The Computer Accent + A History of the World According to Getty Images

The Computer Accent

Director: Riel Roch-Decter, Sebastian Pardo

Country: United States

Year: 2022

Runtime: 85 min

What does music composed with Artificial Intelligence sound like? American post-pop group YACHT embarks on a radical creative experiment: inviting a computer into the recording studio.

Most bands and musicians have a distinct sound. Can an Artificial Intelligence understand—and imitate—that sound? That’s what American post-pop group YACHT sets out to discover out in this entertaining and thought-provoking exploration of the intersection of art, technology and human intuition. YACHT invites a computer to analyze their back catalogue and assist in the composition of their seventh album. In the studio, melodies, rhythms, and even lyrics are generated by an AI system—but arranged, performed, and recorded by the increasingly frustrated band, whose romantic notions of artistic authenticity are put to the test.



A History of the World According to Getty Images

Director: Richard Misek

Country: Norway, United Kingdom

Year: 2022

Runtime: 19 min

This thought-provoking short film examines the meaning of the term “public domain,” and what happens to images whose copyright has expired and theoretically become freely available to all. Why is it that this type of image so often falls into the hands of commercial organizations such as Getty Images, which then requires payment to use them? What are the implications of putting images of historical events behind a paywall?

Archive footage of events such as the 1937 Hindenburg airship disaster and the US atom bomb tests on Bikini Atoll in the 1940s and 50s are etched into our collective memory. This documentary argues that such images should not be held hostage by profit-motivated parties. It’s a philosophy that the film itself puts into practice, ingeniously liberating this footage from the grip of commercial interests.