[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Our world is revolutionising with the use of personalised technology, we keep creating products and electronic devices to make our lives easier. Humanity started with a singular wheel, and ended up producing aircraft carriers that can fly themselves …and Tinder.
The development of social media has allowed for the possibility to bring people together on an international scale. We have the potential to build life-like robots within a generation. But on the spectrum from having a conversation with a flesh and blood human being, to interacting with artificial intelligence, what is considered real?
We have the potential for extensive innovation and growing digital networks, but what are the implications of this new and ever advancing digital space? Do the advantages of these developments out way the risks?
Three series featured at Melbourne WebFest 2018 explore different aspects of modern technology and the effects, both positive and negative, they have had people.
Homo Digitalis (GER) explores personalised technologies and the potential they have in the development of the human experience. Director and creative producer Christiane Miethge wanted to look at technological opportunities from a place of excitement and possibility rather than fear.
“Newspapers were full of robots taking our jobs and the latest achievements of artificial intelligence. However, journalists always seemed to concentrate on the technological development, less on what it actually meant for ordinary people or society.”
“That’s when we decided to ask the question differently – how will virtual friends, digital lovers and chips for the brain change us as human beings? How long will we actually stay human?” says Miethge.
Technology has the power to dramatically change humanity but as humans who design and build technology, we can set the direction Miethge says.
“It is us who decide and we should make use of our rights as citizens and consumers to ask for a future we want instead of following the commercial interests of companies.”
Homo Digitalis is specifically targeted to a younger audience as the direction of technological advancements are important for them to be aware of. “We wanted to make them think and actively shape their future. However this audience doesn’t watch TV anymore, so the web is the best way to reach them” Miethge says.
Iran #NoFilter (FRA) also centres around young people, showcasing ten young photographers and how they’re using social media to publish their work in order to speak about the generational cultural shift within Iran.“In Iran, 60% of the population is under 30 years old and there is no doubt they will shape the country’s future,” says co-directors Nathalie Masduraud and Valérie Urrea.
Advancing social technologies formed the concept of Iran #NoFilter and the series aims to highlight how a new generation is finding their own way through a culture embedded in tradition.
“Our Western-centred vision is often distorted by geopolitical news. The newspapers spread too often the same images: demonstrations, nuclear activities, veiled women.
Instagram is used as a virtual art gallery in Iran. This social media is very rarely censored there and is used by these photographs to reach an audience that looks like them, a community that likes to discover, share and play with the codes of what’s forbidden,” Masduraud and Urrea say.
“We sought to answer questions: Who are these young people? What are they dreaming of? Are they so different from us?
“Our series does not pretend to give a unique answer but offers ten different and singular points of view on this youth who tries to invent new models. Innovative, schizophrenic, combative. A generation that expresses itself without any filter, courageously.”
Telling the fictitious story of how the people behind an app can manipulate people’s lives, Marcel Becker-Neu, producer, author and lead actor of Wishlist 2.0, says the series helps bring to life an app that grants wishes…. seemingly harmless. The question is how far would you go for your own wishes?
Wishlist 2.0 may be a fictional series but it addresses similar ideas to Homo Digitalis, the digital sphere has the potential to greatly impact our physical world but in the end humans hold the power.
“The app always raises the same moral question again and again: how far would you go for your own wishes. Would you make the pact with the devil? The app itself is, in the end, just a tool,” says Becker-Neu.
“It was clear to us that the brain behind Wishlist was a person who embodies pure anarchy”
Wishlist 2.0 creates an explosive world of murder, sex and secrets. “A world in which nothing stands between the individual and the fulfilment of their personality,” Becker-Neu says.
But nothing is granted for free….
“Be careful what you wish for!”
Watch these series and more at Melbourne WebFest 2018.
Tickets now available!
[/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]
MORE ABOUT THE SERIES
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/3″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Homo Digitalis
WATCH
FACEBOOK
TWITTER[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/3″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Iran #NoFilter
Website[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/3″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Wishlist 2.0
WATCH
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
TWITTER[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][divider line_type=”No Line”][/vc_column][/vc_row]