Thumos is a video synthesis tool that articulates a plurality of perceptual worlds through adapting different narrative syntaxes to input text prompts. It is a representational tool of perception driven by narrative syntaxes that allows for an adaptation of individual and collective storytelling to play out in a range of media. The key feature of Thumos is prismatic syntax; or an ability to take text based media and drive it through different syntactic containers trained on aggregated videos. The videos in each syntax have been curated to train the algorithm, and represent the overarching theme of each narrative.

The problem Thumos seeks to address is the increasingly fractured, abstract, and polemical atmosphere brought on by self-segmenting media streams, and a world seemingly incapable of perceiving conditions that are not at their doorstep. The insular headspace of the present will only grow more fraught as algorithmic intelligence is instrumentalized to stretch towards a predictably ahistorical future in a constant recycling of the past into the present.

Thumos imagines instrumentalizing AI as a form of “avenir” as described by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida distinguished the future from avenir: “The future is that which – tomorrow, later, next century – will be. There’s a future which is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable. But there is a future, avenir (to come), which refers to someone who comes whose arrival is totally unexpected... So if there is a real future beyond this other known future, it’s avenir in that it’s the coming of the Other when I am completely unable to foresee their arrival.” Thumos is a self-reflexive conjuring that embodies the radical swing towards a new era of Artificial Intelligence and seeks to find the contours of avenir; thereby seeing, contemplating, and illuminating a space for individual and collective reckoning.

As an example, if one were seeking an understanding of recent developments in their personal life direction; text based indicators representative of the scenario would be input. The most direct approach would be a didactic drafting of one's circumstances into a short story, but it could also consist of letters from family or friends, social media posts, short stories that are relatable et al. The resulting output would be a video that overlays your text-based input onto the syntactic template of your choosing; thereby adapting it into an allegorization. The resulting video could then serve in the same way one becomes contemplative after viewing a narrative film– unpacking the meanings, the double meanings, the plot holes and pitfalls, the blind spots, the philosophy guiding the characters, the entire world in which the story place, and how that story speaks or narrates back to you.

Thumos would be scaled to encompass any narrative syntax that has the familiarity of meaning associated. For the initial test bed phase five syntaxes would be developed as follows: 

1.  Ascension or Descension: The narrative contours a rise or fall from power

2. Tests, Allies, Enemies: Circumstances generate change for good and bad simultaneously; something must be overcome

3. Maturation:  Rite of passage, coming-of-age ie moral, emotional, or spiritual expansion occurs

4. Wretched Excess: The narrative follows a downward spiral due to pride, greed, substance abuse et al.

5. Forbidden Love: A narrative that forces two lovers apart while simultaneously attracting them

All media in each figure below is for case study purposes only. The following examples are meant to indicate the possibility in an adaptation of syntactic video synthesis. The different video syntaxes would be developed with training data from the public domain with fair use rights and follow the narrative syntax templates as outlined above.

Fig 1 (Top): Video synthesis through the Tests, Allies, Enemies syntax; the allegory of The Blind Leading the Blind after Pieter Bruegel
Fig 2 (Above):Video synthesis through the Ascension or Descension syntax revealing another set of Baroque facades behind the apostles in the Isenheim altarpeiece
Fig 3 (Above):Video synthesis through the Wretched Excess syntax of a poker game that ends in an outburst



Fig 4 (Above):Video synthesis through the Ascension or Descension syntax of an alternate ending to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo Fig 5 (Above):Video synthesis through the Forbidden Love syntax reimagining a key scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo