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Forelæsningsnoter – cyborgrepræsentationer og arkitekturvisioner – vol 6: Hanne-Louise Johannesen - forår 2005
* Rotwang - den gale videnskabsmand (protese): * Robot-Maria - Den kvindelig cyborg (kredsløb): * Helten og 'The Last Girl' * Telepresence * Kapitalismen - big brother * Bygningskroppene - rum til overflade (maskulinitet) * De organiske haver - med organisk arkitektur (femininitet) * Infrastruktur (fra vejnet til netværk)
CyborgrepræsentationerRotwang - den gale videnskabsmand (protese): Robot-Maria - Den kvindelig cyborg (kredsløb): Helten og 'The Last Girl' Telepresence FORFØRELSE, PROTESER, KREDSLØB OG MODSÆTNINGSFYLDTE GRUNDVILKÅR. I en cyborg-optik eller diskurs er kroppen ikke længere et samlet sted eller hele, det er en samling af dele. Den kvindelige krop især er i denne diskurs yderst fragmenteret. En række kropslige funktioner kan via den moderne lægevidenskab foretages udenfor kroppen, så som befrugtning, rensning af blodet, 'reperation' af indre organer mm, hvilket nødvendigvis må skabe et skred i forståelsen af kroppen. Kroppen er næsten symboliseret ved dens udskiftelighed og dermed sekundær i forhold til tanken. I Ghost in the Shell er det det centrale tema, hvor det 'ægte' menneskelige element er 'ghost', hvilket svarer ganske godt til kristendommens fastholdelse af en sjæl som menneskelig karakteristika. Den kropslige hukommelse er fraværende i cyborg-diskursen. Elementer som spøgelser, dæmoner, orakler og engle sættes centralt ind i denne diskurs og tilføjer et næsten kristent element, der taler for at uanset i hvilken grad vores fysiske pinsler påvirker os og hvor fremmed informationsteknologi og kunstig intelligens synes at være, kan vi holde fast i immaterielle kristne værdier. Det menneskelige ('sjælen') er placeret i en fysisk krop, hvis delelementer er udskiftelige. Den kvindelige cyborg repræsenterer ofte teknologien som et gode, faktisk som bedre end det enkelte individ, som skræmmes af cyborgens fejlfrihed. Når cyborgen fremstilles med kvindelige karakteristika peges der på omsorg, sårbarhed og mulig reproduktion, men også på at teknologien er noget vi stadig kan kontrollere. Omvendt har cyborgen når den er af hankøn ofte et element af magt og mangel på menneskelige visioner. Den mandlige cyborg bliver derved ofte et billede på teknofobi (altså bortset fra C3PO - som trods sit 'maskuline ydre' har en feminin opførsel) I den dystopiske version af cyborgen er den et billede på accept og fuldførelse af det postmoderne liv. Kaos og usikkerhed hersker og hvad der er tilbage af menneskelig fornuft kan kun videreføres i symbiose med teknilogi - i cyborgen. Fraværet af nydelse, afhængighed og dødsangst peger på muligheden for disfunktionelle sociale relationer som konsekvens af den uundgåelige afhængighed af teknologien. Både den utopiske og dystopiske version af cyborgen lider under fastlåste forestillinger, der holdes i ave af den Hollywood-skabte cyborg. Den dystopiske kan kritiseres for at skabe en mørk fremtidsversion hvor menneske og teknologi er uforenelige størrelser, hvis ikke mennesket bevarer en streng selvjustits og kontrol, mens den utopiske tenderer mod troen på maksimal individuel frihed. Men ... den sociale realitet for cyborgen er ikke fikseret, det der til stadighed forfører os ved cyborgen er dens implikationer i sociale procesuelle relationer. Der er konstant enutopisk-dystopisk polaritet, foruden maskulin-feminin, magt-underkastelse, natur-kultur og lignende polariteter iboende i cyborgskikkelsen, hvilket giver et modsætningsfyldt grundvilkår. Præcis i det modsætningsfyldte grundvilkår ligger cyborgens styrke. Derfor bliver det dystopiske utopisk og det utopiske dystopisk.Cyborgdiskursens engle og dæmoner skifter plads, f.eks Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) fra Bladerunner som konstant bevæger sig på grænsen mellem frelse og forbandelse mellem livgivende og dræbende.... eller Marias to skikkelser i Metropolis. I dystopien findes håbet og utopien truer med sin uopnåelighed.
