An invitation to reflect upon the lure of science and technology and our obsession with progress through a series of films and an exhibition.

IFFR 2018

G. Anthony Svatek

The credit crunch did not really affect island nation Tuvalu, but climate change is bringing it down all too literally now. Yet online it might still have a future.

Perspectives

Curtain Call

Joost Rekveld

A categorical accumulation of abstract patterns. Lines, colours and sounds obey an impenetrable logic. A quiet film that dares to be resolutely experimental.

Johann Lurf

What exactly is written in the stars? Experimental filmmaker Lurf scoured over a century of cinematic history for depictions of the heavens. Without compromising his criteria, he edited them together chronologically, including their original soundtracks. A visually dizzying trip.

Cath Le Couteur

Starting with the first satellite launch in 1958, there are now millions of larger and smaller artefacts orbiting Earth. A floating museum of space exploration above our heads.

Adrift

Greg Kohs

When an algorithm repeatedly beats the holder of 18 international titles Lee Sedol at the board game Go, that isn’t just an anecdote for the sport’s annals. Google’s ambitions for the DeepMind software are to not only equal, but to outdo human thinking. Is that a good idea though?

AlphaGo

Zoe Beloff

Our emotions are increasingly being turned into commodities, manipulated by global corporations. This hack of an IBM commercial suggests how. Screens before AlphaGo.

The Cognitive Era

Hugo Deverchère

This disorienting, cosmic site exploration tests our imagination by means of infrared imagery and radio-telescopic data that are turned into sound.

Cosmorama

Steven McInerney

Inspired by the famous Eames film Powers of Ten, McInerney explores the boundaries of perception, from the smallest atom to the remotest corners of the universe.

A Creak in Time

Paul Bush

A study of a church building in thin sections, as abstract as a CT scan. A journey back billions of years to the time the marble was formed and buried.

Elegy

Louis Rizzo-Naudi

After 20 years of service, the spacecraft Cassini was sent crashing into Saturn on 15 September 2017. It now appeals even more to the imagination.

Patrick Bokanowski

On the cusp of total abstraction, Bokanowski invokes an imaginary journey. An enticing visual trip that makes any questions about its destination redundant.

L'envol

Chen Yin-ju

An extravagant film that appears as a message from outer space. A cryptic cocktail of thermodynamic laws, Egyptian gods and extra-stellar intelligence.

Extrastellar Evaluations III : Entropy : 25800

Paul van Hoeydonck

Two years after Apollo 11 landed the first men on the moon, the Apollo 15 mission took not only the first lunar rover, but also the first artwork to the moon.

Fallen Astronaut

Michiel van Bakel

Animated black-and-white still photographs reveal movement and light on the forest paths that would otherwise remain invisible to the human eye.

Forest Paths

Lawrence Lek

This computer-graphic film summons up a post-human consciousness: the awakening of a robot who, in 2065, wants to become the first Sino-futurist artificial artist. Commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2017.

Geomancer

Nikolaus Geyrhalter

The final minutes of Geyrhalter's monumental documentary evoke a planet deserted by its most ambitious inhabitants, the human species. Only ruins remain.

Homo Sapiens (coda)

Adrian Paci

Hordes of people discipline themselves into a long row or a slow parade. Grief is on their faces, but the reason for their distress remains a mystery.

Interregnum

Steven Eastwood

Steven Eastwood spent a year on the Isle of Wight with a number of terminal patients. Some of these contacts became real friendships. A number even allowed him to film their last breaths. A peaceful documentary that invites us to face death without taboos.

Island

Carla Andrade

The Chilean Atacama Desert provides the backdrop for a series of static shots that foreground emptiness. The natural setting becomes a mental space.

The Landscape Is Empty and Emptiness Is Landscape

Johann Arens

Mysterious white sculptural forms are on display in an empty office environment. Digital graphic tools further enhance the visual alienation.

Moulding Exclusivities

Peter Burr

Alexandra Grote

Peter Burr is fascinated by endlessly mutating labyrinths. For this digital animation about the networked life of worms he collaborated with a parasitologist.

Nematodes

Alexander Girav

The light bulb had already confused our biorhythms. Surrounded by luminous screens even in the bedroom, the threshold between night and day, dream  and reality is evaporating further.

The Night in All Things

Shaun Gladwell

Without any limiting sense of scale, the beauty of the earth, sun and stars is explored from inside an enormous human skull that is orbiting above the Earth.

