Showing posts with label World on a Wire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World on a Wire. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Welt am Draht (World on a Wire - Part 2)

It's not for me to say how influential Welt am Draht was, but it came out in 1973 with ideas that seem like they were ahead of their time.

Although I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of '60s and '70s sci-fi, I wasn't expecting the film to be in line with late 20th and 21st century shenanigans (it's the earliest example I can think of which showcased such ideas).

It concerns virtual environments within virtual environments with some characters aware of their electronic anatomies, eventually responding with paranoid pride, in relation to fractious fundamentals.

The parallels with Star Trek: The Next Generation's Moriarty holodeck character are striking and it may have been where STNG originally found the idea.

Although contemporaneity suggests that different writers were likely thinking about the same ideas simultaneously, if I understand the concept correctly, finding alternative modes for similar hypotheses which various people were considering at the time.

With Welt am Draht's different virtual environments there's a set up similar to Total Recall as well, where people can virtually live someone else's life to gain surrogate sensation. 

Thus, once again, Philip K. Dick may have provided the framework which another artist then expanded upon in his or her work, his story We Can Dream it for You Wholesale (Total Recall) having appeared in 1966.

Thus, Star Trek's holodeck and Total Recall combine as characters within the dreamscapes become aware of their existence, and then seek knowledge of the world beyond while trying to avoid distressing authorities. 

Where does the dreamscape begin, without origins is there organic life?

Multiple dimensions existing in exponential parallel ethereally linked through electronic spirit?

Conscious and substantially determinate yet existentially star-crossed in manifold chrysalis.

Like on Star Trek: The Next Generation I suppose, in episodes which play with space and time, notably Parallels which sees Worf disrupt the universe on his way home from a bat'leth tournament.

Who's to say who's taken different manifestations of these ideas to their most compelling extremes, but The Matrix did an excellent job, and it looks like they're making another sequel.

The first part of Welt am Draht pulls you in with cryptic offbeat uncanny rhythms, it's cool to watch as Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) slowly discovers the blueprints of his reality.

The second part doesn't add much but it's a cool drawn out conclusion.

It's fun to watch sci-fi sans special effects.

Love it when technological constraints don't spoil good storytelling.

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Welt am Draht (World on a Wire - Part 1)

The real world composed of constituent parts practically indicating material projections, consistent tradition reliably upheld as concrete forms refrain from transfiguration.

Fortunately, as time passes and resonant patterns are detected, one is able to generally predict what will physically emerge, structural dependability routinely reckoning as if coherence were indeed endemic, the same buildings appearing on the same streets, libraries convergent, impeccable sandwiches.

The sure and steady can lack variety so spice is eagerly sought like in Plato's Republic, and tempting alternatives emphatically compete to provide soulful sustenance exotic flavour.

Thus the arts envision trajectories upon which to reimagine certified certainty, various in/distinct bold metamorphoses cleverly conjuring kaleidoscopic craving.

Sentiment and novelty oscillate within as abstract patterns extract newfound tradition, but with less elementary toned durability than a street or a house one might expect to see.

Gregarious garnishes astounding adornments laidback lynchpins sombre tomes, remonstrance rhetoric polarities syntheses multiform blends unilateral conceit.

Proceeding with an open-mind may lead to fulfilling multilateral abundance, with intuitive hierarchies inevitably developing, kept in check through reflexive consumption.

Are you too specialized too arcane too generic, too lacking in practical sense?, such questions can lead to a more diverse palette if one can be bothered to consider them effortlessly.

Aren't buffets the best a feed at the trough when they're well-prepared, plate after plate of sumptuous treats judiciously accompanied with varied desserts?

It seems like the will of the pandemic is to encourage lush virtual environments, but after spending so much time indoors it'd be nice to pitch a tent in Parc Jeanne-Mance. 

Welt am Draht (World on a Wire) examines virtual realities as artificial intelligence emerges within them, layers upon layers of structural mimesis provocatively contemplating organic life.

Who's to say if this world we live in isn't a computer program ingeniously manufactured?

I used to think that until I broke my finger.

Related ephemera notwithstanding.