Adam Cole

Attention of a Kiss (video series), 2026

"Our work is a dialogue between the tool and the image, so we would not preconceive an image...We would rather make a tool and dialogue with it." — Woody Vasulka, 1971

Attention of a Kiss is a series of experimental video studies that repurpose the internal mechanics of a generative AI video model as raw artistic material. Using a custom tool, the project intercepts and visualizes the cross-attention maps of a video diffusion transformer — the internal calculations that determine how a specific prompt token corresponds to regions of the developing latent. These values are usually calculated in a fraction of a second and immediately flushed from memory; here, they are visualized as dynamic heatmaps and stored across the diffusion steps, making the model's internal process tangible.

The series explores the iconic image of a kiss across single-channel, dual-channel, and multi-channel orientations. Just as early video artists like Nam June Paik and the Vasulkas built their own tools to subvert the signal-based logic of analog video, this work interrogates the opaque architecture of AI, treating the neural network itself as a malleable medium rather than just an image generator. Ultimately, these artworks emerge not only from what is seen, but from exposing how the network sees.

Attention of a Kiss (single-channel)

The video begins in an abstract wash of latent noise, gradually gains structure, and then dissolves back into noise. This arc parallels both the diffusion process and the formation — and inevitable dissolution — of emotional intimacy.

Multi-Head Attention (multi-channel)

Eight kiss scenes crystallize into focus within a strip of latent noise, only to disintegrate back into abstraction. While the final outputs echo familiar cinematic conventions of romance, the mid-process visualizations carry far greater ambiguity, reducing the iconic image of the kiss to a more mythical ideal and choreography, both physical and emotional.

Diffusion /\/\ Collision (dual-channel)

A diptych pairing two scenes of vastly different scales: on the left, an intimate kiss; on the right, a cosmic collision between planets. Using nearly identical generation settings, the two videos share a compositional skeleton even as their semantic content diverges, creating a metaphor for the explosive collision of bodies spanning from the personal to the galactic.

Additional Work

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