Original Film Title: Carbon Copy
Director’s Name: Derrick Chan-Sew
Writer`s Name: Derrick Chan-Sew
Producer: Derrick Chan-Sew
Country of Filming: United States
Runtime: 3 minutes 19 seconds
Film Description:
Carbon Copy recently won both the Grand Prize and Best Video at the Cal Performances’ Illuminations “Human and Machine” 2022-2023 Song Contest series. The film is a new media exploration in uploading human consciousness to the cloud. The subject’s memories and life experiences are on display as they are transformed into the digital realm. The film score parallels this conversion through the evolution of analog to digital instrumentation, eventually resolving in the cathartic moment of body death.
The film challenges viewers to think deeply about the implications of technology and its impact on our lives. As brain-machine technology matures and gains popularity, it raises questions about transhumanism: what it means to be human, and what happens to our identities when we leave our physical bodies behind.
All aspects of the film and music were crafted using generative AI with natural language processing, neural networks and deep learning techniques. I used a highly constrained human-in-the-loop process where unadulterated video and music output was used. More abstractly, it could be imagined that this is a piece of work that the subject would create recursively, post digital conversion.