videoHotel Lux 'Points Of View' by Ewan Jones MorrisEwan Jones Morris takes us back into the marvellous world of cut-up montage animation - and then adds a modern tech spin for good measure - for South London indie band Hotel Lux.The video for the rather excellent Points Of View is a surreal mash of performance and textures, with a nostalgic zine aesthetic, courtesy of the technique of mixing cut-out stills with lo-fi video of the band performing, and other paper elements, that Jones Morris executed with the help of Louise Mason and William Reid. Together the three of them run a 'collage club' at State51, Hotel Lux's label, called Sticky Pleasure, where people hang out and make collages. So the video became a logical extension of that project.But as well as creating animating in the old-fashioned stop-frame way, Jones Morris also employed some AI to extend the capacity of the form. The effect is to super-charge the animation without disrupting its essential character.So body parts and landscapes entangle, faces crumple and eyeballs appear at every corner, in this wonderful, whimsical piece of work. "The video is pretty straightforward, low budget fare: lads, guitars and paper collage," explains Jones Morris. "But despite it's lo-fi DIY aesthetic some of the imagery is created by feeding collages into AI algorithms and seeing how the images are reinterpreted."I guess it's partly an attempt to utilise some of these already ubiquitous AI image generators in a very handmade, lo-fi way."
Rob Ulitski - 9 months ago