Gary Hustwit

And we have our favorites.

But there's one thing that all of these movies have in common.

They are all linear, fixed experiences.

There's a beginning and an end, and they're the same every time we watch them.

But have you ever wondered why?

Like, why do films have to be the same every time?

The reason is actually a technical constraint from 130 years ago, when cinema was born and film was a physical medium, a reel of celluloid images that had to scroll through cameras and projectors, and they had to make duplicate copies of those reels and send them out to theaters.

But 25 or 30 years ago, when filmmaking all went digital, suddenly this constraint of physicality is gone, but we continue to make movies in the same way we always have.

It's like we're playing by a rule book that doesn't exist anymore.

So in 2019, I reached out to Brendan Dawes, who is a digital artist in England, and we started experimenting.

We wanted to see if we could make a cinematic documentary that was created dynamically in software with real footage that could tell a different story each time.

We built a generative video platform that was entirely human-coded.

It wasn't an AI model based or trained on other people's work.

And as we were experimenting, we realized who the ideal subject would be for the first generative film.

And then we reached out to this guy.

Can you tell us your full name?

We'll just use the shortened form of his name for this talk.

So Brian, for the past 50 years, has been pushing the boundaries of creativity and technology, from his electronic music experiments in Roxy Music, to his collaborations with David Bowie on records like Heroes, to producing Talking Heads, U2, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, so many others.

And he's released over 40 solo and collaboration records.

And in the 1990s,