Udover relationen mellem mennesek maskine er det også interessant at se på forholdet cyborger imellem. Både den hvor den amputerede mand (Rotvang (armprotese), Tyrell (synsprotese), se i øvrigt beskrivelse af 'The Mad Scientist' som arketype http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_scientist) skaber et forbedret hele der ikke længere er amputeret men er et integreret kredsløb af menneskeligt væv og maskindele. Men også vigtigt er der hvor cyborgen som den anden møder en af samme 'art' og potentielt gør mennesket til den anden. Cyborgen ophører dermed med at være en prototype som kan 'trækkes tilbage'. Derudover introducerer mødet mellem cyborger føleleser som omsorg, forførelse og overlevelsesdrift der er med til at pege i retning af more-human-than-human-syndromet og har dermed en forførende effekt i forhold til at overgive sig til teknologien for at opnå et bedre og renere sexliv (Barbarella, Demolition Man, Thomas in Love), en hurtigere og bedre hukommelse, en stærkere og forbedret krop mm: 'You can not beat them so join them!' TELEPRESENS OG VIRKELIGHEDSPLANER - FRA METROPOLIS TIL AVALON Ash, the main character of Avalon, is a professional video game player, immersed in a virtual reality battle game called Avalon, based on Arthurian legend. Through the course of the film, she tries to access a secret level of the game called Special A. One of her gaming partners tried to reach Special A many years ago, only to end up as a vegetable in the “real” world. Ash’s quest is to bring him back, to reunite his consciousness with his body. Through her navigation of the Arthurian structures of the game, Ash is finally able to break free from the dark game world in which she had been living and reach a kind of epiphany. »Avalon. Faraway isle of legend, of applegroves and mist. Avalon. When will that day come? Avalon. Isle of faery, where heroes go. Avalon. A hero takes ship and sets sail to that isle of legend. Avalon.« Mamoru Oshii er primært kendt for hans anime film (Ghost in the shell). Men udover hans anime-produktionerne har han lavet Avalon, der trods sin computerspilagtige karakter er realfilmoptagelser. En dystopisk science fiction-film om kunstige verdener, der i sin ånd og baggrund er asiatisk, omend den er filmet i Polen med polske skuespillere. Ash er professionel computerspiller. Modsat de fleste andre mennesker lever hun, sammen med sin bassethund, et materialistisk godt liv, takket været sine enestående spilevner. Spillet er Avalon - en illegal, virtuel verden, hvor ensomme soldater kæmper mod ansigtsløse våbenmaskiner. Mens de fleste andre er nødt til at kæmpe i hold, så kan Ash ene kvinde nedlægge fjendtlige tanks og helikoptere. Hun er den bedste. Så da Ash hører rygterne om muligheden for at spille på et højere og endnu mere realistisk niveau, må hun nødvendigvis forsøge at opnå dette - uagtet at dem, der ikke klarer det, ender som hjernedøde grøntsager. "Reality is nothing but an obsession that takes hold of us," siger Ash' gamle makker. Som forskriften er for science fiction-historier om virtuelle verdener, så må hovedpersonen og publikummet inden slutningen genoverveje, hvad der egentlig er virkeligt og hvad der er virtuelt. I den forstand adskiller Avalon sig ikke voldsomt fra tematisk beslægtede film som eXistenZ (1999). Nok er Avalon en realfilm, der er optaget med levende mennesker på virkelige steder, men den er hele vejen igennem lavet, som var den en tegnefilm. Hvis man siger om den samtidige Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), at det er en animationsfilm, der forsøger at være en realfilm, så kan man sige om Avalon, at det er en realfilm, som forsøger at være en animationsfilm. Der er enkelte actionscener i Avalon, der i sig selv fungerer udmærket, men de er på ingen måde filmens fokus. Store dele af filmen er blottet for underlægningsmusik, men når den er der, trækker den hele stemningen. Kenji Kawai (Ghost In The Shell og Ring, 1998) benytter korsang, symfoniorkester og solosang, så det kryber én ned ad ryggen. Musikken er i sig selv decideret fremragende, men dertil benyttes den mod slutningen i en fascinerende sammenhæng, hvor den bliver til en dominerende del af fortællingen. Metropolis (2001 movie) [Categories: Japanese films, Anime] Metropolis, also known as Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis released in 2001, is