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.
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.