Amid the rise of at-home and handheld-device streaming, closed captions are having a moment. But, as the US-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim explores in the short film [Closer Captions], the descriptions they offer are rarely up to snuff, especially for Deaf people like her who rely on them. A playful dive into a form of communication that many rarely give a second thought to, in this short Kim explains why we shouldn’t settle for ‘[music]’ when we could have ‘[mournful violin music that sounds like crying alone in an empty bar]’. She then presents a short film in which she uses captions to draw out poetry from life’s small moments, describing, for instance, a shower as ‘the sound of shampoo scent floating among the fog’. The result is both a sharp commentary on the technology and an evocative glimpse into Kim’s unique perspective on sound, words and life.
video
Technology and the self
A filmmaker finds a tactile beauty in the creation of her prosthetic leg
11 minutes
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
video
War and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
video
Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
16 minutes
video
Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
11 minutes
video
Home
An artist endeavours to bring the Moon down to Earth in a ritual of yearning
5 minutes
video
Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
2 minutes
video
Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
15 minutes
video
Biotechnology
It’s our responsibility to engineer corals that can weather the world we’ve created
11 minutes