an anime Any of various resins or oleoresinsanime movie. It was directed by Rintaro, and written by Katsuhiro Otomo based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka. It is loosely based upon Fritz Lang's epic Metropolis A large and densely populated urban area; may include several independent administrative districts Metropolis. Plot A Japanese private detective and his nephew Kenichi arrive to the city of Metropolis. Metropolis itself lies in an unmentioned republic and it can best be described as a plutocracy A political system governed by the wealthy people plutocracy where a man Duke A British peer of the highest rank Duke Red is the most influential citizen. In Metropolis' heavily industrialised world artificial intelligence has evolved a lot and robots are seen everywhere performing all sorts of tasks. Despite their intelligence robots do not have any of the rights that are granted to human beings. In order not to infringe upon human rights the are not allowed to have human names nor to travel between the four Zone's which the metropolis is divided in between without a special permission. Thus they live under Apartheid A social policy or racial segregation involving political and economic and legal discrimination against non-whites; the former official policy in South Africa Apartheid-like conditions. In order to protect humans from mischievous-minded robots a vigilante organisation called the Marduk The chief Babylonian god; his consort was SarpanituMarduk patrol the streets of Metropolis. Heavily armed men dressed in red destroy robots as they please. The Marduk is a vigilante Member of a vigilance committe evigilante group who has formed a political party. It's a public secret that their founder is Duke Red. The private detective and his nephew are looking for a person named Dr Laughton who is among else suspected of trading human organs. Little do they know that Duke Red has hired Dr Laughton to manufacture an extremely intelligent robot in the shape of Duke Red's deceased daughter. The robot is to sit at the customised throne at the top of the newly built Quick Facts about: Ziggurat A rectangular tiered temple or terraced mound erected by the ancient Assyrians and BabyloniansZiggurat; a mountainous building that Duke Red has constructed for military purposes. Dr Laughton plans to flee Metropolis once the robot, named Tima after Duke Red's daughter, is finished. Although Duke Red's adoptive son and Marduk, Rock discovers Dr Laughton's treacherous intentions and proceeds to kill him in cold blood, whereas after he sets fire to the building containing Dr Laughton's laboratory intending to destroy all traces including the robot Tima which is in suspended animation at the time. However Tima wakes up during the fire and is saved by Kenichi. Dr Laughton dies before the detective manages to drag him out of there but manages to utter a few words regarding a precious notebook of his which the detective saves from the flames. During their escape from the burning building Kenichi and Tima falls down a sewage drain and become separated from the detective. Thus a search for his nephew begins for the detective. Kenichi and Tima are at the same being time chased by Rock who is Quick Facts about: monomanical Quick Summary not found for this subjectmonomanical about destroying Tima. Rock's determination to do so lies in his belief that his father, Duke Red, should be the one whom sits on the throne at the top of the Ziggurat and not a robot. Escaping from Rock, Tima and Kenichi stumble upon Atlas who is the leader of a group of unemployed labourers whom live in poverty below the metropolis' glistering surface. The labourers demand better living conditions having lost their jobs due to mechanisation, i.e. robots and with the recent building of the Ziggurat having the food distributions discontinued. They are planning to take up arms and launch a Quick Facts about: coup détat Quick Summary not found for this subjectcoup d'état against the government and bring down the Ziggurat like god's wrath once brought down the Quick Facts about: tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-11) a tower built by Noah's descendants (probably in Babylon) who intended it to reach up to heaven; God foiled them by confusing their language so they could no longer understand one anothertower of Babel.
