Daria und Dan

Daria and Dan was created in the first half of 2021, almost a year and a half before ChatGPT brought the topic of AI to the attention of the general public. So you could say that Alice Watanabe and Tobias Schmohl were ahead of their time when they commissioned this mini-series for the article “Studierende im KI-Diskurs” in their 2023 anthology Künstliche Intelligenz in der Hochschulbildung (Schmohl, Watanabe, Schelling (Eds.)), published by Transcript Verlag. The three episodes of the series deal with hypothetical scenarios of how the (more or less ethical) use of AI could affect higher education.

While Alice Watanabe was in charge of the content, Larissa Jablotschkin, Laura Zuckschwerdt, and I were responsible for the implementation. I would like to take this opportunity and thank Larissa and Laura from the bottom of my heart for their patience and love during the rigging and animation process. I know that my character and production design was not always easy to implement. But the effort was worth it! From the very beginning, it was clear that the series should not get lost in the swamp of uniform animations ranging from Flash movies to corporate Memphis. Instead, we deliberately opted for a stylized but human-made design: monochrome color worlds (with only three shades for foreground, middle ground, and background), geometric-iconographic shapes, and playful, sometimes bizarre movements.

Since I was also responsible for the story/script, sound design, and music, I was able to develop the concept holistically. For example, all sound effects were created exclusively using the mouth. I particularly enjoyed coming up with the paradisial and horror scenarios of AI use. Although the examples at the beginning of the writing process weren't bold enough, a momentum gradually developed during the course of writing that tied the quirky stories, visual gags, and unusual character designs into a coherent package. Lisa Liu's nuanced voice work brought Daria, Dan, AI, and all the other characters spectacularly to life. Looking back, I am also very happy that the color concept with only three tones per color worked out: blue for the neutral parts, such as the introduction and conclusion, petrol/turquoise for positive scenarios, and orange/brown for negative scenarios.

The project was a wonderful opportunity to engage with artificial intelligence in an educational, critical, and artistic way before the AI hype surrounding LLMs and GenAI really started.

Editorial direction: Alice Watanabe
Narrator: Lisa Liu
Rigging, animation, and editing: Larissa Jablotschkin & Laura Zuckschwerdt
Character & production design, story/screenplay, sound & music: Conrad Dreyer

The series can be found on YouTube: