What is Posthuman Cinema?
According the artificial creative intelligence (ACI), a customized large language model trained on the recent writing of artist Mark Amerika, Posthuman Cinema is many things at once:
In Posthuman Cinema, the automated artist uses artificial neural networks to compose and generate digital visuals. The artificial neural networks are themselves composed of algorithms that run according to their own logic. Together, in human-AI symbiosis, we assemble operational systems that produce never before seen motion pictures, which are then superimposed onto the mindscreens of viewers everywhere.
The PHC artist collective (Will Luers, Chad Mossholder and Amerika), in human-AI symbiosis, improvises with each other and with AI tools such as RunwayML, Midjourney, ChatGPT, GPT-4 and ElevenLabs to probe a new kind of language-driven cinema art and explore a cinematically manifested collective unconscious.
As remix artists with a deep affinity for and knowledge of the history of avant-garde and auteur cinema, the collective strategically uses their poetic art+language skills to prompt the various AI systems to generate source material that is then postproduced into a series of cinematic artworks. The first ten of these artworks are included in the launch of the Posthuman Cinema website.
Mark Amerika >>
Mark Amerika has exhibited his art in many venues including the Whitney Biennial, the Denver Art Museum, ZKM, the Walker Art Center, and the American Museum of the Moving Image. His solo exhibitions have appeared all over the world including at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the University of Hawaii Art Galleries, the Marlborough Gallery in Barcelona and the Norwegian Embassy in Havana and the Estudio Figueroa-Vives art gallery.
Amerika has had five early and/or mid-career retrospectives including the first two Internet art retrospectives ever produced (Tokyo and London). In 2009-2010, The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece, featured Amerika’s comprehensive retrospective exhibition entitled UNREALTIME including his groundbreaking works of Internet art GRAMMATRON and FILMTEXT as well as his feature-length work of mobile cinema, Immobilité. In 2012, Amerika released his transmedia narrative, Museum of Glitch Aesthetics (MOGA), a multi-platform net artwork commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices in conjunction with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
He is the author of thirteen books including My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence, the inaugural title in the “Sensing Media” series published in 2022 by Stanford University Press.
Will Luers >>
Will Luers is a digital artist, writer, and educator specializing in recombinant, computational, and AI cinema arts. His work and collaborations have garnered international recognition and been featured in festivals and conferences such as the Electronic Literature Organization, FILE(Brazil), and ISEA. "novelling," a generative work made in collaboration with poet Hazel Smith and sound artist Roger Dean, won the 2018 Robert Coover Award for Electronic Literature.
Luers holds an MFA in Film from Columbia University and has taught cinema history, theory and practice for over 20 years. He has maintained a particular research interest in web-based video and has published numerous essays about evolving forms of digital cinema. He was awarded Best Screenplay at the 2005 Nantucket Film Festival, and in 2010, a fellowship at the Vectors-NEH Summer Institute for the development of his database video documentary, "The Father Divine Project."
Luers teaches web development, digital cinema and multimodal publishing in the Creative Media & Digital Culture program at Washington State University Vancouver. He is the founder of the international online journal, The Digital Review, and will edit its 2024 issue on AI creativity. Luers is also the current Managing Editor at the electronic book review.
Chad Mossholder >>
Chad Mossholder is a BAFTA-nominated composer and sound artist renowned for his ability to seamlessly bridge the worlds of art and commercial creative endeavors. With a career spanning over two decades, his diverse portfolio encompasses experimental electronic music composition, audio/visual art installations, and the dynamic realm of video game music and sound design. His critically acclaimed and experimental electronic music project “Twine” has performed all over the world and has released six full length albums as well as numerous mini-albums and EP’s on such labels as Schematic, Hefty Records, Bip-Hop Records and Ghostly Records.
His sound designs span a diverse range of high-profile game titles including DOOM, DOOM Eternal, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies and DC Universe Online.
For more than 20 years, Chad has maintained a fruitful collaboration with acclaimed artist and writer, Mark Amerika. Their collaborative works, including Immobilité, the first-ever feature length art film shot on a mobile phone, have graced prestigious exhibitions on a global scale, solidifying their presence within the international art scene.