The Future of Intelligence, Part 1, with Shane Denson

At this year’s Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, Film Comment participated in a fascinating experimental event called “A Long Night of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence.” Curated by Rafael Dernbach, a researcher at the Università della Svizzera italiana, the event began at sunset on August 9 and ended at sunrise on August 10, and involved a series of talks and workshops about the many connotations of “intelligence,” how A.I. is changing our relationships to ourselves and the world, and how dreams may offer up keys to our future. The event was co-hosted by Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish. This week’s episode is an excerpt from her moderating shift, featuring a lecture and Q&A with Shane Denson, a Stanford University scholar who explores the terrain of “post-cinema”—the brave new world of digital images untethered to classical notions of time, space, and reality. Check back next week for another episode from “A Long of Dreaming about the Future of Intelligence,” featuring A.I. scholar Andrea Rizzoli and critic Kevin B. Lee.