distractions
Synthetic Media & Runway ML: Augment an existing piece of media through the process of addition, subtraction, or generation. Think about how this could apply to the framework of storytelling.
With the prompt in mind, I looked back into past works and thought about ways to incorporate AI into my personal projects. The project that came to mind was one where I made a compilation of my childhood tv shows and incorporated live music/layered audio to create an overwhelming experience while watching comforting television.
Link to initial thoughts and explanation of the project referenced above
I used this information to start the conversation with my partner, Mary Mark. As we spoke we recognized the drastic difference in the media we consumed as children. Then the conversation led us to the question “Why cartoons?” (personally most of what I watch on television is cartoons due to their ability to clear my mind).
A lot of cartoons use subtle cues to brush up on serious topics and events. Adults are able to capture those cues but most of what children see is the colorful and fun imagery. Mary brought up the news and how it has a similar combination of absurd, comical, serious. The main cartoon used was the Russian version of Winnie-the-Pooh, Soviet Vinni Puh. Especially since it was a television series where both Mary and I had in common.
We created a custom AI generative model using images of the shows to become the base of our project.
Images: samples of the 5,000 photographs we used to train the AI.
Sample of the AI’s progress after 3,000 steps (We ended up training it an additional 3,000).
Image: Our work station when rendering the childhood videos into images.
Image: After using Runway to train the AI and remove the backgrounds from our childhood cartoons, we used Premiere Pro to finalize the video.
“Your Evening News” is a compilation of childhood cartoons, news clips, and AI imagery
By Mary Mark and Sam De Armas
Resources:
Cartoons used in the training of the AI were: Soviet Vinni Puh, Courage the Cowardly Dog, CatDog, Ну, погоди!, Rolie Polie Olie, SpongeBob SquarePants, Ed, Edd, and Eddy, Franklin, Billy and Mandy, Invader Zim, and Cow and Chicken.
