Fieldwork produced the debate series Debattene om Norges Fremtid (Debates on Norway's Future), and for the episode on AI, they wanted a live visualization on a screen installation that would be linked to the theme of the debate.

Challenge

The debate was broadcast both online and to a live audience. As the debate naturally moved from one topic to another, AI-generated images were supposed to appear on the screen to reflect these shifts.

It was up to us to figure out how this would look. The solution had to ensure that the images didn’t distract from what was being said, and it had to work in real-time, as we couldn’t predict where the debate would go.

 

Solution

We created a solution that seamlessly blends one image into the next in a way that mimics the flow of liquid paint or smoke.

This blending effect mirrors how the conversation organically transitioned from one topic to another on stage. The dreamlike quality of the effect plays well with the surreal nature of the AI-generated images.

The transition from one image to another takes up to 30 seconds, ensuring that the audience's attention remains on the debate itself. Since there would be an inevitable delay between when something was said and when the image was generated, we designed the visualization to feel more like a stream of consciousness rather than a step-by-step slideshow.

The images were "manually" generated using Midjourney as the debate progressed. From there, they were placed in a folder that our software, built with TouchDesigner, monitored. The images were then sent from TouchDesigner as an RTMP stream to a NextJS page with a video player, which Fieldwork displayed in full-screen on the stage.


Results

Flux is a live video installation that uniquely creates organic, fluid transitions between images. The transitions can best be described as liquid- or smoke-like.

The next image in the queue almost imperceptibly takes shape in the distortion of the transition.

In short, this effect is achieved by using the images themselves as vectors to shift the image. Some noise is also added to the movement vectors to give the effect a more organic feel. We distort the image more and more before making a very gradual crossfade as the distortion fades.

It’s important to note that this is a simplified explanation, as there are dozens of additional operations applied to the image beyond the main effect.

Flux was originally created to reflect a live debate about AI, but it works with any kind of image input.