The Clockwork Penguin

Daniel Binns is a media theorist and filmmaker tinkering with the weird edges of technology, storytelling, and screen culture. He is the author of Material Media-Making in the Digital Age and currently writes about posthuman poetics, glitchy machines, and speculative media worlds.

The Technician

Title: The Technician

Type: AI Micro-Film

Year: 2024

Duration: 02:43

Cast: None.

Crew: Written & Edited by Dan Binns

Synopsis / Notes / Statement:

An electrical technician travels the highways, tending the wires.

All media in this film were AI-generated, using Leonardo.Ai, RunwayML, ElevenLabs, and Suno.

Festivals / Streaming:

  • Best Movie Using Artificial Intelligence, CineTech Future Fest, Jul-Sep 2024, Poland.

NTRO Statement:

Background:
The video piece The Technician was inspired by Glenn Campbell’s song “Wichita Lineman”, reimagined for a post-apocalyptic setting. Creatively and conceptually, the piece draws from digital media artists Lauren Cook and Mark Amerika, as well as composers Gustavo Santaolalla, Max Richter, and Ludovico Einaudi. The video activates ideas and scholarship around how AI-generated material impacts visual storytelling, exploring whether AI can create compelling narratives and characters; examples of such scholarship include O’Toole and Horvát (2024), Garcia (2024), and Celis Bueno et al. (2024).

Contribution:
The project tests AI’s potential to generate media within a traditional audiovisual storytelling workflow. The output demonstrates both the strengths and limitations of AI in creative processes. This project also illuminates the value of human intervention in shaping AI outputs, especially in narrative construction. All media elements—narration, music, and sound effects—were AI-generated, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities AI tools present for creative practitioners and industries.

Significance:
This piece contributes to discussions about the role of AI in media production, questioning the boundaries of machine-generated storytelling. While the AI generated the media, human intervention was essential for refining the narrative, illustrating that in some ways at least, AI is not yet a substitute for human creativity. The piece won Best Movie Using Artificial Intelligence at the CineTech Future Fest in Poland, affirming its significance in the field of AI-driven media.

Brainstorming chat:

The motivation behind the film came from wanting to give students an example of an assessment for the class ‘Augmenting Creativity’. I assumed the role of a student and began a conversation with ChatGPT; soon I was sufficiently inspired/motivated to begin making my own film. You can read this conversation in full here.

Media prompts:

Some of the prompts used in Leonardo.Ai to generate media for this piece.

  • closeup of a female figure’s mid-section walking left to right across lens; wearing functional clothes for the post-apocalyptic environment
  • wide landscape shot of the post-apocalyptic wilderness at night, we can see a female figure sitting by a campfire in the far distance
  • low angle shot of a comms wire suspended in the air against a cloudy sky
  • in the distance a small fox moves through a forest at night, post-apocalyptic wilderness
  • at night a small fox curls up near a campfire in a post-apocalyptic wilderness
  • closeup of an old, abandoned road in a post-apocalyptic wilderness
  • dramatic stormy sky
  • a sweeping cinematic photograph of a vibrant sunset set against a desolate post-apocalyptic wilderness, shot from directly behind a 30-year-old athletic woman, her weathered skin glowing warm in the fading light, wearing functional outdoor clothing such as a fitted tank top, cargo pants, and scuffed hiking boots, with a well-worn backpack securely fastened to her shoulders, as she stands in awe, gazing up at an enormous rusty metal vault door, adorned with faded warning signs and industrial handles, set into the rugged weathered cliff face, the door’s intricate mechanisms and bolts exposed, with a sense of foreboding and mystery, the sunset’s warm orange and pink hues contrasting with the cold industrial metal, casting long shadows across the barren landscape.