Love, Loneliness, Humans and the Machines

Undergraduate

This course explores how international cinema imagines the boundaries between organic and artificial life. Through analyses of machine-human relations from the beginning of film, science fiction classics and contemporary productions of global cinema, we will discuss what it means to be human. Using theories and methods from sociolinguistics, philosophy, psychology and intercultural communication, we will analyze how concepts of human selfhood, consciousness, emotions, spirituality, language, voice, cognition, memory, rituals, norms, and value systems are constructed in contrast to artificial others and more-than human beings. Are they our antagonists, our companions, our foils or our victims? Are they allegories for social and ethnic groups that are excluded, exploited, discriminated and controlled? In addition to themes like digital replicas and data doppelgängers, algorithmic desire, posthuman identity, digital companionship, the “uncanny valley”, and the ethics of emotional technology, we will also discuss the role of more-than human beings in film and our realities. Is our planet just a set or décor, or are trees, flowers, mountains and rivers the silent heroes, foils, sufferers or survivors in our actions and tales of human loneliness, hybris, self-destruction, self-elevation and fulfilment?