The Net (2004)
A network of lines on a map
A film by Lutz Dammbeck
Sat, April 30, 2016 4.30 pm CEST, Film Screening
The documentary film and book of the same name by Lutz Dammbeck are about the creation of the Internet and the possible parallels from the fields of art and culture. The film provides a platform for people who were involved in the development of the technology of the Internet and its sociological theories.
 
In 1930, Vienna-based mathematician Kurt Gödel shocked the foundations of mathematics with his incompleteness theorem.
In 1968, physician and engineer Heinz von Foerster was working in his Biological Lab at the University of Illinois on the consolidation of digital and biological systems.
In 1995, the FBI arrested former professor of mathematics Theodore J. Kaczynski, known as »the Unabomber« in the Montana wilderness.
What connects these people, places and ideas to a network?
 
The search for an answer leads back to the 1940s to 1960s, where the horizons seemed to open up on all sides in science, art and technology. With cybernetics, multi-media art and military research, the foundations of the modern era are being reset. This is the basis for today’s globally networked machine systems, which are defined by mathematics, logic and binary codes.
 
»The Net« shows the design engineers, operators and agents of these systems. One bails out and tries to stop the machines.
But at what price?
 

Accompanying program

Contributors