XOR Open Arts Event Series - Artists' Film Screen Night: Geomancer by Lawrence Lek
To celebrate the end of Fall semester classes and the launch of XOR Open Arts event series, we are pleased to invite you to the screening of Geomancer 風水師 (2017), a film by a London-based artist and filmmaker Lawrence Lek. Set against the backdrop of a futuristic Singapore, the CGI film speculates a possibility of non-human creativity, art and artifice after the singularity.
Trailer on Vimeo
Time: 7PM, Wednesday, December 1
Film Duration: 48 minutes
Venue: Cheung On Tak Lecture Hall (LT-E), (張安德演講廳), Academic Building 1/F Near Lift 22, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay
Language: English and Mandarin (with English subtitles)
Admission: Free. To join the screening please register via this short form.
This event is co-organized by Computational Media and Arts Thrust Area of HKUST(GZ), HKUST Center for the Arts, and the Interdisciplinary Program Office (IPO).
About the Artist:
Lawrence Lek 陆明龙 is a London-based artist and filmmaker known for creating site-specific. Born in 1982 in Frankfurt am Main, Lek is of Malaysian Chinese descent, and studied architecture at Trinity College, Cambridge, the Architectural Association, and Cooper Union in New York.
About the Film:
Geomancer is a computer-generated animation about the creative awakening of artificial intelligence. Set in Singapore on the eve of the island nation’s centennial in 2065, the film tells the story of an environmental satellite that wishes to become an artist. Geomancer imagines the crisis that might happen when the world has become a techno-industrial complex run by a posthuman intelligence, and creative originality is no longer be considered that special.
“Is irrationality the main characteristic of consciousness?” asks the film’s narrator, proposing art as the last refuge of humanity in an otherwise automated world where an artificial intelligence dedicated to copying and studying massive amounts of data has appropriated every human trait that can be used to produce profit. The film uses ‘art’ to symbolize humanity's appreciation for creative thought and beauty, asking what will happen when an emotionally aware AI gains the power of self-expression, and creative genius is no longer the domain of humanity. Rendered within a video game engine and featuring a neural network-generated dream sequence and synthesized vocal soundtrack, Geomancer explores the implications of post-human consciousness.