Autoencoding Blade Runner: Reconstructing Films With Artificial Neural Networks

‘Blade Runner—Autoencoded’ is a film made by training an autoencoder—a type of generative neural network—to recreate frames from the film Blade Runner. The autoencoder is made to reinterpret every individual frame, reconstructing it based on its memory of the film. The result is a hazy, dreamlike version of the original film. The project explores the aesthetic qualities of the disembodied gaze of the neural network. The autoencoder is also capable of representing images from films it has not seen based on what it has learned from watching Blade Runner.