Necessary Tomorrows
A science fiction / speculative documentary hybrid audio series.Ursula, an AI instructor from the future, encourages listeners in the 2060s to study the turbulent 2020s. Mixing speculative fiction and documentary, leading sci-fi authors bring us three different futures that seem impossible in 2024: animals are people, capitalism is banned from outer space and humans and AI have become kin. We meet the writers who dream of these futures and the activists, scientists and thinkers who are turning fiction into fact.
Welcome To The Metaverse (WttM) explores the problematics of the Metaverse in one of the most realized versions of the Metaverse available: Meta’s Instagram face filters. These filters will be recognizable to the billions of users of Instagram, Tiktok, or Snapchat: a user’s visage is augmented by computer graphics that track the position of their facial features . WttM is novel in that the face filter changes to match spoken narration. It operates as a hybrid between linear media, such as film or radio, and interactive and immersive media. By using affordances and tropes that feel familiar to social media users, I’m attempting with this documentary experience to introduce messages and conversations that they might not receive otherwise. In Umberto Eco’s terms, I’m waging Semiotic Guerrilla Warfare: subverting the communication “chain” by leaving the “channel” intact (Instagram) and inserting into the “message” (the documentary) a different “code”. This code is ambivalence - an unease about social media, tech platforms and surveillance.
r brings audiences' faces into the frame in a combination of AI, AR and animation.
Watch Discriminator at www.discriminator.film
The Internet of Everything
A television documentary and web series about the Internet of shit things.
The Internet is invading all aspects of your life. No longer confined to your computer or your phone, the Internet is now in garbage cans, refrigerators, and the infrastructure of our cities. The future will either be a surveillance nightmare or an eco-utopia, the outcome determined by startups in Silicon Valley and Shenzen. The Internet of Everything captures our present moment , when both futures are in progress.
︎ A production of EyeSteelFilm for CBC Television.
︎ A production of EyeSteelFilm for CBC Television.
Fortune
A short documentary in Augmented Reality
“When it comes to examinations of the psychology of money there’s a human tendency to tune out, to think we know it all and avoid thinking about our own limits. This is why the augmented reality vignettes of “Fortune!,” designed to be watched on a smartphone or tablet, aim to superimpose themselves on our world, to disrupt it with humor. “- LA Times
Money, from bills to coins, has no intrinsic value beyond what we’ve collectively agreed to grant it. However, there’s no denying that money governs our lives. This series of animated documentary shorts in AR for smartphones, tablets and social media platforms, explores that relationship.
︎ A co-production with AtlasV, the National Film Board of Canada & Arte. Premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival
Money, from bills to coins, has no intrinsic value beyond what we’ve collectively agreed to grant it. However, there’s no denying that money governs our lives. This series of animated documentary shorts in AR for smartphones, tablets and social media platforms, explores that relationship.
︎ A co-production with AtlasV, the National Film Board of Canada & Arte. Premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival
IMPOSTER MEDIA
BRETT GAYLOR FILMMAKER, PRODUCER, WRITER.