Week Two – Overview

Building upon what I had encountered in the previous week I felt a move from thinking about cyberculture in ‘technology’ terms to its consideration through a wider lens, that in effect cyberculture as an entity is part of a many-pieced jigsaw.

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.