lu-cameron

[lu-cameron]

Final Essay: Bjork's All is Full of Love meets a Cyborg Manifesto

Is all full of love, even humanoid robots? Directed by Chris Cunningham, 1997, Bjork’s All is Full of Love music video is a visual and technical sensation. Extremely cutting-edge, the video uses engineering, CGI, computer graphics, and industrial robotics to create a mechanical and erotic world. 

By watching Bjork’s music video and by reading Donna Hanaway’s A Cyborg Manifesto, we can dismantle preconceived ideas of AI and imagine a more dynamic future of robotics as it becomes increasingly more tangible. Guided by Chris Cunningham’s visuals and Hanaway’s words, we can inject elements of  post-humanism into our daily lives; the works push us to question our realities and what is means to be “human” and to feel love. 

When I think of the title of bjorks song: All is full of love.... it puts immense power on the word "All." She means every thing, living and non living creatures. I think she is talking about a life force, an energy that runs through everything, that "all" is exploding with love. 13 years before Bjork’s video, A Cyborg Manifesto was written by Donna Haraway in 1984. It is an exploration of socialist feminism and the ways cyborgs are more common in our lives than we think. “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (291). “The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality . . . the relation between organism and machine has been a border war” (293). I am interested in the relation between organism and machine, between mechanical and “human.” The very human and guttural, choral, soft yet chaotic melodies of Bjork’s voice contrasts with the sharp mechanical simplicity and clinical sterility of the video. 

The viewer is presented with a set and two characters. The colors are white and black, with quiet blue and purples hues and stark lighting. Unlike many music videos today, where dramatic costume and scene changes take place, whipping you from one storyboard to another, as though the director crammed his eight ideas into 2 minutes, Chris Cunningham keeps us in one environment. I did some research on the making of this video, and the director had been obsessed with robotics as a teenager. He worked with technicians to build the female android, and then they used computer graphics in post production to generate the machines that look like something you see at the dentists, or at NASA's JPL. In A Cyborg Manifesto, Hanaway writes about the power of electronics in modern world: “Microelectronics mediate the translations of labour into robotics, sex into genetic engineering and reproductive technologies, and mind into artificial intelligence” (303).

The video reminds me of our class discussions of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, post humanism, technoparanoia, and the ever developing cosmos of digital technology. It combines two things I'm interested in: science and art. Clearly, magic happens when these two domains collide. The video can also be tied to Westworld, a show we watched about a futuristic, capitalist world where robots seem so “real” because they express human emotion and deep comprehension of feeling. 

In the video, an erotic connection happens. In the primary shots of the video, we see an android alone. Yet soon, a second android appears and extends her hand in a friendly way. She smiles. In A Cyborg Manifesto, Hanaway explores cyborg sexuality: “the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate. Cyborgs are needy for connection . . . the main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism.” The two female androids, either Bjork’s mirrored self or a separate being, embrace, underscoring Hanaway’s argument that they are needy for connection. It’s as if the bots move from frozen to melting... from a still, solid body lying on its side to a fluid, kinetic interaction.  “A coupling between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality. Cyborg ‘sex’ restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates (such nice organic prophylactics against heterosexism)” (292). Since it is two females kissing, this coupling moves against heterosexism. 

I thought briefly about the sexualization of the female body here, especially since it's directed by a man. I thought about why there was a choice to accentuate the robots hips and breasts.In the video, aside from touching each other’s derrieres, we see the female android on the right reach her hand slowly and tenderly into the crotch area of her partner, a subtle and tender movement occurs to suggest vaginal stimulation. I thought briefly about the kinky obsession with sex dolls and mechanical sex toys and robotic sexual partners. I thought about people's sexual digital interactions through avatars on games like Second Life and the Sims. I thought about how many modern electronic sex toys turn us into cyborgs when we use them. The definition of a cyborg is “a person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.” When devices are inserted into or applied to the body for sexual pleasure, we take on a mechanical element that allows us to achieve orgasm beyond the normal human limitation. 

