The Ark of Dopamine is a project born out of the overstimulation of today. Dopamine drives us to live, but it’s also a potent chemical neurotransmitter that can destroy us if underestimated. In the modern world of technological accelerationism, things move at hyperspeed: we’re in a forever loop of clicking, swiping, liking, watching, and reacting that far exceeds the processor speed of our brains. The endogenous chemicals in our bodies are being pushed to their absolute limit, it’s only a matter of time until we go beyond that limit and feel nothing. 

 

As filmmakers who met in a philosophy class at the University of Southern California, we wanted to explore a futurescape in which dopamine has been depleted for most. A world in which only a select few have enough dopamine receptors to function. A world in which one mystery man seeks a fabled device that could reverse engineer our “dopa-coma” and help humanity feel alive again. But it won’t be easy, as adversarial forces want to eliminate human existence. 

Inspired by kinetic filmmaking and the practice of tackling topical subject matter through genre, our goal is take our audience on an adrenaline fueled experience of what it means to survive in an age of overstimulation.

 

-Büd and Eric