Issue

The Universe Is a Simulation

May 2020

The universe might be a simulation, as the favorite sci-fi trope goes, but this is almost impossible to prove or disprove from within the speculative simulation. What is surer is that our universe is full of simulations. Whether those are computer-generated predictions and projections we increasingly use to look ahead or the natural forms of mimicry and camouflage deployed in the elaborate dances between predator and prey. Meanwhile, humans explore​ the possibilities and risks available to us via every sort of test run we can devise.

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Gamer Girl

FILM Croatia 2016
Irena Jukić Pranjić

The film is set in a computer game. Programmed and limited possibilities provide the backdrop against which Lily is trying to fight for the love of her life.

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Fest

FILM Germany 2018
Nikita Diakur

A suburbian blockparty. Rave, drone, bbq and icecream. Then a stunt.

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El Proyecto (The Project)

FILM Cuba 2017
Alejandro Alonso Estrella

We are roaming around a futuristic, geometric construction whose structure emerges in a milky white. But a matter eroded by time is what now appears, lit up by torchlight, like the remains of a lost civilisation that these men dressed in yellow suits are collecting, beneath the gaze of a child conce

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Presence 6.1

FILM United Kingdom 2014
Universal Everything

Presence 6.1 Taken from the exhibition : Universal Everything and You Drawing in Motion 21 September 2013 - 7 February 2014 Media Space at the Science Museum, London Presence is a circular four screen video installation. The screens show moving abstract forms against a black background, the motion o

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Simulation Beach

FILM United States 2015
Edward Kihn

Simulation Beach depicts the paradox of our intensifying search for control over the elements in an era in which we have recognized ourselves as a geological force, "the anthropocene".

Everything

FILM Ireland/USA 2017
David OReilly

Whoever you are, whatever you are and where ever you are, you're in the middle - that's the game. Narrated by the inspiring philosophy of Alan Watts

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Algo Rhythm

FILM AT/UK/Senegal 2019
Manu Luksch

In marketing and the retail sector, data analytics is widely used to profile and microtarget consumers and to predict behaviour. The ultimate goal, apparently, is for humans to be able to outsource all decision-making to machine intelligence (make Google do it!). What is at stake within the politica

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Spatial Bodies

FILM japan 2016
AUJIK

Spatial Bodies depicts the urban landscape and architectural bodies as an autonomous living and self replicating organism. Domesticated and cultivated only by its own nature. A vast concrete vegetation, oscillating between order and chaos. Influenced by the Japanese Metabolism movement in the 60's a

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Life On The Mississippi

FILM United States 2019
Bill Brown

An essay film about a river and the limits of knowing it. Using Mark Twain's "Life On The Mississippi" as a road map, Brown travels along the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee to New Orleans and considers ways that river pilots, paddlers, historical re-enactors, and civil engineers attempt t

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Simulados

FILM Spain 2016
Guillermo Marin Fernando Cucchietti

Simulados is the story of a hunter-gatherer from 12000 years ago trying to survive in one of the most extreme climates in the world. In this journey we'll learn how computer simulations help us understand the workings of our societies, and how they might help us face the consequences of complex chal

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aDiatomea

FILM UK 2012
Markos Kay

aDiatomea is an artificial life system that uses various methods and notions of a-life research. The basic principle of aDiatomea is that every aspect of it is entirely mathematically generated and thus it is not created purposefully as an art piece but as a complex system that takes a life of its o

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Fog World

FILM United Kingdom 2019
Ruaidhri Ryan

A car crash of a road movie. Iceland is a country marked by its frozen nature and extreme temperatures, which give it a certain touristic appeal. The harshness of the climatic conditions and the enthusiasm of tourists regularly cause car accidents to happen. From this phenomenon, verging on absurdit

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Project Mosul

FILM United Kingdom 2019
Joosung Kwon

Shortly after the destruction of the Mosul Museum by the Islamic State, two computer programers rally an international crowd sourcing effort to create digital 3D replicas of the lost heritage.

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BBQ

FILM France 2019
Jeanne Mayer

Alexis Phon, 18, never left "Here", the suburbian area he grew up in. A world under supervision, where boredom nums the hearts of the youth. Yet, a new horizon exists: it's "There". Thanks to Aïssatou, who shares the same anger, Alexis will gather enough courage to leave. But here, love and fre

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Go Move Be

FILM Netherlands 2018
Polak Van Bekkum

A city under construction, buildings reduced to a fragile aluminum frame and made flexible, trees folded from paper and cars made of clay. The film Go move be intersects between a digitally constructed simulation and a cardboard reality. Cameras in that world, the eyes through which we as spectators

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Of Dice and Men

FILM Canada 1988
John Weldon

This witty short animation film introduces the theory of probability. We learn of its inception in the 17th century to settle a dispute over a game of dice, its relationship to predictability, and its application to everyday situations--like the chances of being involved in an accident.

