Anxious to use artificial intelligent robots to improve the world, Rosetta Stone (Tilda Swinton), a bio-geneticist, devises a recipe through which she can download her own DNA into a "live” brew she is growing in her computer. She succeeds in breeding three Self Replicating Automatons – S.R.A.’s that look human, but were bred as intelligent machines. She names them Ruby, Marine and Olive.
In order to survive, the S.R.A.'s need injections of male Y chromo found only in spermatozoa. Rosetta programs Ruby while she sleeps to absorb images and dialogue of classic movie clips of famous seductions. Ruby acts these out in the real world and shares ‘donations’ with her sisters.
Ruby’s evolving contact with the real world eventually introduces her to art, spirituality, and ultimately, when she meets Sandy (Jeremy Davies), the capacity to fall in love.
All of the characters struggle to find meaning in a world where love
is the only thing that makes things real. In the process they find
harmony between the real and the virtual worlds.
When Rosetta Stone, a bio-geneticist, breeds three Self Replicating Automatons (SRA’s named Ruby, Marine and Olive) by combining her own DNA with computer software, she also creates a set of unanticipated tribulations. As Rosetta seeks to understand the encrypted language of her SRA progeny, she confronts the reality of her own loneliness and alienation.
The nearly-predatory dependence of Rosetta on her creations and of them on their peculiar life-sustaining diet (male “chromo” filched from unsuspecting seduced "hosts") is supplanted by their all becoming viable, distinct individuals.
After Rosetta is forced to relinquish external control, Ruby, Marine, and Olive gain self-sufficiency and sovereignty. If the characters have lost anything, mostly it is their ignorance or a sort of blind innocence, which is replaced by something far more affirming, their birthright to autonomy.
When Sandy, (who conducts crude mimeograph machines), and Ruby (an advanced form of reproductive technology) become intimate they realize that love makes all things real and possible. This film is a comedy, and ends happily in an optimistic birth of redemption.
Unlike Mary Shelley’s monstrous creature in FRANKENSTEIN, or Fritz Lang’s conflicted evil robot in METROPOLIS, all the characters in TEKNOLUST thrive on affection, and ultimately, reproduction. The classic movie seduction clips that program Ruby reflect the powerful impact of absorbed images on behavior.
TEKNOLUST is a coming of age story, not only for the characters but also of our society’s relationship to technology. The 21st centuries technologies – genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics have opened a Pandora’s box that will affect the destiny of the entire human race. Our relationship to computer based virtual life forms that are autonomous and self replicating will shape the fate of our species.
In an era of digital and human biological sampling, it seemed natural to use the same actress (Tilda Swinton) to play not only the bio geneticist, Rosetta Stone, but the offspring she breeds. The 24p camera encouraged a hyper real feeling and aided the massive compositing challenges.
Ruby’s portal is mirrored on the web (http://www.agentruby.com) and extends the relationship of the film beyond the screen into the virtual world of networks.
I have always been attracted to digital tools and cinematic metaphors
that reflect our time, such as privacy in an era of surveillance, personal
identity in a time of pervasive manipulation, and despite this, the essential
quest of all living things for loving interaction.
