Iconic Footage of Jimi Hendrix Playing “Hey Joe” Rendered in the Style of Moebius, with the Help of Neural Network Technology

We are less than a year into neur­al net­work tech­nol­o­gy, and Google’s Deep Dream soft­ware is already yield­ing impres­sive results beyond the dog-slugs of its first videos. YouTu­ber Lulu xXX has been play­ing around with blend­ing art with music videos, and is onto some­thing with this clip that mesh­es icon­ic live footage of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence (fea­tured below) with the art of Jean Giraud aka Moe­bius.

The French car­toon­ist and illus­tra­tor was a big fan of Hen­drix. He designed the cov­ers of a French com­pi­la­tion LP of Hendrix’s first two albums, and includ­ed him in sev­er­al art prints, where the musi­cian is a cool, often angel­ic pres­ence.

So Lulu xXX right­ly chose Moe­bius’ par­tic­u­lar style through which to process this icon­ic “Hey Joe” footage record­ed in 1967. As you see, when the neur­al net­work is fed more line-based work, it tru­ly does get close to “Moe­bius ani­mates Hen­drix.” Watch the side-by-side ver­sion below and let us know what you thinks works best.

In a few more years, this video may seem charm­ing­ly naive as neur­al net­work­ing improves. Think how Pixar evolved, or how video games devel­oped. The results may be so good that we won’t know if we’re see­ing some­thing hand­made or a per­fect sim­u­la­tion. We might have to lean over and ask our Jimi Hen­drix holo­gram to tell us the truth.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed con­tent:

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Jimi Hen­drix Wreaks Hav­oc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From BBC (1969)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.