Soraya Murray

Professor Soraya Murray is an interdisciplinary scholar who focuses on technology, science and visual culture, with particular interest in contemporary art, film and video games. Murray holds a Ph.D. in art history and visual studies from Cornell University. An Associate Professor in the Film & Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Murray studies technological representations (such as the playable simulations of video games), as well as the representations of  advanced technology, science and innovation in film and visual culture. Murray’s writings are published in Art Journal, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, CTheory, Public Art Review, Third Text, ROMchip, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and Critical Inquiry. Her writings are anthologized nationally and internationally.

ARI Supported project: 

Technothriller: Film, Difference and the Technological Imaginary is the first dedicated book-length critical examination of recent films classified as “thrillers” that view technologies like computers, robotics, biotech, the Internet, military weaponry, and digital surveillance through the lens of anxiety, dread or paranoia. In Technothriller, I continue my exploration of the visual culture of science and technology, and how popular media representation has reflected, shaped and guided our possible technological futures. I use popular American films from the late 1960s to the present, like The Andromeda Strain, Westworld, Capricorn One, Rollerball, Jurassic Park, The Hunt For Red October, Clear and Present Danger, and Ex Machina to think through deeply embedded raced and gendered ideologies of technology, science and their imaginaries—or in other words, the mechanics of power within our technological lives. Technothriller also addresses how popular culture negotiates political and cultural attitudes toward technological advancement, especially regarding race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of difference. In short, Technothriller is about the troubled, sometimes catastrophic relationship between humans and their technological innovations.