Everyday life without audiovisual technologies is no longer imaginable. How do we experience reality in the age of generative AI, algorithmic media, and the omnipresence of digital platforms?

How does cinema—and all audiovisual media—construct, challenge, and reimagine reality in times of ecological, political, and technological transformation? The Future of Reality gathers leading scholars, filmmakers, and artists to explore how audiovisual media shape and interrogate contemporary realities. This volume addresses critical questions across (and beyond) five thematic strands: “Beyond Documentary? The Role of Nonfiction Cinema in a Shifting Media Landscape;” “Generative & Algorithmic Realities: AI, Operational Images & Algorithmic Storytelling;” “Power, Truth & Representation: Disinformation, Propaganda & Democracy in Media;” “Material Stories: Sensing Bodies & Ecologies of Nonfiction;” and “The Future of the Archive: Memory, Speculation & the Politics of Time.”

The Future of Reality provides a platform for critical debate, innovative forms of exchange, and the audiovisual production of knowledge by featuring a diverse range of formats and modes of knowledge production. Through scholarly essays, interviews, talks, panel discussions, audiovisual essays, sound mixes, coding components, and experimental interventions, The Future of Reality aims to push the boundaries of traditional academic publishing and enable a multiplicity of forms.