Studio Above&Below Uses Maxon Software for AI-Generated Ruhr River Film

London-based art and technology studio Above&Below has released "Aquateque," a short film exploring the ecosystem of Germany's Ruhr River. The studio, founded by Royal College of Art alumni Daria Jelonek and Perry-James Sugden, utilized Maxon's Cinema 4D and Redshift renderer, combined with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), to produce the film's distinctive visuals.

"Aquateque" is an eight-minute film that follows the Ruhr River from its source to its mouth. The film's visual style is based on thousands of images and sounds captured by the studio. This data was used to train GANs, a form of machine learning, to generate new, partially synthetic landscapes and materials. These AI-generated elements were then composited with actual footage in Cinema 4D and other software such as Houdini and Octane Render.

The studio's inspiration for the film stemmed from a desire to explore how technology and nature might merge in the future. They aimed to demonstrate how AI could be employed to create novel materials and landscapes that, while rooted in reality, offer imaginative interpretations. The project was a commission from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, showcasing the region's diverse ecosystem.

During the initial phase, the studio gathered extensive data along the Ruhr River, including images of the water surface, rock formations, and vegetation. This data was fed into GANs, which produced new, augmented surface materials and forms. These AI-generated elements were converted into 3D objects within Cinema 4D and rendered using Octane and Redshift. The final film was assembled by compositing original video with the AI-generated 3D elements, with post-processing using tools like After Effects and DaVinci Resolve.

Studio Above&Below hopes "Aquateque" will spark conversations about the future relationship between machines, ecology, and human creativity. They aim to inspire artists and designers to explore the creation of digital materials and objects using AI. Additionally, they emphasized the use of carbon-neutral computing throughout their process, encouraging other creators to consider the environmental footprint of digital production.