Ryan Honaker

2024 Fortitude

An experimental multimedia work consisting of visual elements with an accompanying score and narrated original text. The text is a short story that investigates the interplay between mortality and societal control and manipulation by those in power and its ethics.Through a speculative fiction narrative it attempts to intertwine reflections on time and existence that critiques social and surveillance mechanisms of societal control.

Various abstract video images and audio play throughout the narration, both evolving thematically with the story: the visuals comprise circuit boards over the last 50 years shot in meticulous detail, symbolically aligning with the narration on evolving surveillance mechanisms while also affirming the beauty of time-worn obsolete circuitry. These visuals entwine with our current hopes and fears around the nature of artificial intelligence and the outpacing of human structures with artificial ones. The music is cold and foreboding, recorded from a mixture of vintage digital instruments and modern production techniques to match the tone of the film. The project is in collaboration with Jan Hendrich.