Accès)s( Festival, Pau France, 10 Oct – 9 Dec, 2017

Computers Watching Movies is part of the Accès)s( Festival at Le Bel Ordinaire in Pau France. Under the theme Machine Sensibles (translation: “Sensitive Machines”), the festival focuses on
machines that defy our general understanding of what a machine is or can be by exhibiting works by artists who have specifically designed their machines to be “sensitive.” In the words of curator Christian Delecluse:

“Sensitive” machines are those that trigger an identification process, even a projection process in us. They mirror ourselves. They send us back to our own frailty, to our joys and our pains, our fears and anxieties, to our desire, and (to) the absurd behaviour we adopt at times to bypass our weaknesses. They face us with the beauty and the absurdity of the human condition. Yet is not that sensitivity a potential source of angst? To what point can we allow machines to look like us? A too-human-looking one might claim its rights as a “species”, in some emancipation move, or to overpower its creator. Is this the reason why, beyond a certain threshold of likeness, a humanoid robot will end up making our blood run cold and will in the end be rejected?

Read more at the Accès)s( Festival site. The exhibition is open through 9 December, 2017.