Ripple Effects: A Short AI-Generated Film About Digital Distortion and Collective Responsibility
What does it mean to seek truth when the tools we use are designed to distort it?
Ripple Effects is a short AI-generated film that weaves together global stories of extraction, displacement, and censorship—stories often erased or reframed by the very systems responsible for them. It is the result of a multi-year process of archiving: collecting and curating a vast library of images, video, and audio materials gathered from digital platforms, public media, and personal documentation. This archive spans multiple geographies and lived experiences, especially from regions often left at the margins of dominant narratives.
The project was created using closed-source AI models—Runway, Luma AI, Midjourney, and Stable Audio—intentionally chosen to reflect and critique centralized systems of control. These tools are not neutral; they carry embedded biases, filters, and limits that quietly shape the outputs they generate. Protest images were blacked out, Arabic and activist text was mistranslated or erased, and symbols of resistance were softened into safer, more marketable themes. Refugee camps became music festivals. Signs of dissent became corporate slogans. This isn’t coincidence—it’s algorithmic suppression.
These distortions are not just technical anomalies; they are political choices embedded in code. Ripple Effects engages with these omissions not to correct them, but to reveal them—to trace their ripple effects across global systems of oppression and overconsumption. Each AI-manipulated frame is the result of a negotiation: between human intention and machine censorship, between truth and its distortion, between what is remembered and what is conveniently forgotten.
The film reflects how the Global North’s prosperity is built on extraction, and exploitation disproportionately impacting communities in the Global South. Our devices, our software, even the AI we use to make art—all depend on the exploitation of labor and land from elsewhere. Yet, the people who power this infrastructure are often the most silenced.
This reality echoes the work of scholar Jason Hickel, who writes that economic growth in the Global North is not only unnecessary, but actively harmful. "There is no evidence to justify the assumption that the US needs growth in order to improve people’s lives," he argues. Instead, Hickel envisions a post-growth future: "a good life for all within planetary boundaries."
The creative process behind Ripple Effects reflects this vision. Images were chosen and layered based on their symbolic connections: shipping ports with protest banners, mining sites with sacred landscapes, borders with digital firewalls. Audio generated with Stable Audio became a haunting score of mechanical pulses, submerged rhythms, and fractured memory.
Ripple Effects is an open invitation part of a dynamic NFT that will grow and evolve over time, incorporating public submissions, new narratives, and future layers of imagery and sound. The work becomes a living archive, shaped by those who engage with it, carrying forward the voices that closed systems so often attempt to silence.
Art can help us feel, remember, and reimagine. It can help us witness our own complicity and our power to shift course. Ripple Effects is a mirror, a record, and an invitation to pause—to look deeper, act differently, and imagine a future not dictated by extraction and erasure, but by connection, care, and collective responsibility.
Sources:
Hickel, J. (2020). Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World.
Hickel, J. (2019). "Degrowth: A theory of radical abundance." Real-World Economics Review.
Hickel, J. (2022). "Imperial modes of living: Resource appropriation from the global South and ecological crisis." Global Environmental Change.