K2K blends mas and AI for Holy Trespasses

FAMED medium band K2K Alliance & Partners is, yet again, expanding its digital print in mas. Its 2025 band launch was an AI-powered one on October 10, via its streaming platform, K2K Studios.

Holy Trespasses – its 2025 presentation – showcased a fully AI-powered docufilm which interwove its 2025 collection and an AI-generated fashion show.

K2K Alliance & Partners Studios (K2K Studios) is the band's "innovation hub that nurtures ideas into industry-changing products and supports transformational concepts," it says on its website k2k-studios.com. The space is dedicated to activating change. The hub will showcase new and immersive ways to enjoy the K2K Collection. This includes, but is not limited to animation, movies, reality TV and audible experiences, the website said.

Over the last three years, the band led by Kathy and Karen Norman, has been meshing masquerade and immersive digital technologies.

For its 2024 launch, the band used digital images and a video presentation during its live presentation in New Jersey, last year.

In 2022, the Carnival company announced its dive into the metaverse and its animation launchpad.

This is just the start for the band’s AI adventure.

Asked about the success of the AI launch as opposed to a physical launch, K2K said effectiveness could be measured in two ways: viewership and bottom line.

K2K said, since its inception, it traditionally hosted a live-theatre production for the premiere of its collections.

“Thus, the streaming feature and the AI-powered movie was really a feasibility study and pilot for future events,” K2K’s co-founder Kathy Norman said in an interview with Newsday.

“In terms of effectiveness, one of our key performance indicators was our viewership rate on the night and over the weekend. Website engagement on the night of the event (which began at 11 pm) was 7.5 times more than selling our show at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA, Port of Spain).”

She added that the company’s website kept “significant momentum” over the weekend following the launch.

Kathy said as for the bottom line, the ever-growing generative AI allowed smaller businesses, like K2K, to minimise cost while maximising reach.

“Our Broadway-styled shows are expensive – from hall rentals, (Copyright Music Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago) COTT licence, dance cast, models and everything else that is needed to bring a show to fruition.

“Leveraging the advances in technology gives small businesses a chance to create, compete and entertain. AI has the ability to power Carnival and empower the entrepreneur,” she said.

A media release said K2K had become the first band to host a fully-powered AI Carnival show and film.

“The docufilm was curated with two intentions: to paint a visual story and to showcase how K2K could power and empower the Carnival landscape through the use of tools like generative AI.”

She added that generative AI was poised to unleash a next wave of productivity and the company wanted to be in a position to grow as tech grew.

“Generative AI has filtered into our lives through many avenues – from the tech powering our smartphones, to the driving features on cars, to the tools retailers use to assist consumers.

“In retail and consumer packaged goods, the potential impact is estimated to be significant, around US$400 billion to $660 billion a year, with revenues driven by reinvention of the customer-interaction pattern, acceleration in the creation of value in key business areas, quickened resolution and superior insights in customer care, and disruptive and creative innovation, according to research,” Kathy said in the release.

She said AI-generative tools were used in the band’s 3D-renderings of its backpacks.

“This aided in both animating and reimagining the possibilities of the costumes. Thereafter, we attempted to push the possibilities through creating a fully AI-powered docufilm and AI-powered fashion show,” she said.

She added that the launch showed generative AI was not just a tool.

The Normans believe AI is a creative partner, but this is just the beginning.

“In truth, there is much more exploration to be done to fully understand generative AI’s power, reach, and capabilities,” they said.

Despite AI’s growing importance and ubiquity, the Normans believe there is a need for human interaction, connection and feeling.

And its 2025 theme, Holy Trespasses– although integrating AI – speaks to life experiences, they said.

“In fact, it draws the most unsuspecting correlation between food and life,” they added.

The Normans said the collection talks to the sweet and bitter moments life offers:

“For in truth, in the blink of an eye, in the rush of a moment, things change. And with the growing trend and integration of AI, change will be accelerated.

“Thus, despite expert guidance, life, like a meal, has a mind of its own. The bread you have put to bake in the oven, just failed to rise. The dish, which required only a gingerly pinch of salt, just got a grain too much. And of course, the food, which required much prep work, just got burnt on the stove. But despite the drama of the kitchen, what remains, is that you, as the cook, will always bring your personal soul to even a burnt pot!

“For indeed, what holds true, is that the negotiation between sweet and sour; the surprises of spice and pepper; the pauses from the bitter and the bland; all of it – all of life’s flavourful surprises – can make for an endlessly delicious meal. Which, will in turn, make one’s personal life’s recipe, just as holy, as it is sinful.”