Keep that Dream Burning

© Rainer Kohlberger, Keep that Dream Burning

Keep that dream burning is an eight-minute experimental short film that invites its viewers on a journey of fine black-and-white particles fluttering across the screen. Coagulating into rough structures, they transform into a storm of jagged artifacts and steadily changing spots of light. With the introduction of the flicker effect, the floating electronic sound turns into a piercing rhythmic wafting and comes to rest towards the end – to the image of a black hole subtly growing deeper and deeper. Concrete object and events continually materialize from the active particles: dispersing debris, fireballs, and smoke barely evoke images of explosions familiar from action films, before disappearing again in static.

Entirely based on algorithmic compositions, the audiovisual piece Keep that dream burning turns dramatic image sequences back to their raw form and discloses them to the oblivious viewer. Trained through machine learning, the independent computer has learned to apply transformations of images in compliance with the aesthetic guidelines of the artist, accompanied by layers of noise.