Fluid is an important image in the video. When the two androids connect, a milky water streams through the machines and pours into the previously dry, sterile environment. The uncontrollable liquid opposes the tight grid of the set. “People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque. Cyborgs are there, quintessence” (297). Hanaways argues that cyborgs are fluid beings, and as material and opaque as the milky liquid in the video. The first time we see the fluid, it is flowing in reverse up from the white floor and around the android’s navel. This milky water gives a sense of cleansing, of motion, of the one element crucial to human survival. When we think of electronics and water, the two don’t mix well usually. We are taught to keep plugged-in appliances far away from the bath, and we learn about electrocution at a young age. We also know that if we spill water on our computers or drop our phones in the pool, they are ruined. Yet the liquid in this video does not interfere with the electronics. It flows beautifully, like the multiple mechanical hands of the two black robots. The constantly moving machines caress the android’s bodies. They tinker, drill, screw, and tickle. Are they building her? Repairing her? They touch her without ceasing. “The new technologies affect the social relations of both sexuality and of reproduction. The close ties of sexuality and instrumentality, of views of the body as a kind of private satisfaction and utility-maximizing machine depend on a high-tech view of the body as a biotic component or cybernetic communications system” (308).

Furthermore, since Bjork’s partner bot is a mirror image of her, I thought about self love; is it Bjork’s way of telling us to love ourselves? Or is it a lesbian robot? A bisexual robot? A queer robot? The conscious choice to make it two females, and not the age-old binary fairytale of a male and female, is wonderfully boundary-pushing. “Many women’s lives have been structured around employment in electronics, and their intimate realities include serial heterosexual monogamy” (304). This video moves away from serial heterosexual monogamy, yet we can’t assume that the android is necessarily  homosexual. The video goes beyond labels and sexual classification. I don't want to get strangled by terminology. A nude body isn't always sexual or shocking. Futuristic technology isn't evil or frightening. It is joyful, sex should be. The video transcends our culture’s obsession with theoretical terminology, and sometimes all-consuming/confusing/distracting/navel-gazing talks of gender and feminism (especially in college.) The video also goes beyond our society's obsession with sex. If we can watch this video without constant definition, we can see much more. We can simply feel and let the visuals arise without getting wrapped up and ultimately lost in defining or questioning. It is a immaculately made video about love and the first time I saw it, I felt immense warmth.

Is it a visual prophecy? As the modern news talks more and more about AI, we feel as though there is a lost sense of human connection and tactile warmth with the growth of technology. Yet Bjork’s video dispels this myth and shows a world of flaming tender connection between two androids. It doesn’t matter who we are, or what we are made out of. We are all made of love. We are titillated and enthralled by the kissing robots as Bjork’s voice escalates into full expression. It's is other worldly. We do not see the creator of the robot, the people behind the machines. The video makes us think of robots differently. AI doesn't have to be distant and cold. It doesn't have to be frightening and mechanical. It doesn't have to be emotionless and monotonous. As Hanaway puts it, “Why should our bodies end at the skin? Machines can be animated –– given ghostly souls to make them speak or move. Machines can be prosthetic devices, intimate components, friendly selves” (314). All sort of looks like AI.... AI is full of love? 

Sterility / Coldness / Blue light / Eerie / Computers / Clinical / Operation / Robot / Sharp / Angular / Calculated / Machines

Female body / Sensuality / Emotion / Passion / Desire / Post human / Unpredictable / Shocking / Shadow / Light / Woman / Embrace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI2J2SQ528

[lu-cameron]

Westworld analysis

Westworld is a futuristic yet somewhat disturbingly dystopic world, a clash between high-tech modern sci-fi and an old-school spaghetti western.

It is similar to the would you kindly thing, where an unseen hypnotizer rules over people’s minds. Slowly we learn about the “guests” and the “hosts.” The hosts are programmed characters who live in Westworld, like a video game. The guests are rich visitors living out their dumb western fantasies, like riding horses, shooting people, witnessing saloon brawls, having prostitutes, wearing costumes. The hosts are very real seeming, but the guests must be able to slightly be aware that they are “fake.” The little boy says to Dolores that she’s fake, he is a guest there with his parents. She doesn’t understand and ignores his question. 

An update on all the hosts has caused a serious of glitches; where the robots stop functioning smoothly. One gets seizures, one starts killing other hosts. Dolores’s father glitches, and has a breakdown. He seems to have a moment of horrific clarity, and he tells Dolores: “violent delights have violent ends.” I think what Doloroses father means by this is that these silly, foolish, violent games the rich hosts play by escaping to a fantasy at the expense of robotic emotions and lives is sickening. Personally, although the concept is strong, I think Westworld could use some help in the editing, script, and costume departments. But maybe the Western world is supposed to look cheesy? The interior laboratory is pretty well done and convincing, but it feels a bit predictable at times. 

