Gifaanisqatsi: A Random Koyaanisqatsi Generator | Hacker News Reader

Gifaanisqatsi: A Random Koyaanisqatsi Generator

monkeon.co.uk

221 pointsindigodaddy65 comments

Koyaanisqatsi is my favorite movie by a mile, so obviously I love this. Koy is interesting because it's not simply a movie painting a certain picture (which an experiment like this can't do), but because it's a format too (which this experiment focuses on).

The third in the trilogy of Qatsi movies, Naqoyqatsi, while the least well known is probably the closest fit for this experiment since it's almost entirely stock footage laid over the (orchestral – in contrast to Koy) soundtrack. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgM46I-ZryM

I haven't watched the first one since forever. Any specific version you would recommend? I imagine the modern versions are going to be cropped one way or the other. Is that the case?

Criterion's 2012 Blu-ray release is probably the best available. It's a restored and remastered version that was made with the involvement of the original crew.

Seconded. Bought the Criterion box set, never regretted it. Looks fabulous in the home theatre.

IRE

For some reason Reggio opted against releasing this version commercially years later with Criterion, so not sure it's what he would recommend himself.

That was also my first thought - Naqoyqatsi would have been a better fit.

Oy, veh. Philip Glass gives me the hives.

DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdleDWEEdledie DWEEdleDWEEdledie DWEEdleDWEEdledie DWEEdleDWEEdledie DWEEdleDWEEdledie DWEEdleDWEEdledie DWEEdleDWEEdledie DWEEdleDWEEdledie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie DWEEdelie doodelie

... for an hour.

The minimalism is precisely why I like him.

Perhaps he’s an acquired taste. Although I fell for Glass immediately as an adult. As soon as I heard a few notes I was drawn to the music.

I think the Tales From the Loop soundtrack is easy to get into. Yes there is repetition, but there's also motion as the phrases change to convey different ideas.

Yes, I enjoyed the music in that series. VERY reminiscent of Truman soundtrack, but of course, he borrows and does variations upon his own earlier works all the time. Truman is very reminiscent of Mishima imo also.

Exactly my experience as well

From pretty much the first time I'd heard/heard of Glass (conceivably Koyannisqatsi) I found him kind of boring, and didn't listen carefully, except for the Kronos Quartet performs Philip Glass album, because I love KQ. Apparently dismissing Glass is a thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tizP7IFyWig

Anyway, after many years I've listened carefully and love it all. I hope to experience (and will gladly fly to) a live performance of Einstein on the Beach someday. Like the infinitely more sophisticated person in the linked video, I was wrong about Glass.

Pretty much same for me. Listened very casually/cursorily/briefly in my late teens, tried a few times again in my 20s and 30s, and found it kind of boring and unexceptional.

Then in my early 40s I dug in a bit and really started actually listening and exploring. And oh man what a wide universe of musical discovery burst forth for me after that. And I couldn’t believe that I didn’t put in a little effort earlier..

I managed to see Einstein on the Beach in London a while back, recommended! It is performed maybe once a decade or something somewhere…

I discovered him through the soundtrack for the American remake of Breathless with Richard Gere. His music makes the film.

I recently listened of Philip Glass: Piano Works performed by Vikingur Olafsson and that left me speechless.

Softer, more dynamic, more soulful, less mechanical.

Highly recommended.

https://open.spotify.com/track/5q7DgKLBQ54FXKAfGxNMGs?si=zwt...

Yeah, I really do not like Philip Glass’s music, but I actually love the soundtrack to this movie. I heard it one day on the radio (local classical station was playing it) a few years after the movie came out and didn’t know what it was. I was really surprised it was by him. But the rest of his stuff just doesn’t work for me at all.

Funnily, Koyaanisqatsi ranks on the lower end for me for Glass works (no pun intended). I’m a huge Glass fan(atic perhaps), and much prefer stuff like Truman Sleeps, Mishima, Jane soundtrack, Glassworks, Symphony #4 Heroes (Glass/Bowie/Eno), Mad Rush, etc etc. His music composed specifically for the piano is gorgeous.

Amy Dickson’s saxophone interpretations of his violin concertos are absolutely riveting, example: https://youtu.be/ZdUWPA_AX6o

It's interesting that there are two fan groups of Glass' music with almost no overlap. Qatsi trilogy is also on the lower end for me, but my favorite pieces are his more experimental works like Einstein on the Beach. Most of his Hollywood soundtracks are way more conventional.

The soundtrack from Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is absolutely incredible, just like the movie as a whole. I've been looking for a way to get prints of some parts of the movie, the last blu ray from Criterion has a small booklet with a few pictures from the sets, but they're very small.

