Edge of Life

In Edge of Life American artist John Menick speaks with a sentient computer about the possibility of digital immortality. A kind of Turing Test in reverse, the computer quizzes the artist for purposes which may or may not include the cloning of his consciousness. They discuss the undead, uploaded minds, vampires, and an imaginary island populated by holograms. Less a lecture than a first-person séance, the author finds himself channeling the computer’s predictions about his own behavior. A “live” performance about undead subjects, Edge of Life is a strange inquiry into how the digital transforms the boundaries of the living, through a narrated text and an editing of science fiction images, computer graphics, films from cinema history, biological research, and folklore.