There is a lot of foreshadowing at the end of the episode, like we start to think the robots are going to turn on the hosts. A voice says to Dolores in the beginning and end... “you’re in a dream,” and she has never question the nature of her reality. We don’t think she is a robot at first, but slowly we understand that she is. Especially when she is being interrogated by the programmer. She appears calm, put together, mindless, and peaceful, yet I think she has darker motives. One of the programmers in the high-tech “real” world even says himself that there is a darker bigger picture to this game. Is it for power? Control? Money? World domination? How many robots can they produce? The opening credits use a 3D printing-like machine to create the robots. What if in the future, a whole person could be 3D printed?

I am unclear on who the man in the black hat is. I found the fact that he scalped the man in the end very disturbing, and there was a strange pattern on the scalp. Like a maze, or the pattern of a brain, or some sort of circuit. What is this? Is he a host or a guest? Scenes repeat, you feel as if you are lucid dreaming. I particularly like the last scene where right after Dolores says she would never hurt a living thing, she kills a fly on her neck. 

[lu-cameron]

Monsters

what is a monster to you? How would you define the word “monster”? 

A monster is someone/something that takes pleasure in harming/terrifying/horrifying/traumatizing other people/things. Monsters are willing and want to hurt others. A monster causes pain, hate, lust, fear... a monster is deceitful, sneaky, bitter, treacherous, egotistic, cunningly malevolent and has no empathy. A monster is night, hiding, distortion.

What does Cohen mean when he says that “the monster’s body is a cultural body” (4)? 

A monster is created out of the fears of the zeitgeist. Certain periods have birthed certain monsters in history, and every culture has it’s own demons/evil creatures/beasts/monsters. We all have the same fears, we just give them different names/characters. The scariest monsters are the ones inside us. Monsters reveal what we loathe, but also what we are fascinated by.

Which of his other theses resonate with you? Which don’t?

Thesis iv: the monster dwells at the gates of difference. Monsters are always the outsiders, the other. Like in X-Men, Monsters Inc., and Frankenstein. Monsters are shunned, feared, chased away, prayed away. What we are repelling is the traits we most abhor in our own psyches. “the Monster is an incorporation of the outside, the beyond -- all of those loci that are rhetorically placed as distant and distinct but originate Within.�� Monsters can be used as propaganda, when we portray others as monstrous in order to serve a motive / persuade the masses, such as the Biblical example where the original inhabitants of Canaan are portrayed as horrible giants in order to justify the hebrew colonization of the Promised Land. And when the medieval French people portrayed Muslims as demonic caricatures. This is similar to today’s rampant Islamophobia and the European settlers terrorizing Native Americans and portraying them as savages.

How are monsters our “children” (20)? 

Monsters are our children because we create them. We write them, we tell stories, we whisper their haunting secrets, we create nightmares in our heads about them, we have imagined a reality for them to exist in.

why do we create monsters? 

Because there is never light without dark, Humans are obsessed by and fascinated with monsters, humans desire what is wrong. Race, gender, physicality, psychology.... “They ask us why we have created them.”

What are some of your tentative thoughts?

It seems as thought the author talks a lot about monsters having deformities, or being ugly big things with distorted bodies...or he talks about fantastical mythological beasts... but I think monsters can exist in normal, everyday life and look exactly like you and me.

[lu-cameron]

Memento: a postmodern film

Memento is a whirlwind, and breaks down all traditional forms of chronological film structure. The viewer is in a state of confusion over time and space, and we are suspended in an unsure reality. We begin to doubt our own short-term memories of the storyline, like the main character. Nolan’s message is that truth is relative fragmentation, and that we believe what we are shown. The main character builds himself a trap by believing the words tattooed on his body and written on his polaroids. He is in a constant, mind-bending cycle of mistrust and trust, of paranoia. The film is postmodern because it subverts the mainstream conventions of narrative structure; it tests the audience’s sense of belief and disbelief. 