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ArkitekturvisionerKapitalismen - big brother Bladerunner, Cypher, the Cube, Dark City Bygningskroppene - rum til overflade (maskulinitet) Bladerunner, Femte element, Matrix, Star Wars, Minority Rapport, avalon De organiske haver - med organisk arkitektur (femininitet) Barbarella, Bladerunner (dog ikke directors cut), femte element Infrastruktur (fra vejnet til netværk) bladerunner, femte element, Matrix, She writes that the film, like Gibson's fictions, creates an aesthetic of decay (1987: 185). In this decay strict divisions of time and space are also broken down. Arguing that Blade Runner is a metaphor for the postmodern condition, Bruno (1987: 185) asserts that postmodernism recycles; therefore it needs its waste. The ruins that are central to cyberpunk are not simply areas of discarded waste, but zones of new possibilities. Gibson’s cities need interstices, heterogeneous areas that are the result of constant recycling. Their ruination is part of a wider process of recon- struction; spaces are transformed as existing structures are broken down. Gomi becomes new forms and spaces ‘jury-rigged and jerry-built from scraps’. The Bridge and the Walled City are, in this sense, signs of a more hopeful future. As such, Gibson’s concern for detailing the full heterogeneity of these spaces does offer some respite from the bleakness of his vision of future cities City form and structure As present-day analysts, such as Graham and Marvin (1996), note, restructuring of the economic landscape and the increasing centrality of ICTs to city functioning is leading to a change in urban landscapes as corporate trade-offs between urban fixity and electronic mobility are played out. Cities are becoming virtualized, composed of and controlled by distributed networks of computers. Furthermore, organizational restruc- turing is affecting patterns of investment and development between metropolitan areas. It is argued that ICTs are encouraging centralization to large urban areas with affordable, well developed computer and telecommunications infrastructure. Paradoxically, it is contended that ICTs are also fostering decentralization, as instantaneous, multimedia communication networks allow companies to locate in cheaper areas with a suitably skilled workforce, or even transfer routine clerical work to overseas backoffices to create a global, 24-hour office. At another spatial scale, employment restructuring, in part caused by ICTs, is leading to the polarization of districts within metropolitan areas with a strengthening of a dual economy based around the creation of information wealthy and nformation deprived. These changes undermine the modernist bases of city form and purpose. In the transition from agricultural to industrial societies, cities grew rapidly to overcome time with space. In contrast, the space-time compression that underpins the globalized and localized restructuring briefly described above, means that cities are now seeking to capitalize on the overcoming of space by time (Harvey, 1989). Many cyberfiction writers examine these processes of urban-regional restructuring, extrapolating trends to provide visions of future urban form. For example, a number of writers explore the tensions developing between the decentralization and centralization of urban space. In Stephenson’s novels, Snow crash and The diamond age, the processes of decentralization, fuelled by a collapse in place-based politics, win out to produce a sprawling, centreless urban landscape composed of small claves where ‘old cities were doomed, except possibly as theme parks’ (Stephenson, 1995: 71). However, in most other narratives, such as those by Gibson, urban space becomes a large, decentralized sprawl with pockets of highly centralized and dense city spaces: ‘Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis’ (Gibson, 1984: 57). Places away from the centre have become financially unviable and form twenty-first-century ghost towns, fallen-in edge-cities, the kind of place that went down when the Euro-money imploded (Gibson, 1992: 245), and decaying rust-belt areas. In the cores, space is at a premium, and the cityscape is corporate, highly centralized and extremely dense both structurally and in terms of population. The value of space forces development both upwards and underground to produce a vertical spectrum of stylized, mirrored, postmodern architecture – a riot of glass and steel. Besher (1994: 211, 213) thus describes Toyko: Sure enough, immense mounds dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see. Gobi guessed these were underground cities. The freeway suddenly dipped. To Gobi’s surprise, they were now traveling though the guts of one of these mound cities. The elevated maglev freeway had suddenly become a transparent artery. They flew through a tube at a height about 30 stories above base level. All along both sides of the tube were rows of internal high rises. These high rises were spread-eagled over a series of parks and urban work-play centers . . . He caught his breath. They had finally arrived in downtown Neo-Toyko, the circuit-board heart of the rim. Gobi saw wave after wave of towers. Some of them were 500 stories tall, soaring to a point almost above the earth's atmosphere. He saw the famous Aeropolis sky-rise, much larger than life but no different than the postcard image that was famous all over the world. Like a skeletal Mt. Fuji constructed of living tubes, it was a man-made volcano that pulsed and breathed in an awesome symmetry of life and death. Half-a-million people lived on its top