NOW ENROLLING
Transcendence in the Age of A.I.
MacGuffin Media’s Joel Gunz will host a free, synchronized viewing party of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (participants must procure their own viewing license) on Tuesday, June 23, followed by a conversation on A.I., evolution, consciousness, and the future of the human, on Thursday, June 25, with Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel. Both evenings will include audience discussion. The watch party is optional and can be attended separately at no cost.
Description
“If you let me, I'll be so real for you.” So says David, the little robot boy in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Is it a warning or a promise?
Daemonic machine or brute algorithm, existential threat or liberating agent—and possibly all of the above—artificial intelligence has brought humankind to one of the great thresholds of our time. Spielberg’s film, developed from Stanley Kubrick’s long-gestating project, foresaw many of these hopes and fears, along with a few philosophical quandaries in between. In this two-night Weirdosphere event, host Joel Gunz leads an interactive screening of the film and group discussion the first evening, to be joined the second evening by Michael Garfield and J.F. Martel for a 2-hour philosophical conversation and Q&A about what's happening now, what’s around the corner, and how we may approach this emerging technology in an era of accelerating weirdness.
Format and Schedule
- A.I. Watch Party – FREE: Tuesday, June 23, 8 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. PDT
- Garfield & Martel in Conversation – $20: Thursday, June 25, 8 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. PDT
The two sessions can be enjoyed together or separately. The conversation and group discussions will be recorded and made available for registrants.
How to Join the Watch Party
- Get ready to start the movie on your DVD/Blu-ray or streaming platform. (It’s currently included on Hulu, Disney+, and MGM+, and it's available to rent on Amazon in some areas.)
- Join the watch party via Zoom on Tuesday, June 23, at 8 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. PDT.
- When we’re ready, Joel will count down: “3… 2… 1… Play.” On “play,” everyone presses play at the same time.
We'll be cameras and mics off during the screening but will use Zoom’s chat feature while we watch the film together. After the movie ends, you’ll be invited to hop on camera and join a post-screening discussion, which will be recorded.
Cost
The "3... 2... 1... Play" watch party is free but requires that you register for the Zoom link here. You will also need to procure your own viewing access to the film. The watch party is entirely optional and unbundled. You do not need to participate in the watch party to register for and attend the hosted conversation between J.F. Martel and Michael Garfield.
The cost of Thursday's night hosted conversation with Gunz, Garfield, and Martel is $20.
Presenters
Michael Garfield is an evolutionary biologist turned economically-illegible author, artist, and musician who has spent the last twenty years studying and developing better frameworks for understanding the intersection of technology, ecology, and consciousness. Along the way, he has worked as a vertebrate paleontologist, scientific illustrator, touring performance philosopher, innovation researcher, nondual philosophy zine editor, art director, and complexity science communicator, with stints at The Santa Fe Institute, Mozilla, and The Long Now Foundation. Dig into his writing and podcasts at Humans On The Loop and learn more about his latest group project—a new federation for the development of commons-based collective intelligence infrastructure—at Atlas Research.
Joel Gunz believes that the search for meaning is among the highest of human pursuits, and it’s this impulse that drives his work. He’s a writer, filmmaker, the host of the annual HitchCon film conference and the weekly MacGuffin Film Club and is the editor of The Hitchcockian Quarterly. His recent publications include “Hermetic Hermeneutics in Hitchcock’s Vertigo” (Book TBA, David Sterritt, ed., forthcoming 2026), “Travels in Hitchcock’s Multiverse” (Re-viewing Hitchcock: New Critical Perspectives, Robert Kapsis, ed., 2025) and “A Comparative Look at Hitchcock’s Murder! and Mary” (Hitchcock Annual, Sidney Gottlieb, ed., 2025). His 2021 film essay Spellbound by L’Amour Fou was selected by several festivals and won Best Short Documentary at the Medusa Film Festival.
J.F. Martel is a Canadian author, filmmaker, lecturer, and cultural critic known for his work on the arts, philosophy, and the uncanny. With a background in film production and an interest in metaphysics, Martel explores the intersections of creativity and the ineffable, challenging conventional boundaries of understanding. He is best known for his book Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, which argues for the intrinsic value of art beyond commodification and utilitarianism. Martel’s writings often appear in various publications, where he discusses the spiritual and existential dimensions of culture. As a filmmaker, he has directed several documentaries and short films. Through his work, Martel invites audiences to reconsider their perceptions of reality and embrace the mysteries that lie beneath the surface of the workaday world. He co-hosts the Weird Studies podcast with the music historian Phil Ford.
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On the very notion of a Weirdosphere
At a certain point, Phil Ford and J.F. Martel started to realize they weren't just two guys with a podcast (Weird Studies), but members of a community of thinkers, artists, and writers all drawn to the same chaotic, terrible, beautiful zone — the Weird. This community could be called the intellectual sphere of the weird, or, to coin a term, the intellectual Weirdosphere.
But how could such an imaginal entity manifest on the material plane, they asked? What institution could serve as a makeshift home to the Weird? Where would J.F., Phil, and their friends be able to establish the conversations they wanted to have?
This site to which fate has steered you—our community on Mighty Networks at Weirdosphere.mn.co—is home to all the conversations we ever wanted to have with our colleagues. And you are our colleague, even if we haven't yet met. Welcome to Weirdosphere.
