26 min
The Unmanned, is composed of several 26min episodes, it is a fictional documentary about the history of humanity faced with technology acceleration. Each episode dramatizes a “singular” encounter between man and machine. Each episode is filmed with a different camera (a preprogrammed machine or a drone). The title The Unmanned – in French, ‘an uninhabited machine’ highlights perfectly the subject and the method used by the artists. The series uses as a starting point Ray Kurzweil (RK), a researcher described as the “the pioneer of Silicon Valley”. Kurzweil popularized the theory of singularity, as a point of “discontinuity” or inevitable rupture where a machine auto-generates itself to overtake man. Fabien Giraud and Raphael Siboni’s series starts with Ray Kurzweil’s death and the beginning of the machine reign. For Ray Kurzweil and many other positivist researchers, the theory of singularity goes along with an important financial and political project. Considerable investments (particularly from Google where RK heads of a laboratory) apply especially to genetics and biotechnology. Kurzweil’s real project lies behind the theory of singularity: immortality through technological rebirth. This research aims at slowing down the process of aging and bringing our parents back to life. Episode 1 is an image of the world in 2045, as seen by Kurzweil. He would then be 97 years old and spend his time with a young child improving his education. This portrait is the accomplishment of Ray Kurzweil’s reasoning project, the moment when he would have brought back his father (Friedrich Kurzweil). Therefore the series starts from the end, 2045, the moment where Ray Kurzweil can finally die because he is replaced by his son who is actually his father. The episode was filmed by a drone in a tropical forest of Mexico.
The collaborative work of Fabien Giraud and Raphael Siboni is part of a reflection on the history of cinema, science, and technology. For them, cinema is a technological invention which fundamentally transforms our relationship to the world. Giraud and Siboni are fascinated by technological acceleration. So much so that they imagine the possibility of a cinema without a human figure; one which does not subject bodies to the frame, nor bend gestures to duration. Each of their films bring radically different temporalities that are foreign to our present. They choose to film in hidden places, like the particle accelerator under the Louvre museum in La Mesure Louvre (2011), or abandoned places like the Greek temple in Bassae-Bassae (2012) where human absence is hollowly felt. Giraud and Siboni are also inspired by popular culture, micro-histories and major political conspiracies.
– In which a storm breaks out in a computing division and its simulation is turned inside out – Fourth episode of The Unmanned series, “The Uncomputable” is the story of a failure: the building in the northern plains of Scotland of a giant climate prediction factory by meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson...
In Pieces - Photographs by Sophia Bulgakova, Lia Dostlieva, Ola Lanko, Katia Motyleva and Kateryna Snizhko | Book review by Sophie Wright | LensCulture Feature In Pieces In this imaginative collection of photobooks “made with a child in mind,” five artists of Ukrainian descent explore the everyday heroism of life in wartime...
– In which a storm breaks out in a computing division and its simulation is turned inside out – Fourth episode of The Unmanned series, “The Uncomputable” is the story of a failure: the building in the northern plains of Scotland of a giant climate prediction factory by meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson...
– In whiche a lemyng starre returneth in the yeer foretolde and alle thing that spak to us turneth ayeyn to silence – Sixth episode of The Unmanned and sharing the same camera movements as the episode “1997 – The Brute Force”, “Mil troi cens quarante huyt” refers to the appearance of a comet in 1759 – thus validating the computation and rational prediction of its return by the British astronomer and mathematician Edmond Halley...
– In which defeated he leaves the scene and the stage is left in search of its scale – Second episode of The Unmanned series, “The Brute Force” reconstructs the minutes following Garry Kasparov’s defeat against the IBM Deep Blue computer on 11 May 1997...
– Thisstoryoffriedrichkurzweiliwanttotellit- myselfhowhelivedinthisroomandh – Inspired by the writings of the feral child Kaspar Hauser and told by the young Friedrich, both father and son of Ray Kurzweil, this story unfolds on the microscope images of a blade cutting through metal...
El Salto (The Jump/The Waterfall) by Juan Covelli depicts the Salto de Tequendama, a waterfall located on the outskirts of southwest Bogota...
Soft Materials is a curious, touching but also disturbing sequence of confrontations between two people: a man and a woman, and machines...
Press Release: Art21 to Release New Episode of “Art in the Twenty-First Century” | Art21 Our Series Art in the Twenty-First Century Extended Play New York Close Up Artist to Artist William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible Specials Art21.live An always-on video channel featuring programming hand selected by Art21 Playlists Curated by Art21 staff, with guest contributions from artists, educators, and more Art21 Library Explore over 700 videos from Art21's television and digital series Latest Video 16:41 Add to watchlist Guerrilla Girls in "Bodies of Knowledge" Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 11 June 23, 2023 Search Searching Art21… Welcome to your watchlist Look for the plus icon next to videos throughout the site to add them here...