Why Everything Everywhere All At Once Hits So Hard
Summary
TLDRThe video script delves into the transformative power of AI imagine generators like Midjourney, which can turn any concept into visual reality. It explores the impact of the internet and its endless stream of information on our psyche, drawing a parallel to the 'Overview Effect' experienced by astronauts. The script discusses the film 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' as a metaphor for the internet's chaotic influence on our lives, suggesting that while the digital world is overwhelming, it's possible to find personal meaning and balance amidst the chaos.
Takeaways
- 🤖 The script discusses the capabilities of AI image generators like Midjourney, which can create a wide range of visual outputs based on text prompts.
- 🎨 AI-generated art can be inconsistent, sometimes producing awe-inspiring results and other times yielding bizarre or unappealing images.
- 🌐 The script explores the profound impact of the internet on human imagination, suggesting it remixes collective human creativity with individual ideas.
- 🎬 The film 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' is highlighted as a work that captures a feeling of being overwhelmed by the internet's endless content.
- 🌐 The concept of the multiverse in the film serves as a metaphor for the vast array of experiences and perspectives available on the internet.
- 🌐 The 'Digital Overview Effect' is introduced as a psychological shift caused by the sheer volume of information and perspectives encountered online.
- 🌐 The script suggests that the internet can lead to a sense of chaos and the dissolution of traditional values like sincerity and irony.
- 🎥 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' is described as a post-internet film that embraces the internet's chaotic nature and reflects the experience of being online.
- 🌐 The script ponders how to cope with the internet's influence, suggesting that focusing on personal and immediate experiences can provide a healthier engagement with the online world.
- 🌟 The script concludes with a hopeful note, encouraging contemplation and the understanding that there are choices in how we engage with the digital world.
Q & A
What is the main theme of the script?
-The script explores the impact of AI image generators, the internet, and digital technology on human creativity, imagination, and perception. It also reflects on the profound psychological effects of constant exposure to diverse and novel information, likening it to the 'Overview Effect' experienced by astronauts.
What is the 'Overview Effect,' and how is it related to the digital world?
-The 'Overview Effect' is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts when they see Earth from space, leading them to perceive the planet as a fragile, interconnected whole. The script suggests a parallel in the digital world, where constant exposure to vast amounts of information can cause a similar psychological shift, termed the 'Digital Overview Effect.'
How does the script describe the impact of the internet on modern life?
-The script describes the internet as a double-edged sword: a source of endless curiosity, learning, and wonder, but also a potential source of overwhelm, distraction, and disorientation due to the sheer volume of content and perspectives available at any time.
What role does the film 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' play in the script's discussion?
-The film 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' is used as an example of a 'post-internet' film that fully embraces the chaotic, maximalist nature of the internet. It reflects the absurd, unpredictable, and overwhelming experience of navigating through infinite digital content.
What is meant by the 'Digital Overview Effect'?
-The 'Digital Overview Effect' refers to a psychological shift that occurs from being exposed to an overwhelming amount of information and perspectives online. Unlike the 'Overview Effect,' which involves a change in perception due to physical distance, the digital version is driven by the sheer quantity and diversity of ideas encountered online.
What concerns does the script raise about AI image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E?
-The script raises concerns about the implications of AI image generators on creativity, art, and imagination. As these technologies advance, they may change our relationship with visual media, art, and even reality itself, by making anything imaginable a visual reality.
What does the script suggest about the future of digital engagement?
-The script suggests that the future of digital engagement will involve more profound challenges as technology continues to advance. It calls for finding healthier ways to engage with the digital world, recognizing what truly matters, and not getting lost in the endless possibilities and distractions that the internet offers.
How does the script relate to the concept of 'post-internet' art and media?
-The script relates to 'post-internet' art and media by highlighting how works like 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' do not just comment on the internet but embody its chaotic and absurd nature. This represents a shift from critiquing the internet's content to reflecting on the experience of existing in an internet-saturated world.
What metaphor does the script use to describe the internet experience?
