MANZANITA
Video, 2025
About the artwork
Manzanita is an instrumental work composed with AI. An experiment that carries the intimacy of a home-recorded demo while revealing glimpses of its own potential. For the video, I turned toward a 2D paper cutout stop-motion aesthetic, weaving in motifs of Western culture and casino iconography.
At its core, the piece reflects both the possibilities and the unpredictability of AI. A prompt can bring us close to what we imagine, yet rarely delivers exactly what we imagine. The process feels like chance itself like spins of a slot machine, where luck and intention meet.
Manzanita stands among the most evocative AI compositions I have worked with to date. It opens a space for experimentation in sound and visual language. It points toward future explorations of this hybrid, dreamlike style.
Audio explanation
Listen to ABCDJ discuss this work.
ABCDJ is an artist and musician based in Chicago, Illinois. Working with AI image, video, and music tools since 2021, their practice bridges experimental technology and emotional realism. With a background in music production and songwriting, ABCDJ explores themes of romance, solitude, and surrealism through what they describe as a “bubblegum slacker” aesthetic—a fusion of nostalgic imperfection and contemporary digital media. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including Contract of Fiction at P61 Gallery in Berlin and The Noocene: Computation and Cosmology from Antikythera to AI at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale.