[Review] The Film "Backrooms", Generative AI, and Hallucination, Collapse (Text by Yuma Kishi)
AI artist Yuma Kishi discusses the film "Backrooms" and its similarities to generative AI imagery.Summary
This article is a review of the film "Backrooms", directed by Kane Parsons and produced by A24. The Backrooms originated as an internet meme from a photo posted on the anonymous forum 4chan in 2019, depicting an endless space with yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lights. In 2022, a short film by then-16-year-old Kane Parsons went viral on YouTube, leading to this feature debut with A24. Set in the 1990s, the story follows furniture salesman Clark, who discovers a mysterious space in his store's basement, and later his therapist Mary enters it. There, memories and traumas are evoked, and the eerie world blurs reality and hallucination. The author, Yuma Kishi, is an artist who views AI as "Alien Intelligence" and creates art in collaboration with his own developed AI. He points out that the Backrooms space resembles generative AI's "slightly wrong reality" imagery. However, he argues that the similarity to AI hallucination noted by many critics is only a superficial, level-0 resemblance. What is essentially isomorphic is the collapse that occurs when AI feeds on its own output. He aims to consider the meaning of humans continuing to create in a future where repetition no longer requires humans, through this film.
(Source：Tokyo Art Beat)