Saturday, April 29, 2023, 8:00 pm
CHILD’s ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES + KAVANAGH’s WE’VE BEEN WARNED
This first of two Puppet Shows—this one foregrounding the Scary—sees the SF premiere of Abigail Child‘s Origin of the Species, her masterful hour-plus exploration of both new tech/engineering developments and of radically new understandings of the relations between humans and machines…that are apparently our equals, and soon to be our superiors. Abby‘s cinematic genius is realized in exquisite doc coverage—especially of the new Japanese initiatives. Opening the evening is a much-needed push-back from OC ally Mike Kavanagh, A Short History of Robots and AI in Cinema, that presses the case for regulatory action to keep the genie back in the bottle. This 40-minute chronology includes scores of riveting clips, from Metropolis to Colossus: The Forbin Project, and beyond, teasing out the critical distinctions between “generative” and “sentient”. Enhancing the two anchors are Keith Sanborn on Jeremy Bentham, Peter Freund on HAL 9000, Mark Shephard‘s Sentient City, and David Cox‘ “real-world” noggin’-choppin’ heli-drone! $13