floors, and commuted from one vector to another. Similarly, Sterling (1988: 215) writes of a futuristic Singapore: It was like downtown Houston. But more like Houston than even Houston had ever had the nerve to become. It was an anthill, a brutal assault against any sane sense of scale. Nightmarishly vast spires whose bulging foundations covered whole city blocks. Their upper reaches were pocked like waffle irons with triangular bracing. Buttresses, glass-covered superhighways, soared half a mile above sea level. Storey after storey rose silent and dreamlike, buildings so unspeakably huge that they lost all sense of weight; they hung above the earth like Euclidean thunderheads, their summits lost in sheets of steel-gray rain. These buildings are more than mere glass and steel, however. They are virtualized through the incorporation of computer networks which render them smart; they are buildings with advanced infrastructure, buildings with the late twenty-first century embedded in their diamond bones and fiber-optic ligaments (Sterling, 1996: 139). As Fabi (1998: 187) thus details: This is a smart building. . . Totally state-of-the-art; we just built it last year. Carry those cards with you, and a central computer knows where you are at all times. It'll open doors for you, turn on lights, adjust the climate control, everything. Your guest cards are all preprogrammed to average settings, but you can adjust the settingsfor things like temperature, illumination level, even what kind of Muzak plays when you're on the elevator. In these narratives the centre is usually the home to the haves; those with wealth and power. The edges of these concentrations and the sprawl are predominatly home to the disenfranchised; those on the outside of the information economy (although part of the sprawl is also the defensive, suburban homes of the super-rich). This dichotomy between corporate centres of wealth and power and struggling hinterlands mirrors current regional developments which sees centres such as London, New York and Tokyo continue to grow in political and financial power, as companies decentralize lower-level services, typically those requiring less employee skill. This is accompanied by gentrification of city locales as those getting rich in the information economy move back into inner-city spaces. Indeed, the latter point of the spatial division between haves and have-nots within cityscapes is one that is explored extensively in cyberfiction. This spatial division, is according to analysts such as Davis (1990) and Castells (1996), becoming increasingly prevalent in present-day western society. For example, in City of quartz (1990) Mike Davis describes the divided society and dual economy of Los Angeles where one side consists of a predominatly white middle-class corporate sector working in mirrored offices and living in defensible spaces in suburbia protected by police and private security; and on the other side, an underclass of predominately black and Latino first and second-generation immigrants working in menial and casual jobs in the service and manufacturing sectors, whose adolescents and young adults roam in menacing Rob Kitchin and James Kneale 27 Page 10 28 Science fiction or future fact? gangs. This spatial and racial division is heightened by widespread organizational restructuring and means that employment is either well paid, stable, rewarding and full time, or part time, casual, menial and poorly paid, with middle-class jobs and status declining (Castells, 1996): There's only two kinds of people. People can afford hotels like that, they're one kind. We're the other. Used to be, like, a middle class, people in between. But not anymore. (Gibson, 1992: 123). Consequently, in cyberfiction spatiality is becoming polarized, with wealth being concentrated into certain locations which maintain and increase their status through defensible means (see below). The built form of the urban landscape portrayed mirrors this dual economy, with cities clearly divided into rich and poor areas; the gleaming, mirrored landscapes of centralized corporate affluence, accompanied by gated suburban housing, and the abject poverty of have-nots, confined to slums and home- lessness: Orlando scrunched down in his seat so he could see the hammock city. He had long been fascinated by the multi-level shantytowns, sometimes called honeycombs by their residents or rats nests by the kind of people who lived in Crown Heights . . . Long ago, he had discovered, during the first great housing crisis at the beginning of the century, squatters had begun to build shantytowns beneath the elevated freeways, freeform agglomerations of cardboard crates, aluminum siding, and plastic sheets. As the ground beneath the concrete chutes filled up with an ever-thickening tide of the dispossessed, later arrivals began to move upward into the vaulting itself, bolting cargo nets, canvas tarpaulins, and military surplus parachutes onto the pillars and undersides of the freeway. Rope walkways soon linked the makeshift dwellings, and ladders linked the shantytown below with one growing above. Resident craftsmen and amateur engineers added intermediary levels, until a marrow of shabby multilevel housing ran beneath nearly every freeway and aqueduct (Williams, 1996: 510). Later we return to these disenfranchised spaces to consider further how they are reap- propriated. First, however, we discuss how within-city, hegemonic spatial geometries, the divisions between rich and poor, are regulated and sustained in cyberfiction by sur- veillance technologies and the creation of defensible spaces |