Blog Archives
Sight (SHORT FILM – dystopian SF)
Is it possible for a short film to pack the same punch — philosophically, artistically, culturally, spiritually — that a longer one does? Is it possible for a short film to be as artistically and culturally significant as a feature-length one? If the answer can be “yes” for other storytelling forms, such as written fiction — where many short stories are recognized as classics right alongside novels — then surely the same is true of film, despite the fact that feature-length films get most of the attention.
We humbly submit that the first of this week’s Cinema Purgatorio offerings is, basically a classic. “Sight” is a short film by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo, two students at Bezazel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Or rather, by this point they’re probably former students, because “Sight” served as their graduation film. It has made a considerable splash on the Internet ever since they uploaded it several weeks ago, and as you’ll see, it is an exquisite, and in fact a well-nigh perfect, exploration of current societal trends in full-bore dystopian science fiction fashion. For anyone who has ever contemplated the grim nexus of narcissism, distraction, and the trivialization and corruption of human experience and human relationships that may be portended by the social media revolution, the fusion of humans with machines, and the universal digital interconnection of society, this film hits all the right notes to fascinate and horrify. And it does so not only with a brilliantly conceived and realized script but with beautiful production values, special effects, and lead performances.
Trust us: You want to watch it without knowing too much ahead of time, so that it can surprise you with where it starts and where it’s going. Watch it first, before you read the brief explanatory notes below. And be sure to fullscreen it and turn up the volume.
Media company VentureBeat, which is “obsessed with covering amazing technology and why it matters in our lives,” spoke to May-raz and Lazo by email, and received the following explanation from Lazo for the thinking that went into the film:
“I’m a video game geek and Eran is a film buff, and we both have a passion for sci-fi and technology,” Lazo wrote in an email to VentureBeat. “At first we were set on making a film that had augmented reality in it. We did some research, delved into every kind of augmented tech out there today, and somewhere along the way we thought ‘Hey, I wonder how augmented reality would be like without the device or apparatus barrier. What if we could just SEE augmented reality?’ So we kind of tried to envision the world and how it would act after this kind of technology is standard, and it rolled on from there.”
– Jolie O’Dell, “Beautiful short film shows a frightening future filled with Google Glass-like devices,” VentureBeat, July 27, 2012
Lazo also told VentureBeat that the similarity between the film’s future vision and Google’s augmented reality project called ProjectGlass, which was unveiled earlier this year, represented a serendipitous bit of timing:
As for the Glass connection, Lazo said, “The Google Glass video just came out about a day or two after we started work on Sight. It was pretty cool; it kind of gave us an affirmation that we’re on the right path.”
(Note that for an earlier consideration of a similar theme, you can look to”Stream of Consciousness,” an excellent episode of The New Outer Limits from 1997.)
Shame for Fame: The New Path to Stardom in the Age of the Status Cult
The Extinction Papers – Chapter Two
I am routinely wrong about many things. The enduring popularity of televised talent shows. The assured success of former Raider Bill Callahan as the new head coach of my 2004 Nebraska Cornhuskers. The viability of something called Twitter. While the second one caused me more pain (barely edged out by the first), the last might be my biggest miss as a cynical and formerly smug prognosticator.
From what I knew of Twitter at the time, I just couldn’t imagine that this insignificant and seemingly limited tentacle of social media would be embraced, let alone last long enough to metastasize into a societal norm, and even a verb (“tweeting” <shudder>). Allowing one to send out uninteresting life updates in 140 characters from the line at the grocery store (“Ugh! I’m SO ANNOYED by people who pay for their cat food with checks! FML!”), or the gym (“Just ripped off 15 reps at 230 on bench, bruh . . . Feeling pumped”), or from their own living room (“Watching re-runs of ‘Cagney & Lacey’ on Oxygen, y’all, and gotta’ admit, Tyne Daly is at the top of her game”), just didn’t seem to have any cachet, let alone meaning. Even with the proliferation of insipid reality programming, I still didn’t foresee the voracious interest in the mundane minutiae of the lives of everyday people. I had no idea that sharing random thoughts on traffic lights or a blurring phone pic of what one is about to eat for lunch would enthrall a nation, let alone a world. One would assume that a so-called enlightened civilization would have more important things to occupy their hopefully expanding brains than your college roommate’s recent sock purchase at Target.
But, I was wrong. Lords of Light, was I ever wrong. People dig this shit. CRAVE this shit. JOIN IN on this shit.
So I sat, baffled — with my quiet, unintelligent phone stowed somewhere in my bag — by the explosion of Twitter and the flood of tweets that were now an essential part of seemingly everyone’s daily lives. And baffled I remained, until I remembered that in the 21st century, EVERONE wants to be famous and recognized, even if only amongst a small group of friends, family, and online acquaintances. This is the era where fame trumps all, trampling the desire for talent, happiness, and stability, and just barely edging out success. Fame is king, queen, emperor, and god. As such, it attracts acolytes of the Status Cult, who routinely have sacrificed and will sacrifice anything upon the freshly stained, newly hewn titanium altar to achieve immortality, which these days can last only a few minutes, falling far short of that promised Golden Fifteen.
Read the rest of this entry
Recommended Reading 20
This week’s recommendations cover the history of Wall Street’s addiction to inhumanly fast and economically abstracted trading practices; the history of “dark money” in American politics, culminating in the current game-changing dominance of hidden funding; the rise of real-life “cyborgs” via the burgeoning body-hacking movement; a couple of considerations of what it means for human social and personal existence to be wired into a digital social network of ad hoc spying and self-promotion; a look at the rise and definition of “knowledge art” in an age dominated by objectified scientific understandings of life and reality; a look at the meaning of art in light of evolutionary biology; an opinion piece from The New York Times lambasting the “positive thinking” movement as exemplified by Tony Robbins; and links to podcasts on “recovering environmentalists,” Jung and synchronicity, and findings from the new scientific study of the biological unconscious with neuroimagining technology.
Recommended Reading 18
This week’s links, reading, and viewings encompass America’s apocalyptic obsession, the troubled future of America’s electricity situation, the continued rehabilitation of psychedelic research in academic and governmental contexts, the rise of America’s internal surveillance state, a worried critique of art’s monetization, the hijacking of social media by megacorporate interests, a warning from by-God Silicon Valley itself about the dangers of digital addiction, and a fascinating preview of an upcoming conference in Australia that will explore the origins of consciousness.
