With Darren Aronofsky's entry into AI filmmaking, Philip Abussi's 2023 project "Roma Pons Mundi" emerges as an early cinematic case study on how generative AI was already being used as a professional storytelling tool.
ROME, Feb. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- From "Roma Pons Mundi" to Aronofsky: How Philip Abussi's 2023 AI Cinema Milestone Anticipated Hollywood's New Frontier.
The debut of "On This Day… 1776," the series produced by Darren Aronofsky, marks a turning point for anyone working with generative technologies.
When a major world-class director decides to engage with Artificial Intelligence, the medium gains legitimacy and opens an important debate about its aesthetics.
But while Hollywood studios are now experimenting with episodic AI narratives, Italian artist and composer Philip Abussi was already exploring this frontier back in 2023. In September of that year, he premiered "Roma Pons Mundi" at Rome Future Week—an audiovisual work that used AI not just as a new way to create moving images, but as a tool for cinematic and artistic storytelling.
Where today's major studios are testing serialized narratives, "Roma Pons Mundi" had already anticipated the language of the future. The work blended rhythmic editing, complex scenes, and a synesthetic sound identity, proving that AI can become "cinema" even without dialogue.
Abussi's experiment was born at a time when AI video tools were taking their first steps. It didn't aim to replace traditional cinema, but to investigate a new kind of synesthesia between sound and generative image. That approach focused on evocative, abstract storytelling—deliberately avoiding the realism issues that critics now raise about big American productions.
"Seeing a master like Darren Aronofsky explore the frontiers of artificial intelligence is a fundamental signal for the entire industry," said Philip Abussi. "His work with 'On This Day… 1776' highlights how complex this challenge is. With 'Roma Pons Mundi,' by pursuing an investigation into AI's visual grammar, I tried to understand how it could serve an emotion without overpowering it. It's not about making cinema 'instead of' traditional methods, but understanding how this new digital 'brush' can integrate into the creative process without losing its soul. The Aronofsky case teaches us that we are all still students in front of this technology."
With "Roma Pons Mundi," Abussi traced a path where AI acts as a "bridge" between eras and languages—an approach that today finds new resonance in the projection of what future cinematic techniques will be.
What began as an experiment in 2023 is now becoming a methodological reference point in a film industry searching for its new identity.
ABOUT PHILIP ABUSSI:
Philip Abussi is an Italian composer and generative artist who works at the intersection of music, storytelling, and emerging technologies. As the co-founder of Mokastudio International and Mokamusic, he has spent years exploring the creative possibilities of generative artificial intelligence.
Following the advice of Maestro Riz Ortolani, Abussi has built a career composing soundtracks for major international brands, multisensory projects, and feature films—including the score for the docufilm Ferrari 312B. His work focuses on the relationship between sound and generative images, investigating how new digital tools can integrate into the cinematic creative process.
Media Contact
Philip Abussi, Philip Abussi Studio, 39 3395848341, [email protected]
SOURCE Philip Abussi Studio
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