Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation, whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir

An homage to both Godard's Alphaville and Kasimir Malevich's Suprematist painting White on White, this latest effort by Sussman and her collaborative team, Rufus Corporation, was shot in the retrofuturistic setting of a former Soviet oil town, built during the 1970s on the Caspian Sea. Called City-A in the film, the locale serves as backdrop for a nonlinear narrative involving a geophysicist named Holz. Complicating matters is the fact that the video is edited in real time by loading 3,000 clips, 80 voiceovers and 150 pieces of music into a computer and allowing an algorithm to take over. The story, in effect, is never told the same way twice. The result suggests a deconstruction of dystopian paranoia melded with an unfulfillable longing for serendipitous transcendence.