We are constantly questioning who is trustworthy in the film; for example, is Natalie the girl to trust? Is Teddy a reliable guy? Is everyone taking advantage of Leonard’s condition? There is no solidity in Memento; only a serious of backwards plot lines, our eyes are shown a beginning at the end, and an end at the beginning. 

Who is the hero? Leonard reveals himself to be sort of an anti-hero. In the beginning, we love him for his unconditional love for his deceased wife, and we admire his relentless pursuit for revenge. We pity him for his memory loss and hope he will find the killer. Slowly, Leonard becomes more reckless, violent, menacing, and sneaky. By the end of the film, we are told that it was he who killed his wife with too much insulin. Yes, the wife had been attacked by junkies, but she survived. Leonard is in a state of extreme denial. 

[lu-cameron]

Remix: The Legend of Billie Jean remixed by Katy Perry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thfbA7zLMsA

32 years later . . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10aCfqViiHU

Katy Perry remixed the look of the main character in the 1985 film, The Legend of Billie Jean. In the film, a young, spunky girl is inspired by Joan of Arc and cuts her long, beautiful hair off into a pixie cut. She sports one big earring and a ripped neoprene vest, and she leads a group of kids on a righteousness journey. Katy Perry recently cut her hair short in a boyish, punk, bleached style, infuriating many of her fans. Perry says she cut her hair for a drastic change, to disidentify with the “Katy Perry” character she had created. In the photo below, she spots on large earring (a popular trend at the moment,) and a powerful suit while performing. I like that the two girl’s expression is similar in these photos I screen grabbed; concentrated, intense, slightly furrowed brows and big blue eyes. Does Katy Perry know about the 1985 film The Legend of Billie Jean? Definitely. She’s remixed an old cult favorite into a 2017 feminist, millennial look. It’s Katy Perry’s (and Billie jean’s,) desire to be seen as “brave” and "edgy." The bleached-blonde crop is androgynous, unusual, and often a rejection of earlier, more traditionally "pretty" look. It's hair as rebellion. 

It’s interesting to me how if a woman cuts her hair, it is either humiliating and dehumanizing, (Joan of Arc, Auschwitz, alopecia,) or empowering and rebellious (pop stars, feminists, politicians.)

[lu-cameron]

Les Sucettes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-iysdFu_TQ

We first see a row of wrapped lollipops. A beautiful young blonde rises and takes a lollipop. A quick image of a woman sucking a pop appears. She stares into the camera and sucks. Suddenly large, almost surrealist, comically costumed lollipops dance around Gall. (They look nothing like the original wrapped lolly we see in the first shot.) They twirl and tilt, looking like penises! Women seductively continue to insert the phallic lollipops into their mouths. Each pop is decorated with different patterns. Eventually, Gall herself inserts a pop between her lips. She is dressed in all white, her hair perfectly done, a shining, adorable, naive songstress surrounded by huge awkward lollipop people and more experienced-looking women sucking the exaggerated length of the pops, their coy eyes painting with a heavy cat-eye style black liner. 

Gall herself appears fresh, glowingly pure, and without makeup. She smiles and sings in her childish and unaffected voice. The other women are brunettes, and dressed in skin-tight black clothes, suggesting age and eroticism. The song itself sounds like a nursery rhyme. This video was made in 1966, and through the postmodern lens, its heightened sexual allusion makes the viewer slightly intrigued, but mostly uncomfortable. Gall herself was underage when they filmed this video, and later admitted that she didn’t know what the director was slyly referencing (fellatio.) The video editing cuts repeatedly back and forth between a beaming Gall, the strange costumed lollipops, and the sexually-aware sucking women. 

Sucettes is french for lollipop. A 17 year old France Gall sings innocently about a girl enjoying a lollipop. Serge Gainsbourg (the old dog,) directed this video. It’s completely about oral sex, and the poor young girl exploited for her youthful, maiden-ilke image surrounded by phallic lollipops in a sort of postmodern, tongue-in-cheek gag. Gainsbourg also wrote the lyrics, so he knew very well what he was tricking Gall into. This music video makes you question whether this is wrong, right, disgusting, cute, silly, creative, humiliating, and/or titillating.