AI upscaling works incredibly well in my experience.

Is there any in particular that you would recommend? I'll admit that I have a negative prior for AI upscaling, as I've seen a few cases in I think iPhone pictures where the AI added things that weren't there. Ideally I'd like to find the original pictures of the sets, as either they will be digital, or can be digitized without losing anything, but it looks like it would require a trip to the USA at the E. Young Research Library, and I'm not even sure I would be allowed to take copies.

Philistine.

I adore Philip Glass, and it was through Koyaanisqatsi that I discovered him back when the movie was released.

I have been fortunate enough to see PG & the PG ensemble perform Music in 12 Parts (I heard the piece twice that day: once traveling to the concert hall, and once live) as well as attend an evening of piano works by him performed by him and a series of other pianists. On my bucket list is seeing Einstein on the Beach live – easily my favourite opera.

I have been collecting his music since the early nineties, and much prefer his earlier works – his later symphonies, etc, while fine, do not, to my ear, retain the stark beauty of his younger days.

I wish Phillip Glass and Don Martin collaborated on an A Cappella album.

https://www.madcoversite.com/dmd-alphabetical.html

"DIKKA-DIKKA DIKKA-DAK DIKDIKDIK DAKKA DAKKA DIKKA DIKKA DIKKA DAGAK DAK DIKKADAK DIKKA DIKKA DAKDAKDAK DAKKA DAKKA DEEP DABWAK DOOTBWEET DAKKITYDAK OONT GIKKADIK DIK DOKKA DAK DEEP"

-Casey Working Laboriously On The Computer

"GLISH GLUTCH ARRAGGH YAK BLAM BLAM AWK GAROOF GAROOF WEEOOOEEEOOO BLOOM BLOOM BLAM BLAM YAGGAK WHAP WHAP ROWR GROWR RIP MANGLE GURGLE GLUK"

-Domestic Mayhem and Carnage Involving a Small Child, His Mother, a Dog and a Police Officer

For anyone interested, Koyaanisqatsi is on sale on iTunes for $5, and the bundle with Powaqqatsi is $10. Highly recommend for anyone who’s never seen it— it’s definitely an experience. Also if it ever goes to 4K, iTunes will upgrade it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/iTunesMovieDeals/comments/z4f5qt/ko...

> Also if it ever goes to 4K, iTunes will upgrade it.

And if, as Sony elegantly put it, license term "evolving" happens[0], iTunes will remove it and you won't ever have access to movies you bought.

At this point I don't trust anyone to keep digital purchases. It's either on my harddrive and backup DRM free or I don't actually own it.

[0] https://www.howtogeek.com/817070/your-digital-movies-will-no...

> It's either on my harddrive and backup DRM free or I don't actually own it.

It's quiet confusing that some people don't understand that, considering that's literally the name of it: digital rights management.

You only ever get a temporary permission to play a media with DRM. It's literally the reason for it's inception.

I don't care about the legalese, if the button says "purchase" and not "rent" then I'm going to treat it that way. If you buy a car the manufacturer can't just randomly come and take your keys because their license for the car's paint ran out. And they'd also not get away with it by giving it a fancy "rights management" name and hiding it in some agreement.

Additionally lobbies pushed our government to create what's basically a tax on all digital storage media that's included in the price, based on the assumption that companies lose out on money when I copy music from my PC to my music player etc. Which by the way is my right by law, but they decided I have to pay for that right. No, the most I'm going to do with that DRM license agreement is to wipe my ass with it.

> If you buy a car the manufacturer can't just randomly come and take your keys because their license for the car's paint ran out.

Not yet, at least not for that reason.

That business model is currently being established however and the ability to remotely disable the car at the discretion of the seller/manufacturer has already been added on a lot of cars, especially electric ones like Tesla etc

Koyaanisqatsi and Sunless by Chris Marker are movies I come back to and rediscover over and over.

Sunless can be watched on you tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdusEgrbhgA

Ron Fricke's other works, namely Baraka, are also worth a watch.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103767/

Chris Marker made my favourite movie: la Jetée (on youtube with english subtitles here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU99W-ZrIHQ). It was the inspiration of the movie 12 Monkeys

Thank you for mentioning Sunless. Absolutely interesting and very personal, I would say.

To those who complain about Koyaanisqatsi being dated, remember this film was made before such a thing as music videos existed. You might even say it was one of the first, the other being Disney's Fantasia.

Music videos existed before Koyaanisqatsi.

For many years, Koyaanisqatsi was the marker in my Netflix DVD queue between "movies I actually want to see" and "movies that I probably ought to see one of these days but don't really want to".

