As in his previous work Borderline Visible (winner of a Special Jury Award for Creative Technology at IDFA DocLab in 2023), this immersive work by Ant Hampton places a photobook in your hands. Leafing through it, guided by a soundtrack featuring narration, ambient sound, and instructions, you become the connecting factor that brings together the aural and visual parts of the experience. In the individual version, you experience the work by yourself in the DocLab exhibition, with a book in your hands and headphones guiding you through the story.
The images in the book are AI creations telling the story of what industry usually keeps out of sight. They show highly automated distribution and data centers (including those for AI itself), where people are either gradually replaced by machines, or end up thinking and behaving with the same aims: anticipation, acquisition, accumulation.
Then, when a glitch in one of these warehouses causes a power outage, a twilight zone emerges in which the automated, all-predictive algorithms are rendered powerless. Disruption and sensuality cut through the windowless spaces until what is often presented today as inevitable lies shredded.
Recipient of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant 2026
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