Chimera (Edison)
Competition:
2nd Digital Arts Student Competition 2025 – Speculative Futures Finalist (Graduate)
Artist(s):
Artist School Information
| Education Level: | Graduate Student |
|---|---|
| School: | University of California, San Diego |
Artwork Details
| Year Produced: | 2025 |
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| Medium: | Sculpture, Video, Digital Art, Installation |
| Duration: | 9:40 |
| Category: | AI Artwork, Animation, Installation Art, and Sculpture |
Description:
Chimera explores the collapse between nature, myth, and machine. Trained on trail camera footage of deer, and applied to Edison Pictures Frankenstein, the custom AI model behind the film generates flickering, hybrid beings—part human, part animal, part machine. I use generative systems not just as tools, but as collaborators in speculative myth-making. Chimera is a meditation on artificial life, ecological entanglement, and machinic memory. It doesn’t depict the future—it behaves like one: unstable, haunted, and unresolved.
Technical Information:
Chimera was created using a custom LoRA trained on trail camera imagery of deer, with Stable Diffusion 1.5 as the base model. Film sequences from Edison’s 1910 Frankenstein were re-generated using this LoRA in combination with the AnimateDiff model, producing hallucinatory hybrid imagery. Frames were curated and compiled into a nonlinear visual narrative, emphasizing glitch, instability, and transformation. It should be noted that Edison Pictures Frankenstein is public domain. The finished work is a digital video with a resolution of 512×370 and a runtime of 9 minutes and 40 seconds.
Video:
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