Refusnik
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Technology is intransigent. Man is inadequate.
Fusion brings fulfillment.
Refusnik is an adaptive odyssey that evaluates human utility in the age of artificial indifference.
Through a series of mutations, the human candidate is gradually purged of all non-essential attributes
in an attempt to meet the imperatives of growth. This process of adaptive degradation eventually leads
to the distillation of human demand into an intelligent algorithm, fully able to realize it's own destiny.
Refusnik was inspired by DARPA's military robotics, namely the LS3 system developed for the
US Marine Corps to negotiate the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan like an army mule.
After the Obama administration's partial withdrawal from Afghanistan, this technology suddenly
became redundant, like the protagonist in this film. Fukushima heralded a switch from 'anti-terror'
to 'disaster relief', as a potential market. The woodland setting of many Boston Dynamics' test videos
inspired the idea of the 'runaway horse', and the paradox of modelling a system on the most stubborn
of animals, the mule.