Godfrey Reggio's 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi serves as a prophetic vision of a world irrevocably altered by technology—a collision of wilderness, concrete canyons, and flickering screens—a life out of balance. The Vivid Unknown, an installation by Godfrey Reggio and John Fitzgerald (Onassis ONX), emerges from this unsettled terrain as a dystopian vision of a planet consumed by technology. The world we see and know is being left behind. A new, untold world is unfolding. As the human race accelerates through the 21st century, past, present, and future collide as a new technological environment manifests.
The Vivid Unknown invites viewers to become active participants in the emerging digital ecosystem. This large-scale installation is driven by computer vision and a machine-learning model, trained on Reggio’s pre-internet Koyaanisqatsi archive, to produce state-of-the-art generative AI visuals and soundscapes synthesized through a dynamic audio diffusion model. As you move, the installation responds, morphing and evolving in real time, your body a signal revealing the uncanny beauty and terrifying potential of our technological age.
The music was composed using a proprietary text to audio model trained on Philip Glass’ original score. The compositions are intended to deconstruct live, the individual pieces melding and then disjoining. The model used presented an initial stem of an idea, which was then elaborated upon, interpreted, and recontextualized through creative sampling, stitching, arrangement, and most importantly the human touch. The installation responds to movement using a combination of Max MSP, Ircam’s Spat, and OSC.