-The script uses the metaphor of 'swimming through a world of thoughts, ideas, concepts, and emotions' to describe the overwhelming and unpredictable nature of navigating the internet, where diverse content is presented in a rapid, unending stream.
What does the script say about the generational impact of the internet?
-The script suggests that newer generations are growing up with the internet as an omnipresent part of their lives, unlike older generations who experienced it as a separate, log-on environment. This difference is shaping how they view the world and handle information, often without adequate tools or coping mechanisms.
Outlines
🤖 AI and the Expansion of Imagination
The paragraph introduces the concept of AI-generated imagery through 'Midjourney,' an AI imagine generator that can create anything from a watermelon pie to a cactus ghost based on user prompts. It discusses the varying quality of outputs, from awe-inspiring to terrifying, and the addictive nature of exploring the limitless possibilities AI can offer. The script also touches on the broader implications for art and imagination as AI technology advances, questioning what it means for a world where our imaginations can be made real.
🌐 The Internet's Impact on Perception
This section delves into the profound effects of the internet on our worldview, drawing a parallel with the 'Overview Effect' experienced by astronauts. It suggests that the internet, with its constant stream of novel ideas and perspectives, can lead to a psychological shift akin to the one astronauts describe. The paragraph reflects on the internet's role in shaping our experiences and how it mirrors the chaotic and maximalist nature of the film 'Everything Everywhere All At Once,' which is seen as a post-internet commentary on the absurdity and chaos of online life.
🌌 Navigating the Digital Void
The final paragraph grapples with the challenge of facing the overwhelming nature of the internet and its influence on society. It acknowledges the difficulty of growing up in a world dominated by the internet and the need for individuals to find a healthier way to engage with it. The paragraph concludes with a quote from Marshall McLuhan, emphasizing the importance of understanding and contemplating the impact of technology on our lives, suggesting that there is hope for a more mindful and balanced interaction with the digital world.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Midjourney
💡Artificial Intelligence
💡Imagination
💡Internet
💡Multiverse
💡Digital Overview Effect
💡Irony
💡Chaos
💡Maximalism
💡Sincity
💡Personal Engagement
Highlights
AI imagine generator 'Midjourney' can create visual realities based on prompts.
Results from AI can range from awful to incredible.
Examples of AI-generated images include a 'movie camera by Pablo Picasso' and 'a bathroom designed by MC Escher'.
The unpredictability of AI-generated content is both terrifying and fascinating.
AI technology like DALL-E 2 is becoming more powerful than Midjourney.
The impact of AI on art, images, and imagination is a significant question as technology advances.
The feeling of being overwhelmed by the internet's endless possibilities is described.
Artists like Bo Burnham and the film 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' capture this feeling.
The internet is a garden of endless wonder but also a double-edged sword.
The 'Digital Overview Effect' is a psychological shift from consuming vast amounts of information.
The film 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' is a post-internet commentary embracing internet culture.
The internet's impact on the way we see the world is profound and can lead to a paradigm shift.
The film's directors discuss the movie's connection to the internet and the experience of growing up with it.
The internet's influence on current generations is shaping a new way of living.
The film suggests finding a healthier way to engage with the internet's chaos.
Marshall McLuhan's quote offers hope for contemplating and understanding the internet's impact.
Transcripts
Imagine a world where anything you can think of can become a visual reality.
A Watermelon Pie? We got it. A Cactus ghost?
Got it. Hunter S Thompson as the president? We got that too.
For the last several days I’ve been obsessed with an AI imagine generator called “Midjourney.” You
put in a prompt like “the perfect cloud” and it spits out some results. Sometime the results are
awful, sometimes they’re bizarrely terrifying, but just as many times they’re incredible.
Here’s a movie camera by Pablo Piccaso.