Th underlying message of this video is the fetishization of underaged girls, the glorification/deification of the male sexual organ, and the idea that the feminine role is to serve/please/submit to men. This was directed by a man, (and clearly has a man’s point of view,) but would it be different if directed by a woman? Since we objectify ourselves already, (makeup, clothing, hair, perfume...) how would this video be different if made from a female perspective? After all, the women sucking the lollipops seem very aware of the innuendo and have a certain control/coy dominance in their eyes. In the end, who’s really on top? The person who knows their power of giving pleasure, or the person receiving/viewing?

[lu-cameron]

Evolution or devolution: if you think backwards, you remake the past. If you think forward, you move forward.

LUISA CAMERON

I disagree with the statement that “popular style has been stuck on repeat.” First, we must consider that this article was written in 2011. In 2011, the hipster was at his peak, but the hipster is now dead. Secondly, it has always been trendy to conjure up past trends, this is not a new phenomenon. Humans have always consumed the past; it is from the past that we learn how to create new. Learning history forces us to think of things that haven’t been done before.

In fashion history, there have been periods when referencing a past time look was fashionable. For example, in the 1970′s, there was a moment when looking like you had just arrived from a victorian/edwardian prairie was cool. In the 1920′s, referencing ancient Egypt was very trendy; the flappers were extremely influenced by ancient Egyptian garb and makeup. Even their famous flat black bob resembles the hairstyles of Egyptian women and men. This is also seen in the Art Deco movement. Cultural nostalgia is nothing new. When I look at what the 80′s produced (by the way, 80’s pop culture was obsessed with the 50s), I see a huge difference from now.

What is new? Realistically, not much has been done that hasn’t been done before. But is that a good way to think? Who wants realism? Not me. I want the fantastic, the illogical, the impractical. New comes from ideology, from futuristic, hopeful minds.

Technology is synonymous with popular culture now because everything is processed/made digitally. Gender neutral is now, eco-friendly is now, politically-involved youth is now. I feel like this article was written by a somewhat bitter, aging man who isn’t truly connected with modern trends. Possibly one of the reason’s that trends seem recycled is the growing popularity of second-hand stores and vintage stores. Recycling clothes is much better than buying new ones; and many of the clothes in places like Goodwill are donated by older people from another generation. So young people (who have the choice of thrift shopping, unlike many lower income people who’s only choice it is,) are wearing those clothes because they are more conscious of overconsumption and capitalistic, materialistic America. Maybe people care less about superficial pop culture trend changes now; maybe trends haven’t changed much because people are more focused on real issues, because the information technology at our disposal has allowed us to learn more about the Earth and become sick of trivial trends.

We recognize that everyone is trying to sell us something, so why bother with that? If it’s silly or superficial or smells of capitalism, we won't waste our time on it (even though we are stuck in an uber-capitalist system.)  Even this sentence: “what we’re wearing and driving and designing—” seems trivial to me in relation to real problems people face in the wake of this self-centered modern mind. Maybe no change is happening because we are staring into screens instead of each other’s eyes, we are talking with the illusion of emotion, the emoji instead of mouth to mouth. We see through branding because everyone is a creative director now, we brand ourselves everyday.

Art students have historically been the one’s who create and push future trends, and give energy to movements and designs. Real evolution and revolution comes when humans expand their minds and abilities with the tools they have at hand. In the case of Ramapithecus, it was the simple stone tools. Today, with modern humans, it is digital technologies. But most people use this digital tool passively, instead of actively. It is an observing tool, a voyeuristic, searching device instead of an active form of creation (except artists, engineers, writers, teachers, etc.)

Music has changed a LOT in the past 20 years. And not just HOW we listen to it. Sure, records came back. But the sound of those records is insanely new sounding compared to a record from the 80s. For example, genres like trap boom with individuality.

This article makes me angry. It fuels me to not conform and to push myself to think futuristically, instead of revamping the past. I don’t want the author to be right. “I feel as if the whole culture is stoned, listening to an LP that’s been skipping for decades, playing the same groove over and over. Nobody has the wit or gumption to stand up and lift the stylus.” This sentence makes me sad. It is at once a depressing, fatalist view, but also a call to action. If we embrace technology (such technology in medicine, space, and art,) and are not afraid of it, we will be able to work with it. But we also must not become dependent on computers and phones for doing all the original thinking for us! A microchip is not your brain, Instagram can be a distraction, and Google is the easiest way to copy and paste the past.

an article i found enlightening: 

https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now?curator=MediaREDEF