Vertigo Vertigo
Adam Cole
Video with sound
2:07:47
2026
An Artificial Recreation of an Obsessive Cinematic Fantasy
Vertigo Vertigo is an experimental video work that uses an AI video model to construct a scene-for-scene recreation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo using only 3% of the film's original frames. The project algorithmically extracts these keyframes and utilizes a neural network to run first-last frame interpolation, "filling in the blanks" of the intermediary spaces. The resulting film physically overlaps with the original at its anchor points, but constantly diverges, hallucinates, and re-merges in the spaces between.
Hitchcock’s Vertigo is fundamentally a film about the obsessive attempt to control and then reconstruct an artificial ideal. Vertigo Vertigo applies this same logic of obsession and reconstruction to the material of the film itself. In the process, it asks what cinematic language is embedded in the latent space of contemporary machine vision systems. The resulting work creates a constant visual friction: an oscillation between eerie mimicry and unsettling failures. In doing so, it exposes the mechanical, predictable logic that underpins both our historical cinematic myths and the generative networks poised to inherit them.
Video Demonstrations
Below are brief excerpts from the full film demonstrating the current results of the project. Each visualization uses a different method to render the divergence between the original film and the AI reconstruction. As the project is an ongoing work in progress with a final installation planned for later this year, these clips are intended to offer a preliminary sense of the work's aesthetic and conceptual framework.
The Green Room [ Overlay ]— The AI-generated frames are overlaid on the original with half-opacity. This creates a disorienting, double-exposure effect where the boundaries between the original and the AI's interpretation become blurred.
The Stalker Sequence [ Side-by-Side ] - A direct, unmediated side-by-side comparison (original on the left, reconstruction on the right). This analytical layout highlights the mechanical divergences of the AI, exposing how effectively the "machine gaze" mimics the spatial continuity and physical movement of Hitchcock’s camera.
The Red Room [ Difference ] — A mathematical subtraction between the original and reconstruction where the pixels that differ between the two videos are highlighted. This method emphasizes the AI's divergences, resulting in a stark, abstract aesthetic that is distinct from both the source material and the standard AI output.
Reference: Full Work-in-Progress — The complete film for broader context and deeper exploration and research.
