Saturday     15:00
The Chopin House
2025, 12 min., English

Director: Ryan S Jeffery

The production of a computer chip is perhaps the most complex technical process in human history. But a critical step in producing this cutting-edge technology is photolithography, a process developed directly from the older sciences of photography and optics that date back centuries. Today, generative AI and computer-generated imagery are almost indistinguishable from those made with a camera. Once a method for capturing an image of the world, the science of optics is now being used to build machines that can make images of the world without needing to see it.

Ryan S Jeffery’s work with the moving image sits at the intersection between documentary, art, and media studies. Grounded in an analysis of aesthetics and politics, he is interested in how technology, ideology, and political economy shape one another. The subjects of his work have ranged from the history of data centers, the collision of financialization and online meme culture, the private art collection of the World Trade Organization, and the recent turn in Silicon Valley to so-called “hard tech.” He is currently developing a body of work that explores the science and industrial processes of the microchip. My work has shown at FIDMarseille, Transmediale Berlin, and The New York Times amoung others.