Bhavishi (Binaural Sound Film -Use Headphones).
This film imagines a dystopian 22nd Century world: one where
climate change has been realized and world power (economic, military,
technological, cultural) has pivoted from West to East. Southern countries are
super-hot, drought-ridden and cannot produce their own food. Developed nations
have been bankrupted by healthcare and immigration costs. A third world war led
to a worldwide citizenship charter, providing global access to education and
healthcare in exchange for citizen responsibility, where personal behaviours
and outcomes are tracked in a skin chip. The work takes us on a journey via a
time machine into a future where Edinburgh’s Leith is now the ideal temperature
for a popular holiday destination, and a travel journalist interviews Asian
visitors at the Lido.
Rendered in spatial audio and featuring A.I. generated paintings and
voices, complex technological workflows developed machine learning to the
artist’s style, creating 540 paintings, animations and avatars. The audience is
challenged to wonder which aspects are human or artificial.
