Cyberpunk: from then to now

 In some of my previous posts, I have mentioned this artistic genre and my interest in it. But I decided to research mor in depth, since as it will be greatley involved with my studio work.

-Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a future setting that tends to focus on the society of the proverbial "high tech low life"; featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as information technology and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.

One of the most well know exhamples of this is the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", better known as Blade Runner; George Orwell's "1984" falls into the same category.

The running theme in works of this style is the Dystopian future and need of rebellion to return to a peaceful and just society.
This kind of story line not only occures in films but in gaming as well, in titles such as Fallout and Half Life.

Cyberpunk has also evolved and found its way into figuartive art andfashion design.

 

Cyberpunk now has now evolvrd intoa cultural trend, reffered to as Cybergoth,with its own style and music, expressing the querkyness and oddity of the genre itself.

 

Design Fiction: Alternate Worlds

As mentioned in a previous post design fictions focus around narrative and storytelling, most of the time creating an entirely different universe from our own. In fact, its extremley common in fantsy and scifi works, as we take Middle Earth from Tolkien's Hobbit, or perhaps more recently Westeros from George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones.

 

With this in mind, its interesting to think how many fictional universes have been created since the begging of fiction work as a whole. 

If we analyse the previously mentioned works of Phillip Pullman, we notice that the story unfolds in a universe almost completley pararel to our own, but with major diffrences that underline its almost alien qualities. The buildings and locations described are mostly the same as ones that exist, but with major architectural characteristics; machinery and mode of transport function in a mechanical manner, poewred by electricity and otherworldly forces; and in this new Earth, the existance of a kingdom ruled by sentient polar bears, the Pansebjorne.

The plot of the books themseves focus on the concept of the reality of other worlds, universes conncected by a subsance called Dust. These worlds intertwine and connect and the similarities between many of them and ours is uncanny. 

We see something very similar in the 1982 film Tron, in which the protagonist, owner of an arcade, develops new technology that allows him to eneter the Grid, the progammed world of the arcade game Tron, revealing a world with its own social system, classes, justice system and with a completly different biology, of both the enviroment and the characters them sleve, no longer organic beings but lines of code that disintigrate into pixels when terminated.

Looking at these two completley different works of fiction, and their own universes, we can see how the both translate extremely well into the Multiverse Theory

-The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of finite and infinite possible universes, including the universe in which we live. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, and the physical laws and constants that describe them.
The various universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes" or "alternate universes."

With this in mind, altough childish, the possibility of worlds like Westeros, Middle Earth and the Grid being actual existing universes is an exiting and inspiring though, that stimulates new possibilities in creating fictonal work.

Design Fiction: Visual Styles

In a friday evenig seminar, we briefley spoke about fictinal designs, in particular Steampunk and Cyberpunk; two genres that I found myslef draw to during my school years.

Steampunk:
-Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Although its literary origins are sometimes associated with the cyberpunk genre, steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the 19th century's British Victorian era or American "Wild West", in a post-apocalyptic future during which steam power has maintained mainstream usage, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power. Steampunk may, therefore, be described as neo-Victorian. Steampunk perhaps most recognisably features anachronistic technologies or retro-futuristic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them, and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art.

Cyberpunk:
Cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction in a future setting, tends to focus on the society of the proverbial "high tech low life"; featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as information technology and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.
Cyberpunk plots often center on conflict among artificial intelligences and among megacorporations, and tend to be set in a future Earth, rather than in the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation or Frank Herbert's Dune. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors ("the street finds its own uses for things"). Much of the genre's atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction.

I became interested in Steampunk when I was encouraged to read Phillip Pullman's series "His Dark Materials", a trilogy the soon became one of my favourites. The style of writing is so vibrant that the world painted itself, and the visuals it created have been some of the most influential in my work.

 

Cyberpunk, however, is the style I'm most interested at the moment. I'm fascinated by the aesthetic and the narrative behind most cyberpunk orentated works, one of my favourites being George Orwell's 1984 and Blade Runner.

 

I intend to use this genre in my studio work.