Screening of Harun Farocki's Parallel I-IV

Cinema’s onscreen worlds have always borne an indexical bond to the real, thanks to film’s ability to register traces of physical reality and preserve them as enduring images. What happens when computer-generated video game images — images possessing no such indexical bond — usurp film as the predominant medium of visual worldmaking?

Filmmaker Harun Farocki’s four-part Parallel I–IV (2012–14) takes up these questions, tracing how, in just over 30 years, video games have developed from two-dimensional schematics to photorealistic environments.

Don't miss a discussion with Thomas Elsaesser and James Elkins the next day at 4 p.m.