Telematic is pleased to present If AI were Cephalopod, a new multi-channel video installation by the collaborative artist 0rphan Drift (Ranu Mukherjee and Maggie Roberts), which explores fictional relationships between human, animals and synthetic entities, in order to imagine possible future embodiments and forms of consciousness. Drawing upon Embodied Cognitive Science and Radical Anthropology, the artists ask what paradigm of “intelligence” we presuppose in the development of Artificial Intelligence, implicitly challenging commonplace assumptions about what it means to be human as distinct from other forms of life. Is it not perhaps better to imagine the intelligence of machines in light of, what we now recognize as, the remarkably sophisticated cognition of other creatures?

In tribute to film legend Barbara Hammer (1939–2019), this program highlights a selection of the artist’s early films rooted in the Bay Area. Shot at the Roxie Theater, the beginning of Audience (1982) features Hammer’s fun, flirtatious, and thoughtful interviews with the audience line before her tribute screening as part of that year’s San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Recognized as one of the first lesbian experimental filmmakers, Hammer explicitly championed the perspective of women and the visibility of the lesbian and queer communities