Science on Screen®: HER – What It Means to Be Human
HER
with extended introduction by special guest
Janna Levin
Part of the SCIENCE ON SCREEN® Series
An initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) in partnership with the City Council and the office of NY City Councilperson Shaun Abreu.
With the support of Thomas Campbell Jackson and the Brandt Jackson Foundation.
Co-sponsors: BAiP, LiLY, W. 90s Neighborhood Assn., W. 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Assn., W. 104th St. Block Assn.
HER
Spike Jonze, 2013, 126 min
With: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara
What happens when artificial intelligence learns to love, and evolve beyond us? Released in 2013, Her was strikingly ahead of its time, anticipating today’s world of AI companions, chatbots, and machine-mediated intimacy. Set in a near-future Los Angeles, the film follows a lonely writer who begins an intimate relationship with an advanced operating system designed to meet his every emotional need. As their bond deepens, the film turns questions of artificial intelligence, consciousness, and human-computer interaction into a moving meditation on how machine learning and emotional algorithms reshape what it means to be human.
Astrophysicist Janna Levin will introduce the film with a reflection on our rapidly evolving acceptance of AI in all dimensions of our lives and the spiraling of our reality towards Spike Jonze’s prescient vision of Her.
Janna Levin is a cosmologist, author, and cultural force at the intersection of science and art. A professor of physics at Barnard College, Guggenheim Fellow, and presenter of PBS’s NOVA, she bridges science and philosophy. Her work on black holes and gravitational waves has reshaped how we understand the universe, and how we tell its stories.
Tickets: (including $5 Symphony Space facility fee added at checkout)
$12/adult
$10/seniors & students
$8/Community partner with code