MAGIC MEDIA

In 2026, I was invited by the remote island community of Surge Narrows to create a meaningful media art project using school district-issued laptops. Together with the seven students (age ranging from 8-14) of this one-room school, we concocted a collective consciousness with the “magic media” function of generated artificial intelligence videos.

Together we played many improvisation and imagination games that relied on a collective data set and an expanded awareness of our human abilities. We learned about how generative AI works, and who it works for. We asked questions and pondered the speed at which information is able to travel. We crafted prompts using exquisite corpse writing games and presented our findings to the Read Island community by playing intergenerational editions of “Professor Know-It-All” together followed by a screening of our one minute experimental film.

Inspired greatly by Empire of AI by Karen Hao and the many resources shared by the Meta-Relationality Institute. Many many thanks to Susanne Hrybko and the residents of Read Island.