Lilan Yang: The Perfect Human (the Complete Collection)

Author/Artist: Lilan Yang
Year of publication/production: 2024
Category (artist’s book, zine, photo book, merch, etc.):
Limited-edition DVD release
Medium (if applicable): Digital video, burned to DVD
Size: 13 minutes
Numbers of edition (if applicable): Edition of 16

About

The Perfect Human is a limited-edition series of analog and digital artifacts derived from a 2022 experimental film that reimagines Jørgen Leth’s 1968 cult classic through unsupervised machine learning. Using AI-generated imagery and materialist techniques, the project examines the evolving concept of perfection as seen through artificial intelligence.

Available as both a hand-burned DVD and collectible 16mm filmstrips, each piece embodies a transformation cycle: from analog film to digital neural reconstruction and back to physical media. The filmstrips—printed on transparent 16mm—capture unique still frames from the machine’s imagined sequence.

The digital transfer of The Perfect Human in 16mm won the Award of Excellence at the 37th Image Forum Film Festival in Tokyo, Japan.

About the Author

Lilan Yang is an artist and experimental filmmaker from Chongqing, China. Their practice, rooted in the materiality of film, delves into the flux of migration, the decay of memory and the intricacies of perception. Yang currently lives and works in Boston.