Pizzini is the plural of Pizzino which is derived from the Sicilian language and means “small piece of paper”. Most notably pizzini were used by the Sicilian mafia to communicate instructions or messages from the boss to his gang. In mid-2023, Matteo Messina Denaro who is described as “the last godfather of the Sicilian mafia” was arrested after pizzini were found in the leg of a chair in his sister, Rosalia Messina Denaro’s home.
The earliest signs of written notations can be dated back to 35000 BCE (Before Common Era). Fast forward to 2024 CE (Common Era) and Deloitte predicts that almost all software companies will integrate Generative AI into the offerings. The GenAI market will reach over 50 billion US dollars.
The contrast between the hand-written word and text generation is prodigious and we exist somewhere between the two. This year’s series will focus on the pizzini of our time. Collaborating with poet, Ronna Bloom, we will create six videos over the year based on pizzini. Little notes “found” in unusual places. Every other month, we will use a consumer AI program to create a video based on the same parameters as our original video.
Which video will catch your eye? Will GenAI videos replace those hand-made by humans? You be the judge. Human-made videos will appear in January, March, May, July, September, and November. GenAI videos will be posted in February, April, June, August, October, and December.
This is the final AI video in this series. Reviewing the year long AI creations it is easy to see the incredible advancements made in less than a year. These AI videos illustrate where the free versions of these technologies are today. Tomorrow, AI will just keep getting better. Tomorrow, we will not be able to tell the difference between “hand-made” media and AI generated products. This video took 30 minutes to create.
Text to video prompt: LTX Studio (Beta version)
Make a video that shows a wooden match being struck against a matchbox in extremely slow motion. On the beat of an ominous atonal music track, the image fluctuates between a black and white negative and positive. When the match is lit, the image becomes full colour. As the match slowly burns in the surrounding darkness, fiery text flashes the names of the books: “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, “The Wars” by Timothy Findley, “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” by Mordecai Richler, “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov, “Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie, “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” by D.H. Lawrence, “Go Ask Alice” by Anonymous. A blast of fire transitions or wipe to a close up shot of a row of book on a shelf. Between the books there is a paper note sticking out. Zoom into the note which is handwritten in cursive letters: “some of us are missing”. The paper catches fire and the image fades out.
Music by: Tad.ai
Music Lyrics: Quotes by Authors
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” ― Joseph Brodsky
“He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.” ― Milton
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.” ― Lyndon B Johnson
“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.” ― Oscar Wilde
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” ― Ray Bradbury
Sept: PEN & PAPER
The 6th and final hand-made video in the series. Stay tuned for the AI version of this in Dec.
For this month’s video, I created several images using the Adobe Firefly AI image generator (text to image). The new title was created with this program using the prompt “You should try the hot sauce”. Using PixVerse, I employed the prompt: “a drone shot of a field of chili peppers drying in spiral rows in the sun” to get the first shot of the chili peppers.
Some of the Adobe Firefly images were further manipulated in Haiper AI as image to video files. Dripping red liquid shots were created from text prompts in Pika. immersity AI was used to create a different type of movement to some of the images. The voice over track and some of the video images were generated by invideo AI, by asking for: “Mesmerizing drone shot of red chilli peppers drying in spiral.” I edited the clips together and added transitions. This process took approximately 2 hours.
Sept: You should try the hot sauce.
The 5th hand-made video in the series. Stay tuned for the AI version of this in Oct.
For this month’s video I used three free AI programs. First, I created 30 still images at Ideogram using brief descriptions based on the images from the original (July) video. Then I animated these still images at Haiper.ai (free account: limit 10 images per day). At Kapwing, I typed in descriptive text for the original video and then replaced some of the shots with the video clips made at Haiper.ai and July’s video.
June video:
3rd AI generated video in the series based on the May hand-made video, “The Shock of Now”
Software: https://app.pictory.ai/login
This month’s video took me 1 hours and 43 minutes to create – from creating the text to exporting the final video. This software has many options to customize your video, so it took me awhile to experiment and review the features.
This is the text that was input:
In the sky, there are birds circling. This could be stock footage from Al Jazeera.
A wad of “paper” is created from a sheet of newsprint paper and crumbled in the middle of the frame.
The wad of paper is in the foreground. In the background are blurry shots of garbage.
The wad of paper transforming into a chaotic shot of a garbage landfill.
The garbage landfill morphs into the crumpling wad of paper.
In the background there is a news crawl at the bottom of the screen when mentioned “Tons of garbage pile up in Gaza streets.” This crawl is white text on a red and black background at the bottom of the screen.
A shot of another garbage dump.
A wad of “paper” is created from this shot.
The crumpled paper ball is in the middle of the screen. In the background, news footage of garbage from AP.
A shot that looks like the camera is being tossed around in a garbage bag.
A montage or collage of numerous garbage bags and sheep walking through the garbage. This is from Al Jazeera.
A title “Please keep these safe” appears on a green textured paper/screen.
This “paper” is crumpled into a wad of paper in the centre of the screen.
This “paper” is unfolded to reveal a photograph of blue garbage recycling bins from the city of Toronto.
May: The Shock of Now
Stay tuned for June’s AI version of this video.
April video:
2nd AI generated video in series based on the March hand-made video, “quench”.
Software: https://www.artguru.ai/ai-video-generator/
This month’s video uses a text to video program “supposedly” powered by Sora AI. I say “supposedly” because Sora AI, created by OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, has been in limited use (early 2024) and it is not clear who or what connections artguru.ai has with Sora AI.
To be fair, I tried this program twice. With the following text input:
“1 minute video shots of ice and water or clear liquid being poured into clear glasses. Abstract black and white close-up shots with a yellow lemon slice dropping into glass. Imaginative, sharp, ice and liquid-inspired sounds. A yellow sticky note with the handwritten text ‘please wait for me I’ll be back in 10 minutes.’ Photograph of gin bottles on a shelf in a store.”
The first attempt took less than 5 minutes to create. After waiting several days to accumulate enough credits, I tried again. This time the online generator stalled at 97% for about 15 minutes and then finally created a second video.
FEB: The Unheard Promise
For this month’s video I used the free program Invideo.
I entered this into the video generator: “I want a 1 minute experimental video using the text ‘I promise you I didn’t do it’. Use a dark, atonal soundtrack and frame everything in a polaroid frame.”
I wanted to see how close the AI could get to producing a video like January’s project, “Sunday at 10:11 am”. Since this series will only use free programs, the ability to customize the elements is limited. I am also interested in seeing what the AI programs will create with minimal human intervention. This is the result.