My final project is a music video. Composed of Chinese lyrics, it is a song memorizing my grandmother, who passed away in August 2020 due to cancer. The song was generated by Suno AI with lyrics[1] written by ChatGPT, prompted by my mother’s writings about grandma[2]. The footages within the video were old pictures and video clips I pulled from my hard drive that could date as early as January 2012, as well as more ancient photos my mom provided when grandma was in her 30s. So, the music video indeed was a collective creation of me, my mom, and Generative AI tools – each of which played some role in making it what it is. It has obvious flaws, but it is meanwhile very private, sentimental, lingering, and beautiful.
[1] The edited lyrics can be found here (lyrics).
[2] The original text can be found here (mom’s writing).
… it is human nature to say a proper goodbye to the people we love. The way to get through pain is not to forget, but to remember them forever in a way that retains their spirits and wills. Not “reviving” the corporeal body or finding a substitute like what we’ve seen in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), I opt to use generative AI tools to facilitate me to envision the ways to maintain and rejuvenate grandma’s countenance.
… At my grandma’s funeral, my mom gave a powerful memorial speech on her mom. My mom asked me to create some sort of video for grandma and play during the ceremony. I did not take it seriously with an excuse of not knowing how to approach this form of video. So here I am, making up for the work that I was supposed to do four years ago for two of my beloved ladies…
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