A.I. and the future city

Chris Cunningham and special effects

although he is best known for his spooky music videos for Aphex Twin, Cunningham has worked with animatronics in ALIEN and participated in the early phases of A.I.

A.I. and the figure of the Android

all right, since we have to deal with lots of androids, cyborgs, robots etc… in the next few days, let’s provide definitions. David (the protagonist of Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a “mecha” android. note, this is different than “robot” or “cyborg.”

there is a decent definition of “android” on Wikipedia here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android

Maria, from “Metropolis,” Robbie the robot from “Forbidden Planet,” the “Star Wars” robots, the robot in “I Robot” are all robot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot

different definition for the Cyborg, whose story is a bit more complicated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg

Brazil and Gilliam

an interesting BBC documentary with interviews with Terry Gilliam

Bureaucracy, Dystopia and Architectural surrealism in Brazil

this scene is probably one of the denser in Brazil: it synthesizes the the monstrosity of the bureaucratic apparatus through its architectural spectacularity and its vertical dynamism.

2001 space odyssey

the opening:

the monolyth

the ending

memory and dreams in SCIFI film

in Kathryn Bigelow “Strange Days” (1995) Lenny Nero,  deals with data-discs containing recorded memories and emotions.

2001 and popular culture

This politically-inspired parody of 2001 was brought to my attention. it is part of the Colbert Green Screen Challenge

movies such as “2001″ are often appropriated in all sorts of forms by popular culture. this reminded me of an episode of the Simpson from a few years ago.

Memory, time travel, and day-dreaming

memory is the big theme that shapes the entire movie “La Jetee”. a lot of this memory is linked to the role of the gaze (memory is blurry and made of fragments. the movie is made of photograms as well).

memory is linked with time, because it evokes a past and re-interprets the future. the protagonist travels back in time led by an obsessive image.

however, is this image really part of his past? a lot of our memories are not coming from events we saw happening but from events we heard haad happened or events we imagined happening. what is, then, day-dreaming and what is really time-travel? what is real and what is not? the two things do merge at some point.

La Jetee (1962)

Memory, Utopia/Dystopia, Past and Future,  Time travels, these are all themes explored by Chris Marker in “La Jetee”

and this is a very bad quality online version of La Jetee