CORE DUMP

CORE DUMP is a born-digital short CGI film. It borrows its title from a term describing a computer’s documented memory when a program—or the computer as a whole—fails. The film’s scenery, designed in a gaming engine, happens in a 3D-fabricated desert-like post-industrial landscape with an open dump site of household junk. Picking up on Climate Fiction, CORE DUMP is a hyper-realistic fantasy addressing the politics behind e-waste management. Contemplating 21st-century warfare and links between environmental and geopolitical conditions, the work addresses – sometimes in abstract, sometimes in a concrete manner – the difficulty of transporting goods during a siege, the usage of drone swarms in warfare, the destruction of historical monuments during combat action, and more.

The film presents a flock of drones hunting for e-waste, beginning with the site observed through the window of an empty truck when a seemingly endless self-driving truck crosses its path. Flocks of drones fly across, some unintentionally smashing into the window shield. Then, the truck’s window opens, and the drone-like camera flies into the landfill, interacting with the drone swarms and circling the site, noticing peculiar events. Eventually, the camera is drawn to shafts found in the landfill’s center, falling into a dream-like “rabbit hole,” losing gravity for a while in what seems to be out-of-time. The speed slows down significantly, only to hit the ground with a big boom, finding oneself back in the starting position, with another iteration of drone swarm attack starting.