Ben Howard Shares AI Generated Video For "Richmond Avenue"

Ben Howard is pleased to share the video for “Richmond Avenue”, made entirely using AI software.

The video was made in collaboration with the Australian born, Cornwall based cinematographer/photographer Wilbot, who comments on the process of making the video:

“Richmond Avenue was made using the generative AI application Runway, with a combination of text to video (adding select phrases and words to get a result) and video to video generators (taking existing video and using phrases or imagery to alter in line with the film)”

Ben writes cryptically on the video and the usage of AI in the creation process,

“Neither existing, the past and the future. we are caught between two poles. We dream of what is to come to make peace with an inaccessible past.
We wade through memory asking the future to provide it all again. We are filled with sadness because we are neither here nor there.
Meanwhile the planet melts. A great dystopian future confronts us.
The shimmering mirage of childhood is buried by the news that things will only get worse. Our children will see the end of civilisation. The great spectacle of our demise is there, fatalistic (fantastic) tantalising, in front of us.
Of course we look back because we cannot bear to look forward.
Of course, the greatest spectacle is the very end. Altogether, smiling.
Some are laughing,
Some are crying,
We are all eating ice cream.
Because what else? What else is there to do when you have all the money in the world but the world is melting?
We are enjoying ourselves, between the two poles— The unreachable past, the unavoidable future. And the technology will be old soon. And we will be old. And the sun’s great nuclear mass will mesmerise us until it melts us. Or we choose to melt ourselves.
And we can’t decide anyway because we are all computer generated.”