Combining direct animation with AI-generated footage transferred onto celluloid, the work subjects the digital specter to the violence of physical decay—scratched, burned, scarred through passage through the projector’s mechanical mouth.This collision between the sacred tactility of analog film and the untouchable siren of AI image-making forms a ritualistic act of transgression, a blasphemy.
Through the symbolic use of feathers, human hair, and blood, the film navigates the thresholds of birth, death, and flight—not as progress, but as descent. It conjures a liminal space where machine hallucinations are forced into mortality, where the digital is made to bleed.
In this alchemy of destruction, Ashes for a Second Birth asks: Can an artificial eye be reborn through ruin? Can flight mean falling into form?
original music composition by me
Advised by: Allen Sayeh (Harvard GSD) & Rheanne Vermette (Harvard AFVS)
Tools used: 16mm film/ Direct Animation/ After Effects/ Midjourney/ Runway AI/ Ableton Live/ Premiere Pro