Punctum. International Journal of Semiotics

By: Maria Lorenzo Hernández

ABSTRACT

By the end of 2022, social networks started sharing collections of sophisticated images accompanied by suggestive comments as if they belonged to a forgotten past: photos of interrupted filming, lost ancient movies, modern traditions recreated in archaic settings, etc. However, these astoundingly realistic images were but simulations generated by the Midjourney AI, with which users can design pictures from textual descriptions. This article focuses on two series of images devised by Johnny Darrell to recreate a non-existent film: Jodorowsky’s Tron (2022), as if the Disney film was directed by the visionary Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. If Disney’s Tron was known for its pioneering incorporation of computer graphics to recreate the inner world of the computer, the new simulations not only point to how AIs imagine the native environment of the AI but, unexpectedly, we may be seeing the preview of what the next-generation films will look like. Although these stylized visions of science fiction to come are, by the moment, just pictures and not movie pictures, they help us reflect on AI’s implications in the visual arts and, specifically, about the generation of images that re-create alternative history lines. Likewise, the essay explores Mark Langer’s suggestions in his article “The End of Animation History” (2002) about the critical moment that the traditional definition of animation – as opposed to live-action cinema – was going through at the turn of the 21st century. Thus, we will examine how the AI simulations propose a new scenario for our structure of reality.

 
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