Orbital Vanitas

Henna-Riikka Halonen

This kaleidoscopic compilation film about biogenetics, 3D printers and new models of artificial intelligence raises questions about new forms of virtual life.

Placeholder

Sami van Ingen

From a few surviving images from the Finnish film Fallen Asleep When Young (1937), an other-worldly melodrama is distilled. Passion, deeply human, now digitally reanimated.

Polte

Valérie Mannaerts

Hanging like a baroque drapery, this fusion of soft, flesh-coloured fabric with metal ornaments evokes the interior of the body and the organs it contains.

Private Human

Robbrecht & Daem

Blending modern architecture with elements of fairy-tale castles, this futuristic toy theatre also folds together into a rocket, pointing to the heavens.

Puppet Theatre

Izaki Yasunari

A ladder defies gravity with the aid of two bright red balloons. Its triumphant pose is at the same time the denial of its very functionality.

Red Balloons

Laurence Favre

The eternal quiet of a mountain ridge is but a deception. Melting glaciers constantly change the surface and uncover old traces of human presence.

Résistance

Sarah van Sonsbeeck

Shiny aluminium and gold-coloured sheets were once a typical ingredient of aeronautic aesthetics. Nowadays most people identify it with an emergency blanket.

Shelter #6

Simon Heijdens

A long matt-black building offers an immersive experience of silence and peace, forming a black hole in the sensory overload of its outside environment. This anechoic chamber has no sound or echo. The lighting reduces all colours to black and white. A rare experience of the self in an unmediated state.

Silent Room

Chantal van Rijt

Dust particles float about in front of a black backdrop. Lit by rays of light, they dance in all directions in a timelessness equal to that of  the stars.

Stardance

Pierre-Emmanuel Le Goff

Jürgen Hansen

On 17 November 2016, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet was sent to the International Space Station by the European Space Agency for six months to conduct scientific experiments. This film reveals the intensity of the preceding training period. A warning to all those who dream of making it in space tourism.

Thomas Pesquet, l'étoffe d'un héros

Agence Future

A three-dimensional timeline introduces the rich history of future-oriented thought and practice from which the conceptual tools of futures studies are derived.

A Timeline in Four Layers

Various Artists

toxiThropea poetically researches the tense and toxic relationship between humans and nature and exposes our inability to maintain our only biosphere.

toxiThropea

Photographic 'images of a future', shot in current reality to the detailed instructions of professional futurists, as a deliberately literal interpretation.

Toynbee Convector

Jacques Perconte

A peaceful image transforms imperceptibly into a blood-red scene. Below the soothing waves of the sea, deep unrest simmers. Digital impressionism at its best.

Twenty Nine Minutes at Sea

Takahiro Kudo

Frozen milk in the shape of a tea set is presented in a showcase, reminding us of Snow White's glass coffin. No eternal life without electricity?

Untitled (Tea Set)

When this painting was first displayed in 2014, all one could see was a blank canvas. By now it evokes an other-worldly landscape, a colourful garden of fungi.

Untitled

Two projectors are animating robot legs. Driven by the zeros and ones of an Arduino, the sound of the projectors provides a mechanical rhythm for the dance.

Veronica

Jodie Mack

Close-ups of electrical circuit boards and images of bright red flowers are interwoven in a rapid-fire montage, short-circuiting the memory of what we see.

Wasteland No. 1: Ardent, Verdant

Kurt D'Haeseleer

Franck Vigroux

Two white TV screens are reflected on a glass plate. That plate doesn’t show a white image, as could be expected, but two dark streams of moving images.

In 'Curtain Call'

.TV

#57

★

Adrift

AlphaGo

The Cognitive Era

Cosmorama

A Creak in Time

Elegy

Elegy

L'envol

Extrastellar Evaluations III : Entropy : 25800

Fallen Astronaut

Forest Paths

Geomancer

Homo Sapiens (coda)

Interregnum

Island

The Landscape Is Empty and Emptiness Is Landscape

Moulding Exclusivities

Nematodes

The Night in All Things

Orbital Vanitas

Placeholder

Polte

Private Human

Puppet Theatre

Red Balloons

Résistance

Shelter #6

Silent Room

Stardance

Thomas Pesquet, l'étoffe d'un héros

A Timeline in Four Layers

toxiThropea

Toynbee Convector

Twenty Nine Minutes at Sea

Untitled (Tea Set)

Untitled

Veronica

Wasteland No. 1: Ardent, Verdant

The White