Whenever Koyaanisqatsi got near the top of the list, I'd find something else to bump above it. Then some new films would come out, and it would get pushed down more.

Eventually, though, enough new stuff came out on streaming that I needed the Netflix DVD service less and less. I'd watch it occasionally... and then one day Koyaanisqatsi arrived at my door.

As expected, I didn't really care for it. Not that it isn't brilliant; it's just not my thing. I'm glad that it brings so much pleasure to some people. But I won't be adding the other two to the queue.

(And in fact it's rapidly reaching time to jettison the Netflix DVD service. There used to be many things available only that way, but it's just not the case any more. Not only have they substantially pared down their once-vast catalog, but I have realized that I'm just not a movie buff who wants a vast back catalog.)

Nice. For Philip Glass fans, his third opera Akhenaten gets my strongest possible recommendations, it's visually spectacular at the level of Einstein on the Beach but musically accessible and vaguely pleasant while certainly not being bland. The Metropolitan Opera (NYC) is streaming it on a free trial along with much of the rest of their best recent work. I've learned a lot of people have a conception of opera as a woman singing in a particular style and don't actually realize how visually spectacular the best modern opera has become.

https://www.metopera.org/season/on-demand/opera/?upc=8100042...

Awesome! Wasn’t aware this recording existed. I became a Glass fan after watching Leviathan (2014) featuring Akhenaten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GqpcA8dPjs

Akhnaten by Philip Glass.

Arranged entirely for Minecraft note blocks and with narrator voice like Stephen Hawking.

Very enjoyable interpretation.

One interesting next step to the idea is to indicate a continuity of meaning via the edits. For example, for each randomly selected gif, have the next gif share at least one tag. This allows each vaguely connected gif to create a randomly generated narrative by their connected meaning.

This will likely lead to some unexpected detrimental paths like endless videos of cats. But I like the general idea of continuity!

Without any storytelling this generator becomes boring very fast.

Maybe keep track of the last n tags used and only select gifs based on tags not in that list?

It should be possible to be even more prescriptive. E.g. write a "screenplay" (or even let GPT3 generate it) -- basically just a progression of tags -- and then pick random videos that match that.

www.radioparadise.com does this with song titles

The Koyaanisqatsi cinematographer went on to become a director himself, and made the movie “Baraka” in the same style. IMHO, it’s even better.

To me Baraka always felt like a ripoff, despite its wonderful cinematography.

If you enjoy adapted koyaanisqatsi ripoffs, try https://tita.lol :-)

I adore Koya and Baraka. I agree Baraka is easier to get into: it's more "human" and soft and animal, vs Koya being bombastic and somewhat frightening. (Which is the point: Koya means "life out of balance")

They're both required!

Samsara is probably my second favourite after koyaanisqatsi, would highly recommend checking that out too.

Absolutely love samsara, Lisa Gerrard did the score which i think is very very cool

My wife and I recently went to see a showing of Koyaanisqatsi at a local art theater in Minneapolis. My wife fell asleep; she was snoring and completely unrousable despite my best efforts and minor embarrassment.

After the movie she said she really enjoyed what she had seen but found the Philip Glass soundtrack entirely too soothing.

From what I understand falling asleep in response to getting comfortable is simply a sign of sleep shortage, so I wouldn't hold that against your wife

Especially if she was “completely unrousable.” Sounds like something y’all need to address.

The good news is that they've already established that Philip Glass apparently is a good sleeping aid for her!

I once took an MP4 of Koyaanisqatsi and reversed the whole video sequence. It was quite a joy to watch the film backwards.

I also experimented with time lapse videography after watching the film. I am surprised by what does and doesn't work as a time lapse.

Also, Phillip Glass is the cousin of Ira Glass from the radio program This American Life.

Powaqqatsi holds a special place in my heart - it's the only film that has ever put me to sleep in a theatre.

The style of this reminds me of Infinite Adam Curtis, a generated series of video clips overlaid with random punchy / pithy comments in (very loosely) his style.

https://www.tomscott.com/infinite-adam-curtis/

I'm a big fan of Adam Curtis' movies, and this is awesome for taking the piss, love it haha! I'd like to think he'd find it funny too.

As someone who's been familiar with Monkeon's work for about 20 years via https://b3ta.com/, I wonder about the size of the intersection between people on HN and b3tans.

Cal Henderson was a co-founder of b3ta!

Took me a while to figure out how that's relevant - I thought "yes, I know, but he's not monkeon, so?" :)

A little research shows that he's also co-founder of Slack, which I hadn't been aware of.

Commodore 64 game Delta uses this music, very good.

That was hilarious and amazing!

This is fantastic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com