From the team behind the Oscar shortlisted documentary feature The Great Hack, Persuasion Machines’ Extended Reality (XR) experience will World Premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in New Frontiers.

Persuasion Machines, from artists Karim Amer and Güvenç Özel, uses a virtual smart living room, and an HTC VIVE headset, to allow the user to visually confront the invisible process of data collection and question the nature of the digital machines that are supposed to be making our lives better

From the team behind The Great Hack (from directors Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer), the global phenomenon and one of the year’s most impactful political documentaries that helped blow open the year’s biggest news story: that data is being weaponized to undermine democracy in the United States and across the globe; Filmmakers chronicled the widespread effect that data mining has had, and continues to have, on our society

Persuasion Machines, like The Great Hack, shows us that companies like Facebook are treating our society like pawns; We are being manipulated, and our private data is being used against us; Filmmakers call for action to allow people to retake control and get our privacy back – The Great Hack has helped lead to legislation and policies in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and beyond

Enter a smart living room that asks the question: are we in control of these machines or are they in control of us? The filmmakers of The Great Hack (2019 Sundance Film Festival) use mixed reality and surveillance technologies to bring to life the invisible world of data. Audiences will experience how smart devices harvest data from our devices and how this data is then used to control us and persuade us.