Capilano Universe: Animating Ghosts
Explore how generative AI and visual effects can revive surrealist stories from historical archives in “Animating Ghosts.” Through live demos and interdisciplinary film, music, and dance work, this presentation demonstrates how forgotten voices can be brought back to life.
This presentation examines how generative AI and visual effects can be utilized to convey surrealist narratives derived from historical archives, reviving forgotten voices and stories — a process referred to as “Animating Ghosts.”
The session introduces the foundations of generative AI and highlights how its applications vary across different creative contexts. It also showcases interdisciplinary work spanning film, music, dance and historical narrative, featuring screening clips that illustrate the intersections between these mediums and the real-world connections formed through their creation.
The presentation will feature live demonstrations that animate archival photographs in real-time. No prior experience with AI or visual effects is required.
About the speaker
William Morrison has had a diverse globetrotting career as a series television producer/director for networks including National Geographic, Discovery, History Channel and BBC, to name a few. As a Grammy award-nominated multimedia artist and touring musician (Skinny Puppy/ohGr), Morrison synthesizes film, music, dance, and historical narratives, expressed through surrealist approaches across diverse media: live performance, digital works, projection, and typography as prose. The work inhabits both traditional and non-traditional spaces. Stages, galleries, libraries, urban and rural environments, academic institutions and virtual contexts. Each space informs how the narrative is perceived, and this contextual fluidity has always been at the core of his work.
Location: West Vancouver Memorial Library
This lecture is part of the 2025 free Capilano Universe Speaker Series, led by expert Capilano University instructors.