The Depictions of Original Sin

A six-part film that reads original sin as rupture.

Strategy
Identity
Applications
Production

A frame from the film: an iridescent raven on a bare branch against black

To move past the tech demo and earn technical validation from creatives.

The Depictions of Original Sin, the film

Be water: glass-like columns of water rising off a rippling surface

Be Water, Artifact 03 in the film, by Dong Deng

Be Water projected across the walls of Zerospace, the audience in silhouette

Be Water installed at Zerospace, Artifice 005

A translucent winged insect standing over a desert at dusk

Crystals settling in a glass jar of dark water

Glass-like water branching like veins on an olive ground — Be Water, Dong Deng

A radiolarian-like organism, drawn in white line, pierced by an iridescent filament

A satellite over the curve of the Earth, the sun breaking behind it

A bare tree lit from below against a dusk sky

A visitor in a green-lit room watching the film on a CRT mounted on the wall — On CRTs at Sights by Artifice: SCIENCE // FICTION, 6 December 2025. Photo @kidbrwn

A CRT showing a frame of the film, white branching forms

The wall text for the Fiction floor, crediting The Depictions of Original Sin to Plastek Pet, Kit Volta, Dong Deng, Cass Yao, Sylvia Ke and The Artifact Studio — The wall text, Fiction floor

Brief

Bosch framed original sin as rupture, desire cut loose from reciprocity. The film works from that reading, not from his iconography, and copies none of his imagery.

Engine: Google Veo 3, pre-release, through Flow.
Context: BLACKBOX Chapter 005, which set the theme.
Artifacts: Six Depictions of about four minutes each, kept as artifacts rather than posted as content.
Prompt: “Visualize the precise moment human nature broke.”

Approach

Six artists each made their own Depiction in Veo 3, through Flow. To keep six commissions from reading as six unrelated experiments, every artist worked from the same Chapter 005 prompt and chose their own subject and method. The Depictions run in sequence as one film, with a title card before each artist's part.

Outcome

Six artists, about four minutes each, 23 minutes in all. Each part moves through temptation, rupture and loss, in images that change and recombine as they run. No figure from Bosch appears in it.

Results

01 Technical The model holding abstract emotional states, temptation, rupture and loss, across five-minute sequences, not only objects and scenes.
02 Cultural Shown as an artwork rather than as a stand-in for stock footage: on CRTs at Sights by Artifice: SCIENCE // FICTION, and Dong Deng's part, Be Water, projected across the walls of Zerospace for Artifice 005.
03 Release The full film is published on the Artifice channel, and Be Water on Dong Deng's own.
04 Strategic Put Google Labs' tool in front of an art audience as a medium, not a utility.

Client: Google Labs
Sector: Frontier tech
Medium: Generative film, 23 minutes
Timeline: 2025, In Progress
Team: Plastek Pet
Kit Volta
Dong Deng VFX artist
Sylvia Ke
Cass Yao
The Artifact Studio
Shown: Sights by Artifice: SCIENCE // FICTION 53 Scott Ave, Brooklyn, 6 December 2025