Telephone is a collaborative art project by Mark Amerika, Martine Stig and Joanna Zylinska, commissioned by Noorderlicht and funded by the Mondriaan Foundation in the Netherlands. Inspired by the game Telephone, the artists engaged in a creative cycle using AI-generated video clips as prompts. The artwork evolved via a call-and-response procedural composition where each artist intuitively interpreted the video clip they received and crafted a new prompt—whether an image-based still sampled from the video, a text prompt derived from their creative reflections, or a combination of both—to guide the AI in generating the next video clip. This approach emphasized thoughtful, deliberate engagement with AI, as each artist’s decisions shaped the final work. These reflections later appear as animated text scrolls revealing the artists’ evolving insights. Telephone explores themes of perception machines, generative forms in human and nonhuman image-making, and post-photography, inviting viewers to consider how creativity and authorship unfold across the human-nonhuman spectrum.
The work is installed inside the 700+ year Akerk (church) in the center of Groningen as part of the “Pixel Perceptions: Into the Eye of AI” exhibition which opened on October 26, 2024 and closes on January 19, 2025.
In addition to Telephone, Amerika is exhibiting Posthuman Cinema (PHC), his collaborative work of AI-assisted digital video art made with colleagues Will Luers and Chad Mossholder. The work is beautifully installed in the “high pews” along with solo works from Stig and Zylinska.
PHC was also recently exhibited in Bergen, Norway, as part of “More Than Meets AI”—in conjunction with the Bergen International Film Festival and sponsored by the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen. The work previously appeared at the Noise Art Fair in Istanbul with the Kate Vass Galerie and was a selected work for the International Biennale of Digital Art in Montreal curated by @elektra_bian
