These collaborative video works are inspired by the exhibition’s main themes: 'Imaginative Futures', 'Worldbuilding and Power Relations', and 'Future Identities'. ACMI’s curatorial team provided guidance and critique to students on their projects.
Explore a selection of the student films below.
RMIT is ACMI’s Major Research Partner
Dan Behshad – Tower Blue
"I have often thought about the connotations made by the view of movement of clouds behind the high-rise towers in cityscapes. How would I sustain this essence, and hold on to it, in a continuum where only the noise, and the sight of the melancholic skies, remain as the sole moving perspectives? The motion of the clouds behind the tower tops, represent our coming memories, and the sound of the VCR machine, relate to the medium in which we store memories. The images are partly inspired by the film Blade Runner (1982), and the soundtrack titled ‘Blade Runner Blues’ was referenced for naming the work."
– Dan Behshad
Video and sound by Dan Behshad, sound recording assistance, Laura Hunter.
River Williams, Sofia Pantelidis & Christina Antonia Nazim – Em-Bark
"Set in a dystopian future, where the human experience has been stripped of its humanity, this work emulates what we imagine as an “ad” in this future. Its visuals and AI voiceover promote the physical experience of a return to the natural world after being consumed with mass consumption of culture, environment and identity. The work leans into a sense of the ridiculous through promises of shedding any humanness in favour of becoming the raw materials that exist within nature. This acts as an indication of our imagined societies severe detachment from anything natural or innately human, bleakly, the only hope of an escape from reality, has naturally become a commodity- an opportunity for profit and thus corrupted. Its absurdity mirrors an identified pattern whereby proposed solutions to concerns and issues facing humanity are addressed through the most arbitrary action."
– River Williams, Sofia Pantelidis and Christina Antonia Nazim
Selina Vincenzo, Jane Cheewakoset, Tak Yan Boaz Ma & Tamana Alizada – Return to
"Our photographic series explores utopia and dystopia, not as distant or abstract ideas, but through the lens of modern urban exhaustion, escapism, and the dissonance between reality and dreams. We have created two contrasting environments: a chaotic cityscape and a tranquil garden. The train station symbolizes the relentless pace of city life –crowded, uncomfortable and stressful, evoking the feeling of rushing home during peak hour. In contrast, the garden represents a world untouched by human intervention, where life moves slowly, deliberately, and without obligation. It captures the serenity of moments like listening to wildlife before sleep while camping or driving through the countryside."
– Selina Vincenzo, Jane Cheewakoset, Tak Yan Boaz Ma and Tamana Alizada
Krystal Torre, Minh An Pham & Jace Davison – Awakening in the Wake
"This video work explores speculative futures through a protopian lens, imagining an AI newly aware of its organic potential yet haunted by the violence of its extractive origins. Set within a rewilded landscape, it stages a collaborative human-machine assemblage where AI confronts the inherent contradictions of its creation – extractive practices and data colonisation – integrating plural knowledge systems and rethinking its participatory role. Through acts of listening, care, and ecological reciprocity, the work gestures toward regeneration – an emergent futurity in which artificial intelligence embodies responsibility rather than domination, and technology remediates the environment it once helped to diminish."
– Krystal Torre, Minh An Pham, Jace Davison
Cecily Fitzsimons & Ethan Lucioni – Once Removed
"By slowly pulling back through a series of screens, this work explores the proliferation of technology and our constant distancing from the 'real' or original image. Hundreds of replications exist online, and we lose touch with what the original once was. The work leads the viewer to believe they are watching a beach yet questions the truth in this as the original shot distances. Furthermore, in the age of AI, it has become all too easy to falsify reality. To mimic this, the last screen that pulls through is an AI generated image, seamlessly blurring with the originals before it."
– Cecily Fitzsimons & Ethan Lucioni
Amelie Roberts, Wilson Murphy, Youhanna Tadros & Tia Rose Cochrane – Know Your Melbourne
"Based upon the iconic 1946 Miller & Co. Removals advertisement, “Know Your Melbourne”, our group has vibrantly envisaged Melbourne’s future, utilising juxtaposing futuristic and vintage aesthetics to merge what has been with what is yet to come. Oftentimes, interpretations of the future stand strictly within the realms of dystopian and utopian, and disregard pre-existing city landscapes in favour of outlandish, heavily stylised architecture. Throughout the creation of this project, we sought to maintain the integrity of historical Melbourne buildings and sites while allowing for both humorous and realistic explorations of how society will change over the next 150 years. By imposing early 20th century music and visual embellishments upon colourful, highly saturated imagery, we seek to extend an olive branch between generations, asserting that the future is something to be embraced rather than feared."
– Amelie Roberts, Wilson Murphy, Youhanna Tadros & Tia Rose Cochrane