Playfully merging art and technology, underground animator Michael Wartella teamed up with artificial intelligence to breathe new life into The White Stripes’ fan-favorite song “Black Math.”
The video was released earlier this month to mark the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking “Elephant” album.
Wartella is known for her cross-genre work as a cartoonist and animator.
His Brooklyn-based Dream Factory Animation studio produced the “Black Math” video, which combines digital and practical animation techniques with AI-generated imagery.
“The track is 20 years old, so I wanted it to look fresh, but I wanted it to look like it was cut from the same fabric as the old White Stripes videos,” says Wartella.
For the “Black Math” video, Wartella turned to Automatic1111, an open source generative AI tool. To create the video, Wartella and his team started with the actual album his cover by using AI to “bore” into the image.
We then used our AI to train the AI to create more images in a similar style. “It was really crazy and interesting and everything was built from there,” he says.
This image-to-image deep learning model is part of a new generation of AI tools that caused a sensation with its release last year and is transforming the art.
“We used several different AI and animation tools,” says Wartella. “I wanted this to look like an AI video, like the traditional CGI video of him now looks very CGI in every shot.”
Wartella and his team relied heavily on archived images and videos of the musician duo, as well as motion capture technology, to create a video that recreates the atmosphere of late 1990s and early 2000s music videos.
Wartella has long relied on NVIDIA GPUs to run its complete digital animation tools on workstations from Austin, Texas-based BOXX Technologies.
“We have been using BOXX workstations with NVIDIA cards for nearly 20 years,” he says. “This combination is very powerful. It’s fast and stable.”
Wartella describes his work on the “Black Math” video as “collaborating” with AI tools. Use AI tools to generate images, fine-tune the results, and then return to technology to ask for more.
“I think it’s more of a collaboration than just pushing a button. It’s an incredibly creative tool,” Wartella said of generative AI.
The results were sometimes “weird”.
He took the output from the AI, ran it through traditional composition and editing tools, and processed the results back into the AI.
Wartella felt that using AI in this way made the video more powerful and abstract.
The video features Jack and Meg White in their 2003 personas, born out of a whimsical and dark cyber fantasy.
The video resembles the look and feel of early 2000s band videos, but leans toward the otherworldly, almost kaleidoscopic quality of modern generative AI.
“The lyrics are anti-authoritarian and punkish, so the sound steered this song in that direction,” said Walterra. “The song itself already has a scientific theme that is perfect for AI.”
When ‘Black Math’ was first released as part of The White Stripes’ critically acclaimed album ‘Elephant’, it garnered attention for its energetic, powerful guitar riffs and Jack White’s unmistakable vocals.
The song helped solidify the band’s reputation as a key player in the early 2000s garage rock revival.
Wartella’s inventive approach in “Black Math” highlights the growing use of AI among creatives and the lively debate about its impact.
AI-generated art has become increasingly prevalent on various social media platforms over the past few months, thanks to tools like Midjourney, OpenAI’s Dall E, DreamStudio, and Stable Diffusion.
Wartella says that as AI advances, we can expect more artists to explore the possibilities of these tools in their work.
“I’m totally in favor of people having the opportunity to play with this technology,” Wartella said. “If a song or project calls for AI, we will definitely use it again.”
The “Black Math” music video release coincides with the release of the “The White Stripes Elephant (20th Anniversary)” deluxe vinyl reissue package and is available now through Jack White’s Third Man Records and Sony Legacy Recordings.
Check out the music video for “Black Math”.
