The AI + Society Initiative is delighted to announce that the short film #tresdancing won the “Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Supernatural” award in the “Long Short” category at the Alternative Film Festival.
Created by sava saheli singh, #tresdancing is the fourth instalment of the Screening Surveillance series, and speculates the effects of escalating surveillance and control through educational technology. In this near future fiction narrative, a young person has little choice but to use invasive augmented reality glasses as they are forced to ramp up their engagement with a new, experimental technology in order to make up for a failing grade.
The film highlights different issues around privacy, algorithmic bias, AI-enabled decision making, and surveillance. Tech adoption, especially in education, is often presented as a choice that people make. But, as shown in this film, administrators, teachers, and especially students, rarely have much choice and find themselves having to interact with increasingly invasive technology as a condition for “success”. The protagonist’s use of the technology escalates out of her control, and she finds herself being manipulated into making decisions she might not otherwise make. The film also highlights the moral and carceral logics that often underpin surveillance technologies. Our protagonist finds herself at the mercy of this technology that is recording, analyzing, and judging everything she sees and does in her life, bring her to the point of having to choose between her friends and social life, and academic success. A difficult choice indeed.
View more information about the film here