Soylent Green: We Are What We Eat

The event will start at Newcastle City Library with a workshop called Dying in a Sci Fi Universe. Newcastle City Library invites you to flex your creative writing skills in Dying in a Sci Fi Universe where we will create short stories together in collaboration with AI co-authors. To do this each author contributes a section of the story, using the surrealists exquisite corpse game, so you never know where the story will take you. 

Following this we will walk over to the Tyneside Cinema for an evening viewing of the 70s dystopian sci-fi classic Soylent Green. This will be followed by a panel from experts in death, science fictions and capitalism, speakers TBC.

Join us to explore how death and science fiction help us to think about what it means to be human and what the future holds for us. 

You are welcome to attend either the library or cinema part of this event independently

The library workshop will explore death and science fiction as a prompt for creative writing, it will explore how collaborating with an AI agent can support new modes of creative enquiry (particularly when thinking about complex topics like death and dying).

The film portion of the event aims to support people in considering how society treats its most vulnerable members and the dignity of the dead. Our panel will explore links between capitalist modes of production and wellbeing at end of life with members of the public and professionals, helping people explore the ethics of disregarding human life in favour of profit. It will consider how capitalism relies on overproduction, inequality, and

environmental destruction to support profits even in the face of the sacred of human

experiences like death and dying.

Dr Stacey Pitsillides, Associate Professor Northumbria University

Andy Jones, Humanist Funeral Director

Kim Dryden,  Newcastle City Library

Patrick Newton, Film Programmer, Tyneside Cinema

Anyone 15+ is welcome to attend the film screening.

For the Dying in a Sci Fi Universe workshop:

All experience levels welcome but you will need to be over 13 to participate and require permission from a guardian if under 18. The model operates in English so you will need to be comfortable contributing in this language. The AI co-author uses a large-language model (LLM) to contribute story segments and although guidelines are in place to ensure the appropriateness of the responses, the probabilistic nature of LLMs means they can produce output that violates these guidelines. The team will be on hand to provide support should this happen, but we recommend you read through Gemini’s policy guidelines to ensure you are comfortable with this before taking part: https://gemini.google/policy-guidelines/

How we die and how we prepare for it will differ, but by providing space and opportunity for people of all walks of life to think about their future options is very empowering and life-enhancing to individuals. The event will specifically appeal to those who have experienced loss or those with an interest in death and dying e.g. death practitioners/ clinical/ palliative care alongside people interested in technologies specifically capitalism and Science Fictions.