This week has encouraged me to reflect on the value of perspective. That the experience of cyberculture differs depending on whose eyes it is being viewed through. The diner aliens conclusions that humans are meat-based, [They’re made out of meat], the casting director’s considerations of human attributes on an alien form [Gumdrop] and ‘everyday’ life as seen through the eyes of a human immersed in non-human form. [Avatar Days]

Both sections of the film festival ‘other world’ and ‘being human’ resonate what has been described as the recursive (Bell, 2001)nature of the borderlines separating real from unreal, a membrane dividing fact from fiction.

I became interested in the possibility that the employment or absence of colour could influence the viewer’s interpretation of a given environment as utopian / dystopian. I considered the power of colour.

Sterne’s (2006) The Historiography of Cyberculture, made me think a lot about the mammoth power of sound. I revisited the film clips with this in mind saw how the audio shaped the clips. Whether it is the unrelenting rain of Bladerunner or the sweet chirping birds of Worldbuilder…each element contributes to their scene in a specific way. This is an avenue I would like to explore further.

• Bell, D (2001) Storying cyberspace 1: material and symbolic stories, chapter 2 of An introduction to cybercultures. Abingdon: Routledge. pp6-29
• Sterne, J (2006) The historiography of cyberculture, chapter 1 of Critical cyberculture studies. New York University Press. pp.17-28.

How does if at all, the use of color contribute to the creation of  dystopian/utopian associations? The street scene above from the pre-schoolers TV program Balamory is used  as a setting for a happy environment where all problems may be resolved and life is pretty much picture perfect. The houses in this program are painted in bright cheery colors, instilling an association in the viewer that contentment may be depicted and expressed through color.

The use of pastel shades in the creation of a Utopian perfect suburbia is effortlessly captured through the street scene above, Edward Sissorhands. The repetitious use of colour  gives the viewer a sense of uniformity and ease with the familiarity of the visual structure.

The absence of color may be equally instrumental in the creation of a utopian / dystopian association. In the EDC course movie Worldbuilder (2009), we witness the creation of an environment through the use of colour in an empty canvass. It is through this colour that the creator fabricated textures, shades and objects. The end result is a city mirroring all of the elements found within a  ’real’ city.

At one point the creator builds a flower. Unhappy with its composition he returns to it to further enhance its beauty and realism…through the concentration of yellow colour.

Real = Beauty

Beauty =Colour

Landscape devoid of colour conjures association with dystopian state. We see in Splitting the Atom / Massive Attack (2010) that shades of grey and black dominate the video and the limited use of colour, the blood red eyes of the shackled jaguar and the skeleton sentry serve to highlight the bleak  horror of the city battle scenes. The reworking of this scene in pastel shades could not convey the same meaning. Likewise, a visual overhaul of Balamory in black, white or sepia would have pre-schoolers scrambling for the remote.

Minority Report (2002)

Visual representation of the recursive relationship between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’

Bell (2001) Storying cyberspace 1: Material and symbolic stories