Image Empire – a new short film from Alan Warburton
Image Empire is an animated fairytale about the fusion of the real and the virtual within contemporary AI models. The film forms part of a research project undertaken by Alan Warburton which also includes a research paper and a series of satellite events.
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Key points
- The film is based on doctoral research at Birkbeck's Vasari Centre for Art & Technology.
- Commissioned by the National Videogame Museum in collaboration with ODI and Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
- A webinar on May 6 featured experts discussing AI, visual culture, and post-truth.
- The project includes a field guide, webpage, and related articles.
Why it matters
This matters because the film is based on doctoral research at Birkbeck's Vasari Centre for Art & Technology.
Technical impact
May affect model selection, inference cost, product capability, and evaluation benchmarks.
Image Empire is an animated fairytale about the fusion of the real and the virtual within contemporary AI models. The film forms part of a research project undertaken by Alan Warburton which also includes a research paper and a series of satellite events.
The film is based on doctoral research undertaken at Birkbeck’s Vasari Centre for Art & Technology. It was commissioned by the National Videogame Museum in collaboration with the Open Data Institute (ODI) and Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
The ODI hosted a webinar on 6 May to discuss the content of the film. The panellists explored what AI can and can’t do, what effects a collapse of real and virtual could have on visual culture, and if we’re living in a post-truth world. The participants were as follows:
Harmeet Chagger, Head of Digital and Innovation at The Space
Dr Maya Indira Ganesh, Associate Director of Research Culture & Partnerships at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
Chair: Dr Oonagh Murphy, Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at Goldsmiths, University of London
John O’Shea, Creative Director and Co-CEO at the National Videogame Museum
Hannah Redler-Hawes, Director of Data as Culture, the ODI
Dr Alan Warburton
You can watch a recording of the event below:
Useful links
Image Empire field guide
Alan Warburton’s webpage
More about the ODI webinar
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