Offline program 2024 Archives - Interface Festival

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Director Biography – Davide Bernardis

Davide Bernardis is a conceptual film director based in Triest. His work combines documentary filmmaking with state-of-the-art image processing techniques applied in scientific research, film production and design. His research explores the intersections between the natural, the artificial and the symbolic. Davide is a former research fellow at The Terraforming 21 and creative director at VICE.

Synopsis

Materia is a non-profit independent film featuring data from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Max Planck BioImaging Core Unit Network, Human Technopole and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab.
The shape-shifting worlds of M a t e r i a were built combining documentary filmmaking; satellite image processing from NASA (HiRISE) data; light and electron microscopy data of organic neural tissues; generative adversarial network (GAN) for image processing; and hyper-realistic 3D renderings. The visuals are accompanied by text from LaMDA early training (2021) – the first historical evidence of human to machine (LLM) conversation at such level of complexity.
Materia employs different technological and aesthetic conditions of perception belonging to the fields of art and science — in an effort to imagine new relations of interdependence between consciousness, technology and the natural world. By bringing these divergent methodologies and visual languages in conversation, the multi-scalar complexity of our planet and its temporalities collapses into a morphing vision of the contemporary landscape — in which the uncanniness of the real surpasses that of fiction.