Director: Mark Chavez

Bio: Mark Chavez (the USA, b.1958), is an artist and animator currently based in Singapore and Los Angeles. He has an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. His works have been exhibited at the Chinese Millennium Museum (Beijing, China), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), Los Angeles Center For Digital Art (LACDA), the BANK Gallery, Omotesando district in Tokyo, Japan, and the International Fine Arts Film Festival, (Santa Barbara, CA), Raw Science Film Festival (Los Angeles, CA), and other international film festivals and galleries such as the International Beyond Film Festival Special Edition for Climate Change at ZKM, Germany, Art Basel Miami 2021.

Director Statement
This short film is the first in a series of short that I plan to make with Generative AI and Dreivative Touchdesigner. These new techniques provide a feeling of liberation in the ease of visualization and realization. It becomes almost as though through imagination alone a new creative palatte is available where through careful curation new visions can be realized.

Film: Mitla | Underworld is a 3-minute, 20-second art film inspired by my visit to Teotihuacan and the tunnel beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. This short film expresses my feelings while walking through the 2000-year-old space, visited only by a few. I was inspired to consider the possible discoveries and ideas to explore this unexplored archeological site.
Though the tunnel beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent has been fully explored and documented, there is a discovery of caves in Mitla near Oaxaca, Mexico. These places are some of the oldest continually occupied sites in America. Mitla is derived from the Nahuatl name Mictlán, which was the place of the dead or underworld.

MITLA | Underworld.
The short film is created utilizing Generative AI Toolsets and composited with real-time toolsets.