NM Special Report: Ye and the Future of Content (w/ Dean Kissick)

One of the most compelling examples, so far, of media made using AI content generation is the video that artist Jon Rafman created for Kanye West’s new album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures. Rather than aiming for maximum realism in these clips, Rafman leans into visual incoherence, moments where the software experiences a collapse of distinction. This, coupled with prompts that could have gone something like “gang members in balaclavas imploding like the Pruitt-Igoe housing project demolition 1971” with style tags “cult horror, VHS, America 1986, Norwegian black metal” meant the video also conveyed a sense of what we thought might be a Witch House revival. So we called up cultural savant and 2010s historian Dean Kissick to discuss. But Witch House did not remain the central thread of our conversation. Instead, all paths lead back to something more fundamental—the struggle for iconicity in a time of infinitely available content. For more: @deankissick (X)NOTE: Dean will be helping New Models resident Patrick McGraw to stage a very special Heavy Traffic reading at EARTH, 29 Orchard Street, New York City, on Easter Sunday, March 31st.