Saturday     11:30
The Chopin House
2024, 12 min., English

Director: Dan O'Brien

This video-essay critically examines the dual allure and anxiety of onscreen computers in sci-fi film and television. Onscreen computers are often depicted as windows to power and knowledge, while simultaneously evoking fears of technophobic otherness, with machines frequently turning against their human operators. This is considered through a range of examples, including: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Minority Report, Her, Mr. Robot, and Severance, to reveal a persistent tension between human agency and machine autonomy.

Daniel O’Brien is a Lecturer in Film and Digital Media at The University of Essex. His teaching and areas of research span across film, video game studies, interactive media art and video-essaying. He has published work in all these subjects. Daniel is working on a monograph with Edinburgh University Press titled, Postphenomenology and Narrative Across Cinema, Interactive Art, and Gaming, which considers the shift from passive viewing to active co-creation of stories across diverse screen spaces.