Automatism

Stéphane Degoutin (France), Gwenola Wagon (France)

Studio-X Istanbul

“After animal magnetism and electricity, it is now information that is considered as the universal substance running through everything, the matter in which we are all immersed… It fuels the fantasies of a universal connection… In our era, we tend to believe that information can link and regulate all things, all entities, all matter… Since mankind considers information as a universal fluid, it reorganizes itself based on this assumption… There is obviously a strong desire to see the brain become an information machine… Mankind does its best to augment both computers and brains. If the evolution of computers depends on technological improvement, the evolution of the human brain can result from the networking of brains… And if we can’t create computers that are like brains, then we will adapt the brain to make it able to compute information.” –SW, GW

Automatism is an episode from World Brain, a film that is a combination of “documentary, fiction and a how-to guide.” The episode examines how the world around us becomes increasingly automatized, as people, faces, vehicle motions are tracked, counted, processed through algorithms and feedback loops. Automatism contemplates the fact that there is no clear line between human and machine as a new automated society is being designed that works as efficiently (if not more) without humans.