Oliver Hockenhull: Montage and AI Lecture

Oliver Hockenhull has been an acclaimed and prolific independent filmmaker and media artist for 35 years. His substantial and eclectic body of work includes half a dozen feature length essay films, and numerous mid length and short films, new media pieces and installations, interactive digital, video, web-based and hypermedia works, as well as co-editing and designing DAMP (2008), which took the pulse of Vancouver’s new media scene in book form. Even this list only scratches the surface of Hockenhull’s polymorphous pursuits.

At the title implies, his latest essay film, FOTO CINE MAMA & I, is both an autobiographical rumination on memory, and a philosophical disquisition on the technology of photography, cinema, and AI. Starting with a trove of family photos, Hockenhull explores how images function as mental constructs and ideological stamps. This film engages with Walter Benjamin’s ’optical unconscious’ and Ernst Jünger’s theories on self-objectification, drawing on milestones from photography’s history and contemporary artists like Jeff Wall.

Prior to the screening, Hockenhull will present a lecture titled “Montage and AI: The Emergence of the Eighth Art,” delving into the rapidly evolving interplay between AI and media, and illustrating how generative systems transform image making into a dynamic archive of visual memories and play. Inspired by Ricciotti Canudo’s vision of cinema as the seventh art, Hockenhull will discuss AI’s role in extending the legacy of cinematographic montage and cinematographic creativity. This event offers an inspiring and radically informed take on technology, representation and society.