KULTAMA
experimental short film
by Jarkko Räsänen
Finland, 2023, 8 min
Premiering in Brooklyn Film Festival June 2023
Synopsis
The latest addition to a series of experimental short films by Jarkko Räsänen is KULTAMA, in which he demonstrates the possibilities of misunderstanding found footage through his self-made algorithms.
This fatherly-guarded, 7-minute-long hypersynthetic trip to the digital subconscious uses bits of video footage downloaded from YouTube to form an ecosystem of forms and colors before the viewer's eyes.
The pilgrimage through the Information Amazon offers a granular view of the world, presenting information as paint in the spray can of a digital expressionist at an empty subway station.
After listening to the archangelic soundtrack, viewers might wonder what a choir of bass players would sound like...
Jarkko Räsänen is an award-winning Finnish media artist based in Berlin, specializing in artistic programming and electronic music.
He has been referred to as an AI artist since he was 12, but prefers to "keep it real" by not using machine learning algorithms in his more serious work.
Filmmakers' note
« I have been obsessed with programming since it was introduced to me in the midst of the 90s Finnish demoscene, a UNESCO immaterial world heritage-listed computer subculture. In 2009, I opened a portal to other dimensions in every given JPEG by inventing a pixel-sorting style algorithm as my MFA graduation work. Ever since then, I have been studying variations of it, and KULTAMA is perhaps the closest in structure to a classic demoscene piece, which I still hold as an ideal artistic form. Nevertheless, KULTAMA is strongly connected to the tradition of experimental cinema by arrogantly using found footage as raw material for its very special effects - and for the soundtrack. I like to think that the algorithm ‘Order’d Dance’ plays the main role in KULTAMA, not the alien sample material. »
Direction, Production, Music:
Jarkko Räsänen
Finland, 2023, 8 min
Shooting Format: Digital
Premiere: Brooklyn Film Festival
Category: Experimental
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