The end of the world (Melancholia)

Futuristic Beats

Often, when we see sci-fi movies or series, we can hear music, sound effects or even noises that go along with the feeling of the scenes that are in those movies. They play according to the characteristics of such scenes: it is a mixture of visual and auditive styles. Those sounds help the visual part of the movie or series and what they want us to feel; therefore, the sounds have to be, most of the time, accelerated, mysterious, technological, etc. And they transport us to those alternate worlds with the alteration of our senses.

The following are some good examples of those sounds and music. Some of them are actual soundtracks, the other ones are regular bands who play and experiment with those magnificent beats.

Wake up in  a fast, deranged, high-tech city with the following tune:

Mind Teardown - Death Increased 

 

 

Amazing metal percussion from Japan. Der Eisenrost,
one of my favorite bands, led by Chu Ishikawa, known from his
collaborations with Shinya Tsukamoto's movies.
Enjoy these high-speed rustling noise-makers!

 

Beautiful artwork accompanied by distorted voices
and cybernetic noises.

 

 

Clock DVA are and industrial post-punk band from
England, formed in the 70s. Their sounds reminds us
of dystopic societies, computing noises and technological
voices that seem to be uttered by cyborgs.
Amazing concept, image and project this band has got!

Futurism: Science Fiction in art.

Fortunato Depero: New York, 1930.

Futurism not only existed as an artistic movement in the field of paintings. It was also a social and political manifestation of what artists (mainly painters) believed the future would look like in their societies. This movement originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It depicted themes that were, at that time, associated with futuristic motifs and imagery: industrial and technological landscapes, abstract representations of the speed in the city, the violence of the youth, etc.

Antonio Sant'Elia

 

 

 

He was one of the most important artists in the futurist movement. His work focused on architecture. Sant'Elia is so important in science fiction that his work inspired several artists that wanted to represent what the cities would look like in the future. His idea of future societies was so accurate that it highly resembles what we can imagine or see when reading a book or enjoying a sci-fi movie.

Here, for instance, we can see how one his drawings inspired the movie Blade Runner by sci-fi director Ridley Scott.

  

We can mainly compare the triangular structures of the buildings, the flying vehicles, and even the colors: warm red, orange and yellow along with cold, nocturnal, rusty black.

Can you find other resemblances?

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Science Fiction in Performance Art, Part 2: Body beyond capacity.

Stelarc — Amplified Body, Laser Eyes & Third Hand (1985)

Stelarc (born Stelios Arcadiou) is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose work can be understood as a cyberpunk manifesto. His art focuses on how the possibilities of the human body are not enough, and hence it might be possible to modify and extend such possibilities and capacities.

His performances explore various techniques and aspects including body modification through technology and hardware, medical intervention, robotics and biotechnology, etc. In 2007, he even had an ear implanted in his left arm through surgery as well as cell cultivation.

He has received several prizes for his art, mostly because of his avant-garde and post-modern manifestation of an alternative human body. Stelarc explores how the capacities of the human body cand be modified to the point of altering the normal structure of its anatomy. For Stelarc, the human body is obsolete and needs to be adjusted. Here is a brief video of him in the 14th Media Art Biennale, in Wroclaw, Poland, 2011. He talks about his ideas on body modification and his arm:

 

When we contemplate the work of Stelarc, we can ask ourselves, for example:

• Will the human beings get to the point of having to change their bodies to function better?
• Will it be normal, someday, to have cyborg friends or relatives, or even constantly walk among them?
• Will technology grow so much that we will be drowned by it and will not be able to tell what is organic and what is cybernetic?

The work of Stelarc and his manifesto can be connected to the work of Japanese film director Shinya Tsukamoto and his 1989 sci-fi cult classic Tetsuo, the Iron Man; where a man is suffocated by metallic and trashy representations of the invasion of technology:

Still from Japanese cyberpunk flick Tetsuo, the Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989)

Here, you can visit Stelarc's official website and enjoy more of his work. Just click on the following quote by him and transport yourself into his world.

"The body needs to be repositioned from the psycho realm of the biological to the cyber zone of the interface and extension - from genetic containment to electronic extrusion". 
---- Stelarc, 2000.

Science Fiction in Performance Art

Science fiction spans several media: not only books, movies, or television. Art is also an important manifestation of science fiction. Several contemporary and moder artists have exposed their art in order to let people witness a different view on art. In this case, and if we talk about science fiction, there are people whose work is explicitly a manifesto of how the world is constantly evolving into a more sofisticate and technological status: something that we already know by movies, for example.

Art can be read in heaps of ways. What is beautiful for one person, can be grotesque for the other person. It all depends in how you contemplate art and how you get to understand its meaning. This way, some artists and their performance can be read as science fiction in modern art.

Some of them work and act as a means to react against established orders or issues that need to be questioned. For example, British performance artist Alice Newstead protested against the use and consumption of shark fins inside LUSH cosmetics in San Francisco, USA. 

Alice stayed suspended for several hours on August 24, 2011. She was using the art of body suspension to show how sharks are slaughtered and hung in order to obtain their fins. She used blueish and greenish colors to emulate the environment in which sharks normally live when they are free. Her legs were covered by a blanket that represented the shark fin. She somehow looked like a half-human, half-shark lady, similar to those humanoid creatures that we know through science fiction movies; like that half-animal, half-human creature from Vincenzo Natali's 2009 movie Splice:

Splice (Vincenzo Natali, 2009)

Here are some other pictures of Alice Newstead and her several performances:

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Science Fiction Prophecies.

Here you have a video about 10 inventions which became a fact thanks to a science fiction writer.

Metropolis and the birth of Cyberpunk.

Metropolis is a 1927 sci-fi movie by German director Fritz Lang. It is a beatiful expressionistic and surreal story about the creation of a female android (or ginoid) in a futuristic distopian city called Metropolis.

Metropolis is believed to be the first movie within the genre of Science Fiction to have explored what is known as cyberpunk.

What is Cyberpunk?

Neuromancer by William Gibson is the most important book on Cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk is a genre of science fiction that exploded in the early 80s. This genre focuses on dystopian futuristic societies where individuals coexist with high technology, cybernetic organisms, advanced computers, artificial intelligences, and all of that in a society that seems to increase in terms of crime as it does in term of advanced technology. Of course, this genre emerged primarly in literature, but it also did in cinema, television, anime, manga and even videogames.

 

The first Cyberpunk movie?

Followers of this genre (such as us, Steph and Juan) believe that it started in the cinema with Metropolis, although the cyberpunk manifesto appeared only until the 80s. However, director Fritz Lang did an excellent fantastic job with his work of art: he had already explored the subjects of oppressive dystopian societes, cyborgs, futuristic cities and imagery, etc.

So, if you ask us: Is this the first manifestation of Cyberpunk as it is known nowadays?, we will firmly answer: Yes, it is indeed.