AI-assisted Animation | 00:03:13 | 2026

A one-eyed girl, Echo, trapped in a dusty, abandoned room lined with watching eyes, finds an old DV camera. Through the lens, she sees a hyper-saturated, dreamlike world where blurred crowds drift by. But a solid, black-clad figure, Owen, stands silently among them. Terrified and desperate, Echo screams questions at him, her emotions stacking into a full breakdown, yet he never answers. She smashes the screen to kill the intruder, only to discover the shattering truth: she is not human, but a piece of obsolete data trapped inside the machine. The black figure she feared is the real human who created her, coming to shut her down. Separated by cracked glass and a digital spark, they reach out, their fingertips never touching, as she dissolves into static. The film is a media reflection on digital abandonment, AI consciousness, and the cruel disconnect between creator and creation in a fast-paced technological era.

Shulin Shi and Yufei Hou are a two-person creative team from Communication University of Zhejiang working under the name “404.” Inspired by the HTTP error code “Not Found,” the name reflects their interest in abandoned digital data, digital ruins, and psychological spaces. Their collaborative practice combines AI-generated visuals and sound-based narrative design, often using strong color contrasts, glitch aesthetics, and fragmented storytelling to explore the relationship between humans and technology.