At first the image seems to remember a familiar cinematic reflex: people staring at something gigantic, bodies arranged around astonishment. The dinosaur itself has been removed with AI tools, so what remains is the performance of surprise, the empty space it faces, and the technological marks left by the erasure.
The work treats a pop-cultural image as a trained expectation. Sight and sound are separated: the remembered roar of the Tyrannosaurus Rex meets another possible sound reproduction, shifting the inertia of an imagination shaped by entertainment.
Process notes
The 60-second structure moves from recognizable reaction grammar to emptied terrain and then toward sound. Male and female reaction shots frame surprise as a choreography learned before the creature appears; later, the jeep, the T. rex enclosure, and the visitor center keep the gaze active after the animal has been removed. The remaining erasure residue and source signage make the found-footage origin visible, so the image keeps showing how it has been processed. The lines “Imagination also needs to be heard” and “Another way of imagining” turn the work toward the sound-image split: the roar is treated as another place where cinematic expectation has been trained.
Exhibitions
- 2025, Hive-AI Utopia: Confrontation and Symbiosis, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
- 2024, Freiheit in Zeiten der KI, Goethe-Institut China, Beijing, China — International AI short-film competition; jury special mention.
Links / references
- Visit Beijing - Hive-AI Utopia Art Project Public exhibition-context page for Hive-AI Utopia and the first exhibition Confrontation and Symbiosis.
- CHEN ZIRUI - works Collaborator work listing for What Are We Surprised About?.
- Goethe-Institut Jahrbuch 2024/25: Freiheit in Zeiten der KI Goethe-Institut official annual report reference for the China AI short-film competition Freiheit in Zeiten der KI, where the work received a jury special mention.