SIMULATION BEACH, 2015, 16mm Transferred to HD, 60 min., color/sound
SIMULATION BEACH is an experimental documentary that explores the culture of risk and simulation in the La Jolla/San Diego region--a place branded by its business interests as “Biotech Beach.” In this idyllic but fragile landscape scientists and emergency managers model, assess, and sometimes profit from the risks of natural hazards such as fires, earthquakes, weather patterns, and climate change, through simulations. Unfolding over the course of a single day, SIMULATION BEACH cross-cuts four different simulation sites, each of which corresponds to one of the four primordial (western) elements:
⋅ Fire: a fire-training center in the county’s “heartland,” El Cajon.
⋅ Water: a hydraulics lab at Scripps Institution for Oceanography’s beachside campus.
⋅ Air: a downtown weather forecasting startup originating at Scripps.
⋅ Earth: UC San Diego’s inland earthquake simulator at Englekirk Center.
By documenting these primordial forces as they are recreated in controlled, simulated settings the film attempts to capture something of the paradox of our intensifying search for control over the elements in an era in which we have recognized ourselves as a geological force, “the anthropocene.”
