Failing to Distinguish between a Tractor Trailer and the Bright White Sky

James Bridle, Gradient Ascent, 2017. Single-channel digital video, 12'00''. The film Gradient Ascent follows a drive by a self-driving car up Mount Parnassus in Greece: the classical home of the Muses and thus art and knowledge. The journey is accompanied by a narrative on mythology and technological progress inspired by René Daumal’s surrealist novel Mount Analogue (1952).