scholarly journals No Figures in the Landscape: Post-Anthropocentric Typologies of Architectural Settings in Science-Fiction Films

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-45
Author(s):  
Maciej Stasiowski
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Intelligent Buildings ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
Automated Warehouses ◽  
Vitruvian Man ◽  
Human Habitation ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
Data Centres ◽  
Insight Into

In the ascending age of automation factories, storage facilities, and server farms, intelligent buildings are becoming less dependent on human maintenance. These new and updated architectural forms do not comply with traditional typologies. From the Vitruvian Man to Modulor, our bodies were the measure of most constructions. Yet automation renders new constructions incompatible with patterns of human habitation. This article focuses on the iconography of buildings designed to operate with little to none human interaction, providing an insight into how such settings influenced recent (last decade) science-fiction films like Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Captive State (dir. Rupert Wyatt, 2019), I Am Mother (dir. Grant Sputore, 2019), or Transcendence (dir. Wally Pfister, 2014). In each of them, artificial intelligence is an intrinsic composite of the environment, terraforming a post-anthropocentric reality of data centres, automated warehouses and drosscapes.

Convenções na direção de arte cinematográfica: um olhar sobre a ficção científica

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe Muanis ◽  
Mariana Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
The Future ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
Spike Jonze ◽  
Stephen Neale

The elements of cinematographic language can be used in many ways to portray a story. It appears that, over the years, many conventions have been established in different areas of cinematographic making. In this article, we aim to highlight the conventions of the science fiction genre, with a focus on the art direction of movies that portray the future. For this, films such as Ex_Machina (Alex Garland, 2014), Equals (Drake Doremus, 2015) and Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) are analyzed. Also noteworthy, is the feature film Her (Spike Jonze, 2013) as a work that goes against the others, which presents an approach to the future that stands out among so many other movies with scenarios and costumes similar to each other. As a basis for the research, the study of conventions by sociologist Howard Becker is used, in addition to the work by theorists David Bordwell, Rick Altman, Stephen Neale, Marcel Martin, Vincent Lobrutto, among others. Directors and their artistic departments use colors, shapes, materials, textures, and elements that have become conventions in science fiction films and few are those who dare to produce something aesthetically different.

scholarly journals Neuroimages: Some Serving Suggestions

NanoEthics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict Charles Taylor-Green
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Functional Properties ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
Structural And Functional Properties ◽  
Mind's Eye ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThis art-science interaction evokes two ‘neuroimages’. However, the term ‘neuroimage’ does not refer, as usual, to images that emerge from scientific practices that seek to gain insight into the structural and functional properties of brains. Rather, it is meant that the images considered have as their theme neurotechnologies: specifically, those that concern the control of neuroprostheses, and neuroprostheses themselves. The first neuroimage appears in a biosignal sensing cap catalogue, and the second appears in the science fiction film Blade Runner 2049. While neither neuroimage is actually included in the piece, each is described to the reader before being speculatively analysed, and therefore becomes a ‘mental’ image in the mind’s eye, calling upon the ancient art of ekphrasis.

Introduction: Reading (into) the Greatest Science Fiction Film Ever Made

Blade Runner ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Sean Redmond
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Way

This chapter focuses on Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner that has become one of the most lauded science-fiction films ever made. It talks about academics who have written about Blade Runner in terms of its racial and sexual politics, its exploration of humanity, and of the way it challenges many of the accepted or expected codes and conventions of the science-fiction film. It also examines how Blade Runner is considered by the British Film Institute to be a 'Modern Classic' and is often one of the most written about films when it comes to science-fiction readers. The chapter analyses how Blade Runner is often used as the seminal text with which to explore the poetics and politics of the science-fiction genre. It mentions Blade Runner as one of the biggest commercial failures of the summer of 1982 for bringing in less than half the cost of its production.

scholarly journals SHANGHAIED INTO THE FUTURE: THE ASIANIZATION OF THE FUTURE METROPOLIS IN POST-BLADE RUNNER CINEMA

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Marco CERESA
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Yellow Peril ◽  
Genetic Codes ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
The Future ◽  
Standard Set ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
Asian Cinema

The cliched 1930–1950 Western cinematic images of Shanghai as a fascinating den of iniquity, and, in contrast, as a beacon of modernity, were merged in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. As a result, a new standard emerged in science fiction films for the representation of future urban conglomerates: the Asianized metropolis. The standard set by this film, of a dark dystopian city, populated by creatures of all races and genetic codes, will be adopted in most of the representations of future cities in non-Asian cinema. This article traces the representation of Shanghai in Western cinema from its earliest days (1932– Shanghai Express) through Blade Runner (1982) to the present (2013– Her). Shanghai, already in the early 1930s, sported extremely daring examples of modern architecture and, at the same time, in non-Asian cinema, was represented as a city of sin and depravity. This dualistic representation became the standard image of the future Asianized city, where its debauchery was often complemented by modernity; therefore, it is all the more seedy. Moreover, it is Asianized, the “Yellow Peril” incarnated in a new, much more subtle, much more dangerous way. As such, it is deserving of destruction, like Sodom and Gomorrah.

scholarly journals De wereld als sciencefictionroman. Over De goede zoon van Rob van Essen

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-242
Author(s):  
Erica van Boven
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Central Place ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Rob van Essen’s award-winning novel The good son (2018) offers its readers a puzzling reading experience. It contains a tangle of storylines and seems to lack head or tail. This contribution aims to discover composition and meaning by analyzing various aspects provided by the novel itself: timeline, plot, science fiction, ideas, poetica. This approach provides insight into the rich reservoir of meanings, whereby the importance of imagination and creation appears to have a central place. The novel, which can be labelled as a dystopian science fiction novel, as well as a novel of ideas or a novel of poetics, wants us to become aware of the mysteriousness of everyday reality. Nederlandstalig abstract Rob van Essens bekroonde roman De goede zoon (2018) biedt de lezers een verwarrende leeservaring. De roman bevat een wirwar aan verhaallijnen en heeft op het eerste gezicht nauwelijks samenhang. In deze bijdrage wordt geprobeerd compositie en betekenis te ontdekken door middel van een analyse van verschillende aspecten die uit de roman zelf naar voren komen: tijdsverloop, plot, sciencefiction, ideeën, poëtica. Daarmee ontstaat inzicht in een rijk reservoir aan betekenissen waarin het belang van scheppen en verbeelden een centrale plaats heeft. De roman, die beschouwd kan worden als een dystopische sciencefictionroman maar ook als een ideeënroman of een poëticale roman, lijkt ons te willen doordringen van de raadselachtigheid van de alledaagse werkelijkheid.

Military Stock Footage

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Hantke
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
The Public ◽  
Standard Device ◽  
The Common ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
The Military

This chapter focuses on the recruitment of the audience into the “military metaphysics” that C. Wright Mills decries as a symptom of America's Cold War mentality. More specifically, it reads attempts at recruitment made by science fiction films of the period through the use of military stock footage. Pilfering the public domain for footage to be inserted into one's own film was a standard device of inexpensive filmmaking that found one of its most extreme expressions in Alfred E. Green's Invasion U.S.A. (1952). Generally dismissed as a hack job and mercilessly lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000, Invasion U.S.A. is a prime example of a politically engaged film using one of the common stylistic devices of 1950s low-budget filmmaking.

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