Her postulates a world in which romantic love can exist between humans and AI objects.

In Spike Jonze’s futuristic romance, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), a lonely and heartbroken writer, becomes captivated with his computer’s new operating system – a uniquely intuitive entity called Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), and a tender relationship develops between them.

Far from being a passive and compliant computer, Samantha is a seemingly organic and loving creature that gives Theodore the connection he is so deeply searching for. She also has no physical form, just a disembodied voice. Rather than examine the science behind how this can be, Jonze’s film instead asks questions about our inclination to fall in love through contactless connection. We can’t help but think of the countless instances of this phenomena happening every day on the internet, where people meet and fall in love with each other’s avatars, not knowing anything of their background or the totality of their lives. Such love is so realistically depicted in Jonze’s masterpiece (for which he also wrote the screenplay) in all its messy, contradictory and painful guises.

Past Futures curatorial notes —
What futures were past filmmakers imagining for our present world? And did those sci fi prophesies come true? All dreamers and designers start from a place of deep imagining.

In Past Futures we look at imagined dystopias and utopias that made their way into the collective conscious – into the design of now – and consider what might be in the making to come.

Presented by The Capitol as part of Melbourne Design Week 2021, an initiative of the Victorian Government in collaboration with the NGV.