Digital Physics

FILM United States 2016
Jonathan Khanlian

Khatchig's on a quest to find the fundamental nature of reality but he'll have to overcome a system that has snubbed him, hostile hostel residents, and some really strong mushrooms. Will Khatchig uncover the secrets of our universe before he loses his home, his friends, and his sanity? Will anybody

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Scenes of Disclosure

FILM US, Netherlands, Finland 2017
Kaisu Koski

Standardized patients work with medical students to help them practice their clinical and interpersonal skills in preparation for their medical licensing exams. This documentary is dedicated to exploring the tension between standardization and authenticity that is involved in this work, particularly

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Snowflakes Used to Fall

FILM turkey 2017
Mehmet Serif Karakoyun

In a distant future, tehcnology allowed for Hologram Rooms to be a trend. An old man is spending his time, in a virtual room reminiscent of his childhood. When the time is over he has to leave the room, for there is another customer, which will have the room retransformed into his own like.

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On the Other Side

FILM France 2018
Zulma Rouge

Eugène is dependent on software capable of generating a continuous flow of dreams. With the assistance of a machine to which he connects himself and which draws inspiration from the consumer's environment, our protagonist progressively becomes submerged by a routine brightened only by the com

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Rhizome

FILM France 2015
Boris Labbé

From the infinitely small to the infinitely large, all things in the universe are tightly connected : they interact and restructure in a combination of movements and perpetual metamorphoses. Drawing on paper, indian ink and watercolor, 2D Computer. Some 2300 originals drawings, from 21 x 30 to 60 x

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Utopia 1.0

FILM United States 2015
Annie Berman

'Utopia 1.0: Post-Neo-Futurist-Capitalism in 3D!' is a twenty-minute expedition through a largely abandoned virtual 3D world known as Second Life in search of utopia. It is an absurd idea, as the title suggests. There is no such thing as post-neo-futurist-capitalism just as there is no such thing as

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Terrestrial

FILM USA 2015
Calum Walter

An enigmatic choreography of industriousness and dysfunction, Terrestrial carries us through the arterial flows of transport, into buried subway networks and soaring aerial views, against a backdrop of uniquely human dissonance. - Andrea Picard The film was inspired by an incident in 2014 where a Bl

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Bedside Manner

FILM USA 2016
Corinne Botz

"Bedside Manner" focuses on standardized patients and the art of medicine. The film explores empathy and medical relationships through the practice of using medical actors to train student doctors. At the center of the film is the brilliant neurologist Dr. Alice Flaherty, who plays herself as a doct

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Le Grand Content

FILM AT 2007
Clemens Kogler Karo Szmit

At the film´s very beginning the voice over, a man speaking in gently broken English, claims that the most important issues in life can be summed up with three words: how, why and what - three basic questions which are provably the most popular words in the autograph books of teenagers around

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Ovum

FILM USA 2019
Cidney Hue

Ovum, is a Black Mirror-esque short on the convergence of reproductive rights and VR technology.

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Time and Place, a talk with my mom

FILM The Netrherlands 2014
Martijn Veldhoen

The mother of the filmmaker tells about how her life has gone when she first came to live in a poorly maintained canal house in Amsterdam fifty years ago. The rapid career of the father; the dramatic separation; her four children she raised alone; she tries to remember the whole story. But she doesn

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Operation Jane Walk

FILM Österreich 2018
Robin Klengel Leonhard Müllner

A City Tour through the Architectures of an Online Shooter The live online performance Operation Jane Walk is based on the dystopian multiplayer shooter "Tom Clancy's: The Division". The game's digital war zone is appropriated with the help of an artistic operation: Within the rules of the software,

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Undead Sun

FILM UK 2014
Jane and Louise Wilson

Jane and Louise Wilson's Undead Sun is a large-scale video installation that looks back at the seismic impact of the First World War and considers how so many of the products of that conflict continue to shape our contemporary experience. At its heart is a now-familiar pattern of military action &nd

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Howto

FILM France 2014
Elisabeth Caravella

Howto is a video tutorial in which her creator learns us how to make a 3D text. But quickly, her undertaking get complicated, the software become out of control, she discovers that she is no more alone.

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Wargames

FILM United Kingdom 2018
Jessica Bishopp

A short creative documentary that charts the attendees of Britain's longest running Wargames group, and explores the complexity of actual combat on individuals from a psychologist's perspective. Obsession, camaraderie and a Wargames Society that asks: what does it take to go into battle?

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The Visit

FILM Denark, Finland, Norway, Ireland, Austria 2015
Michael Madsen

This film documents an event that has never taken place – man's first encounter with intelligent life from space".With unprecedented access to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, the military, and experts from leading space agencies, the film explores a first contact scenario, beginning wit