A Music Video Remix of Classic Sci-Fi Films About A.I.

John Pavlus's video for Jascha Hoffman's "Limited" combines clips from TRON, 2001, Moon, WarGames and Robocop to create a new, impressionistic narrative.

The song, from Hoffman's new album The Future Limited, is about an artificial intelligence that wants to be human, and the video recasts familiar A.I. personalities, like HAL, in this light. Pavlus, a filmmaker whose work focuses on science and technology, describes the inspiration for the video in the press release:

It also seemed like a fun challenge to take images that have acquired so much "baggage" over the years -- like the glowering Cyclops eye of HAL from 2001, which has become visual shorthand for "evil machine" -- and try to attach completely opposite emotional associations to them. What if something like HAL wasn't evil at all, but just misunderstood in its intentions, like a puppy who plays too rough with its owner? That's exactly the image that Jascha's plaintive refrain in "Limited" put into my head. Remixing material from five very different films creates a necessarily impressionistic approach to telling a story, so maybe the story this video tells in your head isn't the same one that it tells in mine. Either way I hope it's a good one.

For more videos by John Pavlus, visit http://smallmammal.com/. For more music by Jascha Hoffman, visit http://www.jaschavsjascha.com/. The Future Limited is available here.