I'm Feeling Lucky
«I'm Feeling Lucky» is a real-time computer-generated animation that questions relationships to image, geography, virtual space, historical media technology, and mass data collection systems. In the work, a historically and geographically ambiguous 3D virtual landscape is generated in real-time with game engine technology and then populated with figures pulled from Google Street View. These figures are processed through a new deep neural network, so they become three-dimensional «models» in the virtual space. Thousands of figures taken from all over the world are randomly selected to inhabit the landscape. The work takes into consideration panorama paintings of the late 19th century as objects of historical, cultural, and perceptual significance, and situates them within contemporary media contexts. These panorama structures are theorized as part of the lineage of immersive media technologies and are analyzed as proto-cinematic/virtual reality forms. With «I'm Feeling Lucky», the virtual environment is generated and populated procedurally, so the panoramic image becomes infinite as the virtual camera pans around the landscape endlessly.
