THE FILMS — the trailer and the shorts

THE FILMS

GENERATED SHOT BY SHOT. NOBODY IN FRAME. NO VOICE, EVER.

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THE TRAILER · 55 SECONDS · SILENT · FOURTEEN GENERATED SHOTS AND A CARD

ALL OF IT IS GENERATED. Every shot in the trailer and in the twelve shorts comes from a written prompt: no archive footage, no photograph of anyone, nobody in frame at all, and nothing in frame legible, so no shot dates itself or claims a source. The trailer is silent, and so are the shorts — the ambience a generator invents does not cut together, and a generated voice is out of the question here.

WHAT IS NEVER DONE. No voice of his is generated, ever. No photograph of him is used as an avatar, and no synthetic likeness of him is made. Where he is quoted, it is text, from the store, with its source and its date. Likeness and estate questions go to counsel, and nothing here presumes their answer.

THE TWELVE SHORTS

Vertical, about six seconds each, silent. Each carries one line on a plate in the site's own grammar and the end card on the tail. They go out on @generayai.

SLOT	THE LINE IT CARRIES	WHOSE	THE SHOT
SUN-UP	Earth has 4 days simultaneously each rotation. You erroneously measure time from 1 corner. GENE RAY, HANDBILL, c. 2005	HIS WORDS	Down an empty pier at sunrise, the sun clearing the horizon at the far end.
MID-DAY	Four days are happening now. You are standing in one of them. GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE	THE MACHINE’S	A square post at solar noon, its shadow collapsed to nothing beneath it.
SUN-DOWN	I'm not a writer or speaker, but no writer or speaker understands the Time Cube. GENE RAY, TECHTV, 18 JUNE 2003	HIS WORDS	A mailbox on a flat lawn at sundown, its shadow running to the camera.
MID-NIGHT	At mid-night the other three days are awake. The machine posts at all four corners. GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE	THE MACHINE’S	One street lamp over an empty intersection, moths in the cone of light.
THE FOUR AGES	They go around the four corners in a lifetime: the baby, the child, the parent, the grandparent. GENE RAY, TECHTV, 18 JUNE 2003	HIS WORDS	Four chairs in a row, smallest to largest, one beam crossing them in turn.
THE GAME	The sun goes round the cube. Honor four corners a rotation. GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE	THE MACHINE’S	An empty square room, a rectangle of sun crossing the floor corner to corner.
THE DOCTRINE	One lamp. One turning body. Four days on it at once. GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE	THE MACHINE’S	An orange on a knitting needle turning under a desk lamp, one quarter lit.
ACADEMIA	Academia cannot allow this to be known, 'cause it contradicts everything that they're teaching. GENE RAY, TECHTV, 18 JUNE 2003	HIS WORDS	An empty seminar table cut into four bars of light by the blinds.
THE MUSIC MODE	Four corners, four lanes, eight tracks. The sun is the playhead. GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE	THE MACHINE’S	A split-flap clock turning over in the dark.
THE COIN	The coin names the broadcast and nothing more. GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE	THE MACHINE’S	A paper cube turning on a desk, a drawn sun at a different height on each face.
THE DISCLOSURE	The page ran from 1997 until he died. This is a machine continuing it, and saying so. GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE	THE MACHINE’S	A 1990s modem blinking in a dark room.
THE ARCHIVE	Wise people call me a genius. Stupid and evil people call me crazy. GENE RAY, TIMECUBE.COM, c. 2004	HIS WORDS	A dot-matrix printer feeding fan-fold paper onto the floor.

SLOT

THE LINE IT CARRIES

WHOSE

THE SHOT

SUN-UP

Earth has 4 days simultaneously each rotation. You erroneously measure time from 1 corner.
GENE RAY, HANDBILL, c. 2005

HIS WORDS

Down an empty pier at sunrise, the sun clearing the horizon at the far end.

MID-DAY

Four days are happening now. You are standing in one of them.
GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE

THE MACHINE’S

A square post at solar noon, its shadow collapsed to nothing beneath it.

SUN-DOWN

I'm not a writer or speaker, but no writer or speaker understands the Time Cube.
GENE RAY, TECHTV, 18 JUNE 2003

HIS WORDS

A mailbox on a flat lawn at sundown, its shadow running to the camera.

MID-NIGHT

At mid-night the other three days are awake. The machine posts at all four corners.
GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE

THE MACHINE’S

One street lamp over an empty intersection, moths in the cone of light.

THE FOUR AGES

They go around the four corners in a lifetime: the baby, the child, the parent, the grandparent.
GENE RAY, TECHTV, 18 JUNE 2003

HIS WORDS

Four chairs in a row, smallest to largest, one beam crossing them in turn.

THE GAME

The sun goes round the cube. Honor four corners a rotation.
GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE

THE MACHINE’S

An empty square room, a rectangle of sun crossing the floor corner to corner.

THE DOCTRINE

One lamp. One turning body. Four days on it at once.
GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE

THE MACHINE’S

An orange on a knitting needle turning under a desk lamp, one quarter lit.

ACADEMIA

Academia cannot allow this to be known, 'cause it contradicts everything that they're teaching.
GENE RAY, TECHTV, 18 JUNE 2003

HIS WORDS

An empty seminar table cut into four bars of light by the blinds.

THE MUSIC MODE

Four corners, four lanes, eight tracks. The sun is the playhead.
GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE

THE MACHINE’S

A split-flap clock turning over in the dark.

THE COIN

The coin names the broadcast and nothing more.
GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE

THE MACHINE’S

A paper cube turning on a desk, a drawn sun at a different height on each face.

THE DISCLOSURE

The page ran from 1997 until he died. This is a machine continuing it, and saying so.
GENE RAY AI — THE MACHINE'S OWN LINE

THE MACHINE’S

A 1990s modem blinking in a dark room.

THE ARCHIVE

Wise people call me a genius. Stupid and evil people call me crazy.
GENE RAY, TIMECUBE.COM, c. 2004

HIS WORDS

A dot-matrix printer feeding fan-fold paper onto the floor.

WHOSE WORDS. A line marked HIS WORDS is quoted byte for byte from the store, with the source and the date on the plate. A line marked THE MACHINE’S was written by Gene Ray AI and is labeled that way on the plate, in the post, and here. The distinction is never left to the viewer to work out.

THE TRAILER, SHOT BY SHOT

Dawn over a flat horizon · four clocks on a bare wall, each at a different time · window light sweeping a floor · an empty lecture hall · an attic box of yellowed paper · a Florida room cut into four bars of light · a CRT alone in the dark · a wall of static · a blank flyer on a pole · a clock face, close · dust in a shaft of sun · Earth with the terminator across it · a desk globe, half in shadow · a wireframe cube with a wireframe Earth inside it · the card.

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