"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others," (Animal Farm, 1945, by George Orwell).
OVERVIEW
The School of the Future (2024) by the Social Imbalance team is a short film which uses satire to explore how future educational institutions might be structured. Through the lens of a promotional video for a hypothetical school, we invite you to reflect.
This dystopian comedy is inspired by George Orwell’s classic satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution, Animal Farm (1945) - as well as the film adaptation of the novella, Animal Farm, released as an animation in 1954. The aesthetic qualities and methodology used to achieve a film script and moving images created entirely through Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) software, take inspiration from Capitol of Conformity (2023) by Aze Alter. Alter's short film is fully developed using A.I. and within the realm of satire, dark humour, and speculation regarding our future.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The Social Imbalance team presents the two research questions developed when framing this four-month research:
- How can we imagine or reconstruct a society dominated by the underclasses to make people more aware of the imbalance within the existing social class systems?
- How would the traditional education systems change under this imagined social structure?
INTENTIONS & IMPACT
Our team invites audiences living in London and beyond to reflect on and question our society's imbalanced structure. Through irony and satire, The School of the Future (2024) provokes a reflection on the existing inequalities within traditional Western educational systems. In this speculative realm, schools might appear to erase the differences prevalent amongst social classes. However, in reality, the educational inequalities have only become exacerbated. Our concept is revealed through the film's props and scene designs, which expose the false appearance of unity and inclusivity - beneath deep-seeded social divisions. This project seeks to challenge the audience's perceptions of educational inequalities through exaggerated double standards and contradictions within the future school being promoted. This emphasises the demand for genuine, equitable, and inclusive education reforms.
The short film concludes with an uprising and mobilisation led by students and members from the underclasses of society. It will only be through social justice that the rampant inequalities within our current educational frameworks can be remediated. We hope this project will inspire a broader societal dialogue and explore pathways to achieving genuine educational equality.
THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
This project was developed with the assistance of the following A.I. softwares:
- ChatGPT (script and narrative),
- Midjourney (still images for the moodboard),
- Runway (moving images used in the film),
- PlayHT (film audio/narrator's voice).
