Two field notes · Hybrid Media

What happens when the host is made and the archive starts breathing?

Today we're making the screen forget the difference between record and performance.

Two ongoing projects, each one asking a slightly different question about what a screen is allowed to contain.

Field note 01[AI synthesis] · [Live broadcast]

A TV show whose funniest guests were never in the room.

Made with Shams TV. Arabic-speaking AI characters that rap-battle, debate the news, and run cultural quizzes alongside the human host.

The friction — under-30 audiences in the region were never going to show up for a traditional broadcast. A show has to meet them somewhere new.

What stuck — the AI guests were the draw, not the gimmick. Arabic voice, character, and timing matter more than lip-sync fidelity.

Where it lives — the platform behind it is AIt-TV, our multi-tenant system for TV channels who want to run their own AI guests. Credits, voice design, Arabic transcription, studio-ready downloads.

Field note 02[Archive] · [Video synthesis]

What if the archive could wake up?

A documentary format: still photographs from archives are brought into motion, placed inside reconstructed spaces, and woven together with AI-generated video until a history starts to move — and breathe.

The raw material — black-and-white photographs from specific times and places that most people will never stand inside. Static. Flat. Remembered only by the very old or the very patient.

The friction — straight colourisation and motion-gen feels like a gimmick. So we treat archive photos as witnesses, not wallpaper — they stay anchored, and what we generate is the room around them.

Status — concept stage. Pipeline sketches. Looking for the right first subject — probably a Middle-Eastern archive that hasn't been shown beyond its own city walls.

// Trailers, stills, and behind-the-lens notes — coming.