The Uncertain Mirror

Running a Fever is an AI-based project created by Jacob Chandler in February of 2023. Before then, he developed as an experimental musician and video artist. His video work began as an amateur music video director and moved on to more experimental, mood-based video works such as a trilogy of pieces set to the music of Thom Yorke and an 80-minute visual companion piece to his project “The Guitar Loop Experiments Vol. I.” His music, under the name “Hot Air Balloons,” explores sonic landscapes such as ambient, IDM, glitch and vaporwave. Most notable albums include “How To Make The World Go Mad” and “THE END IS NEVER THE END,” as well as the more popular “Looping Music For Sleep” series. Jacob's first widely shared video piece was a seemingly never-ending zoom one-shot set to a cover of Congregation by Low. This was made in the era before the popularization of apps that automated the process, so each frame was generated individually and contains over two thousand uniquely generated frames. After the project Running a Fever was created, Jacob focused primarily on still images until starting experiments using Runway and PikaLabs to flesh out the ideas already established in his published images. The themes frequently explored in such experiments, still and video, include but are not limited to Cold War paranoia, childhood nostalgia, nightmare surrealism, fever dreams, melancholic romance and geometric abstraction. He continues to push the boundaries of genre and form in music and video by manipulating movements of light and frequency.