WEBVTT 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:30.079 I want you to picture a room in Chicago in nineteen ninety-two. 00:00:30.079 --> 00:00:34.240 Not a glamorous room, just a space. 00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:37.439 It's hot under a few makeshift lights. 00:00:37.439 --> 00:00:45.759 There's a plain backdrop hanging on a wall, and a single bulky video camera sitting heavy on a tripod. 00:00:45.759 --> 00:00:52.079 In the middle of this boring room full of lights, there is a guy in Spandex shorts. 00:00:52.079 --> 00:00:54.799 His name is Daniel Pisina. 00:00:54.799 --> 00:01:00.399 He is a martial artist, and he is throwing a punch. 00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:04.000 He throws it again and again. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:09.519 There are a few other people rotating through this hot room over the course of a few days. 00:01:09.519 --> 00:01:12.159 There's Daniel's brother Carlos. 00:01:12.159 --> 00:01:16.799 There's a fitness and aerobics instructor named Elizabeth Malachi. 00:01:16.799 --> 00:01:20.079 She's wearing a green workout leotard. 00:01:20.079 --> 00:01:22.799 These people have day jobs. 00:01:22.799 --> 00:01:24.959 They teach classes. 00:01:24.959 --> 00:01:31.760 They are people who know the exact weight of their own limbs and who know how their bodies move through the air and across a mat. 00:01:31.760 --> 00:01:38.239 Behind the camera are a couple of guys named Ed Boone and John Tobias. 00:01:38.239 --> 00:01:46.000 They make video games and they are tired of the pixelated little characters. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:51.040 Up until this point, the people inside the arcade machines were cartoons. 00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:55.599 Little clusters of colored squares waddling across the screen. 00:01:55.599 --> 00:01:59.280 They are charming, but they are flat. 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:02.640 Ed and John wanted something else. 00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:04.879 They wanted the sweat. 00:02:04.879 --> 00:02:09.759 They wanted the heavy, undeniable reality of a heel hitting a jaw. 00:02:09.759 --> 00:02:15.120 So they asked Daniel to put on a yellow ninja hood. 00:02:15.120 --> 00:02:18.719 They asked him to throw a grappling hook. 00:02:18.719 --> 00:02:27.680 They asked him to fall down, to pantomime what it might look like if his spine were to suddenly be ripped from his back. 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:29.680 And he does. 00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:31.520 He falls on the mat. 00:02:31.520 --> 00:02:34.240 He throws an uppercut at nothing. 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:36.560 They get it all on tape. 00:02:36.560 --> 00:02:41.439 And then begins the quiet, tedious magic of the 1990s. 00:02:41.439 --> 00:02:51.599 Back at the computer, someone sits down with the video footage, and frame by frame, pixel by pixel, they cut Daniel out of the background. 00:02:51.599 --> 00:02:53.759 They erase the room. 00:02:53.759 --> 00:02:55.439 They erase the mat. 00:02:55.439 --> 00:02:58.800 They trace the line of Elizabeth's leotard. 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:01.039 They isolate the movement. 00:03:01.039 --> 00:03:06.800 They take the physical reality of these people and turn them into little pixels on a screen. 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:10.319 And you might know what happens next. 00:03:10.319 --> 00:03:15.919 They build a game called Mortal Kombat. 00:03:15.919 --> 00:03:20.879 It arrives in bowling alleys and pizza parlors and darkened arcades. 00:03:20.879 --> 00:03:24.479 It glows and it is loud. 00:03:24.479 --> 00:03:30.639 Kids crowd around the sticky cabinet, slamming the plastic buttons, completely mesmerized. 00:03:30.639 --> 00:03:37.280 The violence in the game shocks parents and politicians, ultimately sparking congressional hearings. 00:03:37.280 --> 00:03:41.439 But the violence is only shocking because the bodies look so real. 00:03:41.439 --> 00:03:45.280 The human weight was translated perfectly. 00:03:45.280 --> 00:03:49.039 They are in millions of machines. 00:03:49.039 --> 00:03:57.919 And then soon after they are in millions of living rooms on Super Nintendo's and Sega Genesis's. 00:03:57.919 --> 00:04:04.080 The game is a phenomenon, and it is making an absolute fortune. 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:07.039 But Daniel isn't. 00:04:07.039 --> 00:04:09.280 Elizabeth isn't. 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:11.039 None of them are. 00:04:11.039 --> 00:04:16.879 They were paid for their afternoons in that hot room in Chicago a flat rate. 00:04:16.879 --> 00:04:18.480 Just gig work. 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:32.560 And they start to see their faces, their literal faces, the shapes of their bodies, their specific martial arts stances, selling millions of copies, plastered on magazine covers and television commercials. 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:34.800 So they go to court. 00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:36.480 They file a lawsuit. 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:40.000 They point at the screens and they say to the judge, that's me. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:45.279 You just can't take my body and put it in a machine and send it around the world and not pay me. 00:04:45.279 --> 00:04:47.759 Daniel doesn't even wait for the verdict. 00:04:47.759 --> 00:04:56.720 He puts his Spandex shorts back on and puts on his sunglasses and poses in character for a print ad for a rival fighting game. 00:04:56.720 --> 00:05:02.079 Midway games, the creators of Mortal Kombat, are furious. 00:05:02.079 --> 00:05:04.000 They fire him. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:11.040 When the next game comes out, Daniel has been erased, replaced by someone else doing the exact same moves. 00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:15.439 And then the final blow. 00:05:15.439 --> 00:05:19.040 The court looks at the screen. 00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:21.040 They look at the pixels. 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:24.399 They look at the little squares of color. 00:05:24.399 --> 00:05:35.360 The court decides that because the video was manipulated, because it was color corrected and isolated and turned into computer source code, it was transformed. 00:05:35.360 --> 00:05:39.759 It's a new thing, a derivative work. 00:05:39.759 --> 00:05:48.800 They even cite a survey claiming that only 6% of people could look at the pixelated guy in Spandex shorts and recognize him as Daniel Pisina. 00:05:48.800 --> 00:05:57.680 So, legally speaking, if you run a human being through a computer thoroughly enough, they cease to belong to themselves. 00:05:57.680 --> 00:06:03.759 We spend a lot of time today worrying about what happens when the machine takes our face. 00:06:03.759 --> 00:06:11.519 But this all started long before AI, before the facial recognition software really took hold. 00:06:11.519 --> 00:06:25.040 It started with a guy in Chicago standing under a light, throwing a kick at the empty air, completely unaware that he was about to disappear into the machine. 00:06:25.040 --> 00:06:33.120 Thanks for listening to Found in the Margins, and thanks for supporting the Patreon. 00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:35.759 It makes a world of difference.