Rebecca Baron & Douglas Goodwin
United States | 2023 | 22 min
World premiere
Language : English
Subtitle : French

Nearest Neighbor explores the relationship between technology and the living, applied here to birds. How far is humankind willing to go to invent tools designed to replace their understanding of the world? In this film, transhumanist AI technologies turn into ornithologists, resulting in some unlikely and absurdly comical scenarios.

How far are we able to go in creating tools that can understand the world better than a simple human being? In their new film, filmmakers Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin explore the possibilities of technology, in this case applied to birds, and more specifically to understanding their language. Where once we resorted to mechanical cuckoos, mimicry and bird study tools, now artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged, offering us the possibility not only to study our feathered friends, but also to converse with them. Turning things on their head, the humans then try to learn from the machine. This creates absurd and amusing scenarios, in which humans start to speak bird, and have conversations on their smartphone with the nightingale at the bottom of the garden. An AI language such as ChatGPT then takes control over the humans by insinuating itself into the film's voice-over. Nearest Neighbor is a wonderful essay on the possibilities of transhumanism in interspecies relations, at the time of mass avian extinction.
Aurélien Marsais

Rebecca Baron
Nearest Neighbor, 2023
Hearing, 2018
Detour de force, 2014
Lossless, 2008
Cuddle Sit by Pool, 2007
How Little we Know of Our Neighbours, 2005
Okay Bye-Bye, 1998
The Idea of North, 1995 
Douglas Goodwin
Nearest Neighbor, 2023
Artifact #1, 2011
Lossless, 2008
Cuddle Sit by Pool, 2007

Trailer

Photography
Douglas Goodwin
Sound
Ernst Karel
Editing
Rebecca Baron
Production
Rebecca BaronClever Hans
Sales contact
Rebecca BaronClever Hans Studiorebecca.baron@gmail.com+12135957965

International Medium Length & Short Film Competition

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