Infinite Cabbage. / A bathroom designed by MC Escher. / A person made entirely out of
cheese. / Deluxe beans. / A strip mall painted by monet. / Dune directed by Wes
Anderson. / A bubble gum farm. / “Family Dinner” by David Lynch / A Symbol for Bliss / Chicken
Nuggets at a michelin star restaurant. / Cotton Candy grapes. / Twin Peaks drawn by
a child. / A potted tongue plant. / Pills by Gucci
I’ve spent hours surfing through what is essentially humanity’s collective imagination
remixed by my random ideas and a powerful Artificial intelligence. It’s addicting
and fascinating. Every idea is like a gamble,
you don’t know if it’s going to spit out something amazing or just a pile of trash.
sorry, a box of trash by Van Gogh
But it’s as terrifying as it is fascinating.
As this technology improves, (which it already is; DALL-E 2 Google’s AI image generator is
much more powerful than Midjourney) What will it mean for art, images, imagination? What is
a world where anything we imagine can become a reality? What if we put everything on a bagel?
That Funny Feeling
There’s a new feeling I’ve been feeling occasionally in recent years. It’s hard
to describe, deeply personal, overwhelming, fractal, uncomfortable, and yet enticing and
awe-inspiring. For a while I wasn’t sure what it was. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from,
or if anyone else was experiencing what I was occasionally feeling.
And then- in 2020, I started noticing some artists starting to depict the feeling.
The first person who really put a finger on a part of the feeling
was Bo Burnham with his Comedy Special Inside:
That funny feeling.
But another recent work- that captures the feeling in an even more fundamental
way I think is the incredible, hypermodern, maximalist film Everything Everywhere All At Once.
It’s easy to get bogged down in the technical elements of “multiverses” and how they work
either as a storytelling device, or as an actual theory for our own cosmos. But what I’m most
interested in about the multiverse, as it’s used in Everything Everywhere all at once, is as a
metaphor for our own world and our own experience. And for in a certain sense, the experience of:
Title: “The Internet”
I love the internet. For someone who’s always loved learning about new and novel things,
who has a kind of insatiable curiosity, and could spend all my time just endlessly exploring and
learning about what’s out there if I didn’t have to also do other things like socialize, pay rent,
and eat: the internet has been a garden of endless wonder, delight and possibility.
The internet has an inexhaustible variety of cool stuff, tons of fascinating people
and ideas to discover. The internet is why I’m able to have such a cool and interesting job.
But it’s also a double edged sword. Even when it’s pointed towards what on the surface feels
like productive learning, and not just mindless entertainment, when given the
option to fulfill endless curiosity, there comes a tipping point, a crossing of the bell curve.
Here’s the thing: We don’t need an actual multiverse to put cracks in the clay pot
of our mind when we already have devices for careening through the endless imaginations of
the multitudes, when we exist in an environment where you can encounter the personal stories and
experiences from people on every continent, all who are living their own unique life in
just a few minutes, all from the comfort of your own toilet. When more interesting
ideas and concepts, and people and places can fly by in the space of one 30 minute Tik Tok binge
then some of our ancestors experienced in the entirety of their localized illiterate lives.
The internet, for those who are inspired to spend lot of time on it and use it in a certain way,
for those who envelope themselves in it’s self-referential world of constantly evolving
novelty and imagery, will inevitably have a profound effect on the way you see the world.
The Overview Effect What is the result of
the headlong dive through novel ideas and imagery?
Many Astronauts, upon seeing earth for the first time from space,
spinning by below them report something that has been dubbed “The Overview Effect”
“It is the experience of seeing first-hand the reality of the Earth
in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, "hanging in the void",
shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere.
These astronauts are noting a difficult-to-describe shift in their psyche
as a result of their extreme shift in physical perspective. And while I don’t think the effect
of being “very online” is same as The Overview Effect that astronauts experience, I do think
there’s an analogous effect that can happen from consuming the amount of information many of us
now do. Seeing so much of the world so quickly can trigger a sort of psychological paradigm shift.
The shift isn’t coming from being exposed to a new idea of perspective that forces you to reassess
your own, the shift comes from the shear amount of perspectives and ideas that we’re exposed to.
The shift and the feeling of this shift can contain some positives, but it isn’t all good.
I think for most people the Digital Overview Effect is a gradual and pervasive accumulation,
slowly building up as we swim through a world of thoughts, ideas, concepts and emotions,
all projected at us through images, text, and video, one after another in an endless parade.
