This informal presentation and conversation with Uri Aviv, General Director of Utopia: The Tel Aviv International Festival for Science, Imagination and Future Visions, will celebrate science fiction as a laboratory for big visionary ideas, and examine the intricate and mutually inspirational relationship between science and science fiction.
Science fiction filmmakers, authors and designers explore the ludicrous, the fantastic and the impossible. They give names to new and as-yet-nameless things, such as the robot, clone, submarine and atomic bomb, and concepts, such as Big Brother, cyberspace, virtual reality and the technological singularity.
While science fiction can be highly inventive, innovative and sometimes predictive in how it deals with technology, at the core of science fiction are stories about people – communities, governments, corporations, families, individuals and their complex relationships. Science fiction explores how we mutate and evolve with scientific progress, and how we use and abuse technology.
In a world immersed in science and completely reliant on technology, it’s more important than ever for texts to alert us, inspire us, and discuss science, technology, society and our vision of the future.