Vertigo in the Age of Machine Imagination

This paper examines a series of AI-based recompositions created by the artist and researcher Gregory Chatonsky between 2015 and 2022, all derived from the iconic kissing scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) [1:55:10–1:57:30]. It explores how these reconfigurations bring out unforeseen transformations of the scenario, unexpected elements, hallucinatory motifs and figures, which expand the experiential scope of the original film. In this way, Chatonsky investigates the material afterlife of Hitchcock’s film in the age of machine imagination and activates what could be described as its digital unconscious.