Documentary about Screen Culture & Digital Technology

Hi. My name is Jore. I’m an artist, activist and independent film-maker from Melbourne.

For the past 5 years, I’ve been working on my first feature-length documentary about the rapidly enveloping world of screens and digital technologies we find ourselves living inside, from both a societal and environmental perspective

Promo video

Help fund this project

I’m particularly interested—and in equal measure, fascinated and alarmed—by the impact of digital technologies on people (i.e. what it means to be a human being in a world awash with screens and gadgets); the impact of technological escalation on society and visa-versa (‘progress’ for whom/what?); and the environmental impact of this interplay both physically (as in the reality of e-waste, pollution, and the extensive harms of resource extraction and rare-earth-minerals mining that all digital technologies require), but also psychologically (as in what does it mean for us as beneficiaries of the flashy gadgets, as human beings, to live in this pervasive electronic virtual world, as the real, physical world is plundered and destroyed right in front of our averted eyes, to create the very gadgets, comforts and elegancies of which we’ve become so accustomed to, and indeed addicted?).

In a nutshell: The film is an indictment on this culture’s addiction to digital technology and the virtual world, while the real world burns.

Help fund this project

Themes

Privacy; civil liberties and rights; surveillance; consumerism; and the escalation of technology against socioeconomic disparity, all feature extensively as themes and/or topics for the film, as well as an underlying radical critique of corporate power; and how the technoculture can perpetuate, exacerbate and indeed strengthen the arrangement of corporate power and collusion in society, and what that means in the past, present and future for society (think: target advertising, consumer manipulation, algorithmically tailoring information environments (the filter bubble), surveillance, the chilling effect, and very serious questions about our supposed ‘democracies,’ which are unparalleled global surveillance states of scientific precision never before made possible). Also, above all: What to do about all this?

These are obviously huge questions of our time, which I think brings an urgency and pertinence to finishing this project. It’s long past timely.

Controversial

It’s a polemical film, yes. But I hope that it serves as a sobering counter-narrative to the dominant media narrative which exonerates the pervasive technoculture of the many negative social, political and environmental impacts it contributes to in this age (especially synergistically and cumulatively).

It’s certainly not a techno-utopian film, but neither do I hope it’s techno-dystopian. Things don’t have to be this way, it’s certainly not inevitable. We can set about changing these predicaments, and I hope the film sets out to inform, inspire and provoke that.

Funding

As an independent film maker, artist and activist without any budget, funding or backing, this gives my work authenticity and honesty, but is also a huge ongoing challenge within our society where money is this culture’s power.

With your financial help, I’m setting out to make a pertinent film that informs, inspires and provokes action and radical social and political change.