A Computer with a Soul
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 11:56AM
Review of Film White on While
by Philip Hohle
Experimental film is not necessarily meant to be entertainment, and as such, whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir never is in danger of straying too close to those normal expectations for a film. Instead, the filmmaker used a sophisticated method of tagging footage by description and allowing a computer to randomly select and sequence the clips for the audience. As a result, no viewing of whiteonwhite will ever be the same and any storyline one might recognize is fleeting at best. I should say that the director was somewhat adamant that the sequence is not random. The technology applies some sets of rules that effectively group certain kinds of tags together. Nevertheless, the result for the viewer is much closer to random than coherent.
In spite of this, the experiment is fascinating. As a professor of film production, I have screened a few too many student projects that lack coherence. As a matter of fact, some touted film festival flicks intentionally provide ambiguous storylines that provide a surprisingly similar level of coherence. This film project begs a rather frankensteinian question: can artificial intelligence replace humans as creative storytellers?
The title of the film is a reference to a work by Supremist painter Kazmir Malevitch, which appears to most amateur art enthusiasts as a simple white canvas. Producer Eve Sussman got her inspiration from Malevitch’s piece, which she describes as “transcendent.” Apparently, her hope was that her computer-generated film would provide the same sort of higher or spiritual experience. She describes the ordering as “poetic juxtapositions.”
Normally in a film review, I would tell you something about the plot and characters. Capitalization aside, whiteonwhite, does not lend it self well to this kind of formal exercise. Instead, I must provide only the impressions I found after watching this particular sequence at this particular theater on this particular night at the 2012 Sundance festival. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, no one steps in the same river twice. Were you to ever have the opportunity to see this film, know that my analysis will hardly be relevant to your own experience.
The footage for the film was shot in Central Asia in a faceless and worn Soviet-planned city, one Sussman describes as “aging before its time.” The timeframe is the early seventies and the tone is mysterious, technical, and stark. Apparently, Mr. Holz, who seems to be a western geo-archeologist with autistic tendencies, takes a job in the region’s oil industry to conduct some vague research. At one point, the computer storyline suggests that there is a need to synchronize all the watches in the municipality known only as City-A, but this plot thread seems unrelated to any other story fragment. Holz works somewhat independently from his employer, using outmoded tape recorders and working in control rooms reminiscent of the Dharma Initiative (from Lost). But again, this is just my impression.
By design, there is no beginning or end to this experience. The film is running when you enter the theater, and ends only when you feel it has ended. Meaning is internal if not completely irrelevant. I fell asleep, as did several others around me during our screening. Nevertheless, I don’t believe my experience was any less or more than those who watched it with full attention until the filmmaking team came forward to answer questions.
An added element to the show was a monitor showing a running log of commands the computer was issuing to sequence the film. Tag words would appear in the log and the viewer could confirm the computer’s logic by watching the big screen to see what clips, music, sound effects, and voiceover clips would appear. At one moment, one could be aware of the experiment and judge the event as a scientific. By turning away from the data, one would receive a more artistic impression. This choice certainly produced vastly different impressions from the screening. My choice was not to look over at the data until the interview began.
The computer can create no meaning—only reorder the clips created by the human artists. Should meanings emerge, it is by pure luck—hardly a transcendent experience unless you believe computers have souls. Thankfully, human creativity is much more complex and rich that a random roll of the dice, and human storytelling is still far superior even in spite of its lack of precision. If that was the hypothesis of the filmmakers, it was certainly verified.
©2012 Parabolic Media
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