Category: Video Art

Deep Paula

Posted on | by Erika
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2023, video with sound, 5:22 min, analog survey with Lego(R) bricks

In this work, we are confronted with an old photo that has been “brought to life” with the help of artificial intelligence. Does the girl seem authentic? Do we feel closer to her? What becomes of faulty memory when it gives way to artificial liveliness? Isn’t this illusion more likely to help us forget the last remnants of our memory of the real person? And would “Paula” have liked what we do with her memory?

Thanks to artificial intelligence, it is already possible today to create a perfect, seemingly “living” digital self, as promised by companies such as Storyfile and Eternos.life. We leave countless traces on the internet in the form of search queries, purchases, contributions from our lives – photos, videos, comments – and much more. Will this turn us into transparent marionettes that ghost around the web forever? Who is pulling the strings in the background? Will we still be able to tell the difference between living and dead, human and artificial? And further: if the loss of a person is compensated for by a digital twin – what meaning will farewell, grief and pain still have?

“Paula’s” real portrait photo can be found in the work Below the Surface (Book Object).

Music: AI-generated

Would you like to resurrect a deceased loved one as a digital copy? You can vote yes or no and take part in my analogue survey with real-time visualisation (Lego(R) bricks) or vote digitally here:

to the survey

Conditio Humana II

Posted on | by Erika
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Conditio Humana II, 2023, video with sound, 4:48 min

Based on the work Conditio Humana I, the question of what the conditio humana is is continued here. If we consider the highest art form of human movement – dance – it is a combination of absolute body control, elegance and emotionality. This is contrasted here with a “dance” by the humanoid robot HRP-4C, as it was presented to the world public in 2010.

Dancer: Dominik Feistmantl

Conditio Humana I

Posted on | by Erika
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2024, video with sound, 3:40 min

The conditio humana refers to the conditions or circumstances of being human in general, usually in contrast to animals. What makes a person human? Is it language? Is it the imagination? What is the conditio humana in relation to artificial intelligence? In a monologue, I let a (fictitious) AI discuss this here.

The starting point for this work was a report on a new milestone in the development of artificial intelligence: In 2019, researchers succeeded for the first time in developing an AI that won a poker game against five real professional players. All in all, this requires special skills that catapult artificial intelligence to the next level of evolution.

Is an AI the better human in the end?

Dancer: Dominic Feistmantl

Premiere: Façade projection in Buenos Aires / Argentina on December 17 2022

Homunculus

Posted on | by Erika
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2022, video with sound, animation, 6:34 min

The idea of creating artificial life has always been with us. The homunculus of the late Middle Ages—the “little man”—symbolizes this desire as well as the ambivalence surrounding it. Today, this figure returns not as a physical entity but as an image: as a projection of human traits onto digitally generated faces.

With the advancements in artificial intelligence since the early 2020s, portraits have emerged that lack any biographical or photographic reference yet still appear familiar. They depict faces that never existed, yet seem visually plausible.

“Homunculus” (2022) takes its cue from this. The work confronts the viewer with animated AI-generated portraits and reveals their artificial origin from the very beginning. This shifts perception: expression is both read and deconstructed. The facial expressions reinforce this ambivalence by lending the faces a sense of liveliness while simultaneously creating a sense of unease.

The work functions as an experimental setup for reception. The focus is not on the technology, but on the interplay of image, context, and perception. It examines the tipping point between acceptance and rejection: When is what is seen accepted as credible—and when does it lose this plausibility?

Phantom

Posted on | by Erika
2022, video with sound, animation, 2:51 min

“People take photos of each other
To prove that they really existed
To make sure they are there
People take photos of each other
Believing that those moments
Would stay alive for all time”

Excerpt from: Menschen Machen Fotos gegenseitig, Die goldenen Zitronen (Songtext)

Brother of Sleep

Posted on | by Erika
2022, video with sound, animation, 3:02 min

“Come,O death, you brother of sleep,
come and lead me away from here;
release my little ship’s rudder,
bring me to a safe harbour!”

from: Johann Sebastian Bach Kreuzstabkantate, BWV56

Wailing Song

Posted on | by Erika
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2022, Animation, 7:28 min

Countless small will-o’-the-wisps buzz in this artificial underwater world. They symbolise all the people who drowned between 2014 and 2022 on their flight to Europe. At the bottom of this sea, we listen to the stories of five young refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Gambia. They talk about their families, their flight from violence, their hopes and dreams.

The audio material was made available with the kind permission of the Junges Theater Augsburg.

Mantra

Posted on | by Erika
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2022, video with sound, animation, 4:45 min

I watch my children play. I search their movements, their words, for traces of my own failures. Will they become the measure by which I am judged?

Mantra is an experimental short film that reflects on the myth of motherhood. What does it mean to be a “good” mother? And who decides?

For centuries, the image of the mother has been shaped by religious ideals—most notably by the figure of Mary in Western culture. She embodies male fantasies of chastity, obedience, selflessness, and unconditional devotion—virtues still echoed in patriarchal expectations of women today.

But this image is beginning to crack. Women demand autonomy, complexity, and contradiction.

Mantra questions inherited ideals and exposes the tension between inner truth and external judgment. A meditation on motherhood—not as myth or moral role, but as lived, evolving identity.