This 15 minute "rush" will show prior to the sneak peak of Lynn Hershman's work-in-progress, Strange Culture

This is a movie about creativity, viewed through the lens of “code.”

Societies, like software, run on certain codes. These codes operate out of view of most people most of the time, but they nonetheless crucially determine -- in the real world as in the virtual world -- what types of actions will be possible, what will be difficult, what illegal, and what unthinkable. Art, at its most powerful, forces these codes into view, either by exposing them directly or by provoking us to imagine alternatives. In this film, we follow several New Media artists as they appropriate (with the active cooperation of major tech companies) the codes of new technology to illuminate the codes that “run” Silicon Valley: codes embedded in the architecture, the labs, the law and the market. At the same time, we interview some of the engineers, technicians and lawyers whose work to create and safeguard these diverse codes serves, in turn, to make the artists' interventions possible.

This film is made possible thanks to support from the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Programs at Montalvo Arts Center, Santa Clara University, and the Arts Council of England