The "Prisma" version of Perfume by The Coathangers

The intersection of art and mobile technology is fascinating to me.  When I discovered the Prisma app (along with thousands of others) last month, I was immediately struck with the unexpectedly beautiful results of running a photo through their artistic A.I.   I found myself testing different photos in my camera roll with various filters.   The results continued to surprise and delight.

I’d just finished shooting and editing the latest music video for “Perfume” by The Coathangers (https://youtu.be/lamnVPiNeOg).   I ran a couple of screen grabs from the video through Prisma (http://prisma-ai.com/) and knew immediately that I wanted to see a whole version of the video run through the app.   Of course, the video isn’t supported (YET), but even after a couple of days I couldn’t shake my desire to see a Prisma version of the “Perfume” music video.  

I came up with a workflow I thought I could manage and just decided to do it…. one frame AT A TIME.  All in all, this took about 57 man-hours to complete.  This project was the very definition of TEDIOUS.  Ha!   

In my opinion, the results are compelling — hypnotic even.  It’s two layers of abstraction; we took an abstract video music and further abstracted the result through an mobile device art app.   I don’t know that I’d want to do this again, but I’m glad I followed through on this idea before Prisma filters and similar apps become so common as to be passé. 

Enjoy!