Machine Visions
What does a machine see? And how could we imagine this? Digitalized systems have become a screen for projections. With a reliable regularity, they are used to discuss and negotiate how we envision a future of our society. The entire spectrum from wonderful utopian conditions to inevitable apocalypses is present there. The films in MACHINE VISION pick up these discourses, shift them and play with expectations. Performed in radical different manners, though all of them are the result of a precise observation.
Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1
The film takes its starting point from forms of insufficiency in the behavior of humanoid avatars in computer games. These ‘Deficiency scenarios’ are translated back into real bodies, and restaged by performers in existing and staged indoor and outdoor spaces. Particular focus is on the phenomenon of seemingly ‘deficient’, minor or major displacement activities, anomalies, irregularities, idle runs and repetitions in the behavior and movement patterns of the game characters. By restaging and transforming these failure scenarios of avatar aesthetics with human performers the project exemplifies a kind of practicing insufficiency ’from within’ and embraces the defects of the algorithmic machine instead of longing for its perfection. The clip is accompanied by a digital composed soundtrack which together with the rhythmically structured montage partly unfolds in a staged set that is based on two estranged versions of a retail space in a computer game. The production was supported by Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg.
- Deutschland
- 00:16:19
- Director: Stefan Panhans
- Production: Stefan Panhans
- Photography: Lilli Thalgott
- Editing: Lilli Thalgott
- Music: Kirsten Reese
- Sound: Lilli Thalgott / Kirsten Reese
- Year: 2016
Geomancer
On the eve of Singapore's 2065 centennial, an adolescent satellite AI escapes its imminent demise by coming down to Earth, hoping to fulfil its dream of becoming the first AI artist. Faced with a world that limits its freedom, GEOMANCER must come to terms with its militarized origins and the growing ascendancy of the cultural phenomenon of Sino-Futurism. As the geopolitical axis tilts further to the East, and as once-dominant economic-technological models are cast into doubt, Lek alights on a longstanding tension between the place of the human and the role of the machine, sharpened by contemporary hopes and anxieties around the rise of East Asia. Lek shows us speculations about new forms of artificial intelligence, already outperforming mere mortals in matters of automation and aggregation will challenge us in more creative skills as well.
- England
- 00:48:15
- Director: Lawrence Lek
- Languages: zh
- Subtitles: en
- Year: 2017
- German Premiere
keep that dream burning
Rainer Kohlberger´s eight-minute begins with extremely fine black-and-white particles that flutter across the screen. Coagulating into rough structures, they transform into a storm of jagged artifacts and steadily changing spots of light. With the introduction of the flicker effect, the floating electronic sound turns into a piercing rhythmic wafting and comes towards the end to rest– to the image of a black hole subtly growing deeper and deeper. Concrete object and events continually materialize from the active particles: dispersing debris, fireballs, and smoke barely evoke images of explosions familiar from action films, before disappearing again in static. The static in Kohlberger´s work packs a punch. Kohlberger enters the now independent machine, which he positions to learn and apply transformations of images in accordance with his aesthetic guidelines. The genesis of a digital aesthetic, whose developmental processes are increasingly less understandable for humans, takes place before our intoxicated eyes.
- Österreich
- 00:08:00
- Director: Rainer Kohlberger
- Year: 2017
