Electronic eyes are everywhere all the time. Everyone is algorithmically famous for 15 seconds. So I wanted to explore this aspect of our lives that has become commonplace. And how better to visualize this but to have an AI generate videos of security cameras and paparazzi?

I started off by collecting 238 images of security images on the side of buildings and on metal poles. Interestingly after training using StyleGAN2, it was having an easier time producing good results on the seeds which had blue sky backgrounds and so I focused on these seeds for the generated videos. Then adding it look like an old degraded TV made it feel like security footage from an SCP article.

While collecting those images, I kept running across images of photographers taking a photo of themselves in the mirror. It was perfect because it was effectively the portrait of a paparazzi with a DSLR and lens pointed at you. So I collected another dataset consisting of 224 images. It’s so weird how StyleGAN2 tried to replicate how human fingers hold a DSLR camera. It might have refined that understanding with more training time, but I doubt it with this tiny dataset, and plus I was aiming for this uncanny feeling.

From there it was all gravy experimenting in After Effects with the PixelEncoder and Pixel Sorter plugins. Cheers to the omnipotent AI BBQ.

Released August 2022