When Experimental Brasil began, two years ago, the works submitted to the category Best Experimental Video Made With A.I. were still in their first steps. More curious possibilities than finished works. And all of them needed, in order to function, not just to be the child of a single tool, but the combination of techniques and talent. On their own, they wouldn’t be enough to stand.

     In this past season, although there were strong improvements in cohesion, less morphing, longer takes, and more character consistency, it still seemed like a much smaller possibility within the audiovisual field. Once again, a tool, and not an end in itself.

     Then I watched Hugs & Kisses, by filmmaker Marc Richter. And almost immediately came a kind of denial. An unconfessed nostalgia that wasn’t prepared to see and understand the future covering all pasts, like a hydra desperate to reproduce with a limping chihuahua. There was no looking away anymore. It was there. Right in front of me. Completely inevitable.

      The first rupture was the texture. Skin so real. Everything so real it could be mistaken for a dream copied directly from a feverish brain melting in psilocybin. Humanoids merged with abyssal mollusks. Eating. Making out. Getting to know each other. For any lover of surreal art, it was the mother cherry in fluorescent syrup.

       The second rupture was the sharpness. Except in a few spots where fire looked out of place for not being as perfect as the rest, everything was clear and present. Almost tactile and mischievously solid. If one could immerse in virtual reality, it would be hard not to want to reach out and touch.

The music was a cacophony that, to me, sounded playful, and fit well with the overall atmosphere.

      After years of consuming, whenever I could, art and/or psychedelia, I won’t deny that perhaps we are entering a kind of golden age of creative possibilities. There is still the need for a distinct and obsessed mind behind the commands, throwing in references and refining and piling up directions, but the tool is growing insanely in possibilities. The body of Tetsuo in a cancer of lights and unthinkable energies, exploding and engulfing the original master. And Marc Richter, in Hugs & Kisses, gave us a glimpse that maybe we can ride the chaos. At least for now, before we are all swallowed whole.