'The Building' film screening and panel discussion

‘THE BUILDING’ (18 minutes) Dir: Dr Orson Nava (Associate professor Ravensbourne University Digital Film Production)

FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION

2-5PM THE WALKER SPACE RAVENSBOURNE UNIVERSITY

6th NOVEMBER 2025

The emergence of Ai as a powerful force in post-industrial societies raises ethical and practical questions about how people operate in the world, how they create, how they communicate and how they exercise power. It is, however, problematic to say Ai itself is imbued with agency or consciousness (yet!). Human beings, with all their associated flaws, foibles and unconscious desires remain at its centre. It is people who programme and ‘teach’ Ai. It is people who deploy them as creative and administrative tools. It is people, as post-Freudian and post-Lacanian scholars have pointed out, that project their powerful unconscious needs and desires onto the simulated Ai identities that we create.

‘THE BUILDING’ is an 18-minute drama, funded as a knowledge exchange project through Ravensbourne University, that explores the dysfunctional relationship between Caleb, a controlling and morally challenged company CEO and the Ai that runs his office. It is about power, dependency and what author of ‘The Algorithmic Unconscious’ (2021) Luca Possati calls ‘unconscious object identification’ i.e. the process through which we unwittingly infuse Ai with human characteristics they may not yet possess. (View a short trailer for the film here: https://vimeo.com/1040394553)

The film will be introduced by the respected Film Practice as Research academic Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska. Her current work on what she terms ‘techno transference’ provides a framework for mapping the human Ai relationship explored in the film and builds on her highly influential career as a filmmaker and film practice scholar.

The screening will be followed by a talk between Piotrowska and the filmmaker. After this there will be an interdisciplinary panel discussion focussed on Ai and its impacts and the role of Creative Practice Research at Ravensbourne University. This panel will include Lawrence Lartey (Ravensbourne’s Director of Innovation, Industry and Enterprise) Dr Naureen Farhan (Ravensbourne Course Leader - MSc Information Technology) Christos Manolas (Professor of Audio Production Technology and the director of the Ravensbourne Audio Visual Lab).

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