Approximately 4% of the population has aphantasia, an inability to form visual images in the mind’s eye. They understand what an elephant is, what pink is, yet see nothing when they close their eyes. Meanwhile, diffusion models generate images from pure noise in data centers every second. Neuroscience reveals that human imagination works through top-down signals reactivating visual cortex, a process structurally parallel to the denoising in AI image generation. Aphantasia may be precisely this denoising interrupted: the signal is sent but never amplified into conscious awareness.
The film places this absence of inner images in dialogue with an AI system that produces images excessively. Through a series of staged conversations, it asks what happens when inner darkness meets synthetic vision, and whether a machine’s capacity to generate images can illuminate the human inability to see them internally. Digital footage is then re-filmed on 8mm, a reverse-developing ritual that returns the synthetic image to grain, flicker, and fragile material surface.
Process notes
The exhibition note describes the work as a non-fictional diagnostic dialogue between aphantasic participants and AI. Its path moves from real elephants and the instruction not to think of a pink elephant, through participants’ drawings and descriptions of elephants and dreams, toward a reflection on the Chinese character 像, where image and likeness are tied to a human act of looking. The final 8mm refilming turns the digital footage back into light, emulsion and time.
The added stills keep this thinking path visible inside the film itself. A black 8mm title card names the forbidden thought — “Pink elephant” — while another frame says “without any picture”, holding aphantasia as a mind without images rather than as a lack to be repaired. The AI-generated banquet scene, introduced by the subtitle “I generated this scene from your description”, shows image overproduction answering a verbal prompt too quickly. Near the end, “My imagination has ended” leaves the film in a pale field of grain, where synthetic vision and non-visual imagination both return to an unstable surface.
Festivals / screenings
- 2026, Rewriting the Future: AI Literature Film Competition, Suzhou, China — Grand Prize: Rewriting the Future Award
- 2026, The Unconscious Expanse, Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival, M+, Hong Kong
Exhibitions
- 2026, The Correct Way to Open a Can: Strike with the Spine!, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
- 2026, Earthed: Reconnecting with the Ground, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China
- 2025-2026, Wild things: The art of the creator, Yemu Contemporary, Hangzhou, China
Links / references
- Rewriting the Future: AI Literature Film Competition award record Public award record for the Rewriting the Future prize.
- M+ Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival: The Unconscious Expanse Official M+ programme page for The Unconscious Expanse.
- Earthed / 重回大地: Guangdong Museum of Art exhibition page Guangdong Museum of Art exhibition page for Earthed: Reconnecting with the Ground.
- Guangli Liu official page: Can GPT Dream of a Pink Elephant? Artist official page with stills, credits, exhibition records and screening-room access.