Author: Josiah A.

Material Songstress

Josiah A.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

More Human than Human

I see a lot of what Harraway discusses in her Manifesto in ArchAndroid. If you scroll through the playlist and simply look at the names of the songs, some seem very esoteric and some make sense. In the Cyborg Manifesto Harraway wants us to think about Cyborgs in an ironic political sense while also keeping it faithful to feminism and post humanist ideology. When listening to the lyrics of the songs in ArchAndroid they are very centered around the “self”. Yourself and Myself, these individual churnings of thought, how everything in the world is so crazy, how dreams of things getting better stay forever, so many expressions of love, to need someone, to not need someone, to walk the thin rope of expression and thought, to speak up and speak out and the insanity that can potentially come with it. If we were to truly think of these in the way that Harraway intended, we’d be here for hours. which leads me to my next few points, I want to touch upon a few songs from the album itself.

Dance and Die is an interesting song, in Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto she wants us to look at Cyborgs as ourselves or rather a way to view ourselves in a personal way. within this song many people are described. Those who are suicidal, those who cry for help or more accurately crying for someone to listen to help, “zombies’ with no thought, children that kill each other, some that go to join the army, men who want to be free, men who want a stronger nation. this song is filled with so much strife and yet the title gives you two options die or dance. To dance as I see it is to keep moving forward even when you wish for it to end. To Dance to your own rhythm and like the song says, whether you are a cyborg, Android, decoy or human, these dreams will persist. How fluid the “human” is, how fluid the very consciousness that such simple and seemingly hopeless things persistent no matter what you are.

I will not lie, I feel a lot of my peers if they did something similar would probably point to “Oh, Maker” and I think it is infinitely smarter to do so when talking about these songs and how they relate to Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, but I simply must talk about Sir Greendown. It is such an esoteric and dreamy song. when looking at the lyrics it practically makes no sense a song potentially full of metaphors and questions. who is ‘Sir Greendown’, where exactly is this taking place, what tower is she speaking off? When I mentioned the word “dreamy” I was not joking, the melody is meant to give off the sense that it is a dream, but I believe the more interesting thing to observe is the Song itself. I believe this relates to Harraway’s Manifesto because Harraway uses the Cyborg to breakdown the distinctions between physical and nonphysical and what is more nonphyscial than a dream? Here is a dreamlike expression of love an ask of the person to wake them up at night, to come to their tower and whosk them away. Instead of a land of Milk and Honey we have a town of Walking dolphins and Cyborgs who know exactly what to do. but what happens when we awake? will Sir Greendown be here at the tower to take us away to allow our love to be reciprocated? who knows, it is a nonphysical expression something outside of the normal something that anything could dream of.

Sprawling City of Lights and the Hell they Harbor Underneath Them

Josiah A.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Within The Decay of the Postmodern World

Within the first few minutes of BladeRunner 1982 We are met with an interesting and phenomenal sight. A dreary nighttime atmosphere a towering skyscraper building and many surrounding it, the air is filled with steam, the light pollution so dense that the stars in the sky are no longer visible. The way the buildings are laid out is congested and constrained, cramped and suffocating and we see a flying car passing an image of a woman projected onto the side of a building. Then a few minutes later we are met with its underbelly, a man walking through an overly crowded street steam billowing from the shops crammed together on the ground level. The space is minimal and yet people are able to get where they need to go. At night a few hours later, we see how empty and decrepit the cities underbelly is, Empty, dirty, unkempt and unwanted.

The city presented to us brings out the aesthetically dystopian majesty of Cyberpunk well. many Visually when we are above the cities ground level and on other colonies, we see how advanced technology is in Bladerunner, but the amazing contrast is that no matter the time of day you can clearly tell how suffocating the city and atmosphere is how much the world itself may be in slow decay due to the rise of technology and a sole focus on corporate interest. As an artist I absolutely adore the colors used here and without the movie. To focus specifically on the image that precedes this text while the shot is at night the light that we see while “bright” is actually quite dim, grey, and muddy. We usually use “ugly” and muddy colors in conjunction with brighter and “pretty” colors to bring out the beauty of the world, when both ugly and pretty colors work in tandem, they bring out the beauty in each other and make things pop with vivacity and life through their working together. but here in Bladerunner the colors while visually stunning and work together are purposefully muted, they are invoking a sense of dread and decay that compound with the clustered nature of the buildings which are seeming placed tightly compacted with each other due to lack of space and ecological restrictions. Bladerunner city is full of visual scenery like this due to dystopian theme and the neon aesthetic that comes along with it, the innate hubris that comes along with unfiltered technological advancement with no moral or ethical leash.

Cybernetic underground amidst a Regional Travesty

Chiba City is the first city we are introduced too, its alias is adequately called “Night Town” by the locals and any visitors. Chiba City is a hub for both legal and illegal cybernetic augmentations within Neuromancer, it is favored by the sprawl’s techno criminal’s, case included. Case is there in hopes to cure his neurological damage but back to the point, Chiba City is described as a “complex” or a group of similar buildings or facilities within the same area or site, the darker areas are even visible from the sea which is littered with white styrofoam, and waste.

The interesting thing about Chiba city is the nickname “Night City”, since it houses illegal augmentations as well it has become a go to place for the sprawls criminal underground and what better time of day to commit crime then in the cover of Night. The many Complexes are everywhere which add onto the dystopian aspect technology cramped in a sea of similarity where all of their problems can be solved or exacerbated by corporations. the contrast to such a high-tech area is the port near it which is Tokyo Bay and how filthy it has become; nothing screams environmental decay that waste farther than the eye can see.