Connecting Cultures
Recently, demonflyingfox’s video Harry Potter by Balenciaga, which utilizes AI, has been making waves on social media. It’s fascinating to see familiar characters like Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, and Voldemort striking the peculiar poses and haughty expressions characteristic of a Balenciaga runway. This work not only showcases the frontier of AI-generated image technology but also redefines the meaning of “content” on social media and in society at large.
In demonflyingfox’s work, familiar scenes from movies, anime, and games are parodied using AI’s unique expressive capabilities. For example, the main characters from Harry Potter are reimagined as trendy Balenciaga models, or the protagonist of American Psycho is depicted as a Middle Eastern businessman. This style has been adopted by numerous YouTube channels, with each video reaching 300,000 views within just 12 hours of posting!
In modern society, most media consumed by the public is based on big-budget films produced in Hollywood. The majority of characters speak English and belong to Western cultures, specifically from the United States and Europe. There have been only a handful of Asian films that have achieved worldwide success. In the logic of capitalism, it makes sense to define a target audience that maximizes profit and to plan content accordingly. However, might this biased targeting subconsciously cause a sense of cultural deprivation among the public?
Nam June Paik’s work Lottery of Genghis Khan comes to mind. A few hundred years ago, Eastern cultures had a far greater influence on the world culturally and institutionally compared to the West. However, following the era of imperialism, Western civilization rapidly advanced and began to wield overwhelming power across culture, capital, industry, and institutions. This shift is especially evident in signage, which reflects public perception. Most signs do not use our native language or Chinese characters but instead adopt English or other foreign words. (In Korea, the use of foreign words is higher than in any other country.) It seems that there is a greater focus on actively embracing advanced cultures rather than exploring and advancing our own. However, if this mindset stems from superficial choices rather than mature discussions and critical thinking, it might be time to reconsider.
We now have the ability, through generative models, to easily alter the gender, race, and age of familiar characters. Couldn’t we modify Western characters to represent Eastern ones? In my spare time after work, I decided to use the text-based image generation AI service MidJourney to create some images. First, I asked ChatGPT for descriptions of key characters and iconic scenes from The Dark Knight Rises, which was a major success in Korea. Then, I matched Korean actors to the main characters and had them described accordingly. Afterward, I generated and edited the images in MidJourney. The key results are shown below.
As I created this work, I began to wonder if AI-generated content models could be used to eliminate cultural bias and achieve freedom in diversifying race, gender, age, and more.
Could these tools be used to connect and fuse various cultures, each with their own distinct forms and structures, freely and creatively?
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