Each new idea can pull you in a different direction, and there’s a certain point where
everything, the infinite possibility starts to look and feel like nothingness, at at that point,
the entire thing collapses on itself. Sincerity is long gone, but irony has also died.
//
For me Everything Everywhere All at once is one of the first true post-internet
films. It’s not just about the internet, it doesn’t just comment one the internet,
but fully embraces it in all it’s absurdist, chaotic glory. The maximalist excess
and the complete tonal whiplash from one moment to the next, captures the unhinged,
unfiltered anarchy of using the internet in a way that nothing else I’ve ever consumed ever has.
This is a movie for people who have found themselves blinking sleep out of their eyes
with 50 tabs open at 2am, which I suspect is many more of us than we openly admit.
In an interview with Slashfilm, Daniel Scheinert, one of the movie’s directors said:
“We've talked a lot about what it's like to have grown up with the internet,
and how that exacerbated the typical generational divide, and what it feels like for everyone,
no matter old you are, to live right now with the internet. So, that's one of the key metaphors,
was just like, we wanted the maximalism of the movie to connect with what it's like to
scroll through an infinite amount of stuff, which is something we're all doing too much.”
Most media that tries to comment on the internet, comments on the “content” of the internet, or one
small element that it wants to critique, but it doesn’t comment on the message that comes from the
medium of the internet. The way the most absurd or inane things you’ve ever seen coexist in the
immediate context of tragedy and your family and friends. Everything Everywhere All At Once does.
It’s silly and stupid and choatic because, well. Welcome to the Internet.
Jobu Tupaki is a child of the internet, raised in and by the chaos of the multiverse,
cast unknowingly by her parents, without training wheels, into the void. She doesn’t have the
skills to cope, and neither do many of the real teenagers who are growing up on the internet now.
Evelyn first tries to resist, and then tries to understand, but realizes that
she too is not equipped to handle the onslaught of experiencing the internet head on.
How do we handle this situation? How do we stare head on into the
void? Maybe you haven’t experience what I’m talking about, maybe you don’t know what I mean.
Maybe you’ve been able to venture into this Brave New World we’re living in relatively untouched,
but even if you haven’t I would argue that you have. Our world is being shaped and formed by
people who have gone in and haven’t come out unscathed, while my parents generation
and even mine got to grow up with the internet as something that you still went to as box to log on
to, current generations are growing up with it as an omnipresent extension of themselves. They grow
up in a technological world increasing dominated by the internet, where it’s intertwined with their
education, social lives, and careers, and where it increasingly takes a bold
and defiant individual to take a step away, much less disconnect entirely.
And it’s not slowing down. While the adults in power are just now
becoming aware of the issues that began rearing their heads in a decade ago, the next decade
holds even more astonishing wonders and terrors, waiting for us to embrace them with open arms.
It might sound from all this that I think it’s a very hopeless situation.
But I don’t really think that, or at least I don’t feel hopeless, and neither does Everything
Everywhere All at Once, which ultimately affirms a quiet acceptance of a life that openly
acknowledges the infinite chaos and possibility, but quietly ignores it and makes the choice to
value more immediate and personal things. And in some sense while chaos reigns on a
planetary scale, it is possible I think for an individual to find a better, healthier way to
engage with this Brave New World, and while that doesn’t fix the problem as a whole, if we can’t
figure out how to engage with these things in a healthy way as individuals, we’ll never
figure out how to do it as communities.
And to engage with this world in a healthier way, you’ll have to understand what doesn’t matter.
Because the internet is a place where everything matters all at once
all the time. But the real word, the life you’re living, is one where you can
only pay attention to a few thing in one place, at a time. And giving your time and
attention to a few things that do matter means looking an almost infinite world of
possibility constantly vying for you attention and boldly proclaiming that it doesn’t matter.
There’s a quote from Marshall McLuhan that gives me hope when thinking about these kinds of issues,
so I’ll leave you with that:
“There is no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”
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