Handed down is a visual essay that explores the invisible threads that weave our present with the past. Cultural patterns, ways of thinking and attitudes that have developed over generations form a deep ocean of human knowledge, implicit and explicit, that guide our actions.
On the one hand, the experimental video is a self-portrait that describes our own involvement in these processes. On the other hand, the video spins the oceanic integration into a future animated by artificial intelligences, cyborgs and robotic beings.

The thesis that the video raises becomes tangible: Artificial intelligence is not a new beginning either, but a continuum. Its codes, its values, its learning behaviour - everything is based on and grows out of what we teach it. And what we feed it comes from the ocean of generative layers of knowledge and behavioural structures, is permeated by unconscious assumptions, by cultural legacies. Artificial intelligence algorithms also dream archaic dreams.
The visual language of the video picks up on these themes, fleeting shadows of movements that seem like memories from archaic times, shadowy humanoid robots, text fragments that could have originated from collective or algorithmic narratives, childhood scenes, portrait and machine fragments, dancing light patterns, digitally distorted and yet strangely familiar, characterise the scene. The pain that a real new beginning is not possible hovers over everything.

duration: 00:03:00
MP4
h.264
1.920 x 1.280 HD
Frame rate 60