and the semi-recent film, Never Let Me Go:
There is something immensely creepy about scientifically engineered humans -- soulful, expendable, throwaway people (and this is a theme in both Never Let Me Go & Hanna). It made me wonder about nature versus nurture when nature is so heavily nurtured. There was a really interesting article in Discover about nature and nurture in the film, Hanna. Click here to read "Hanna: A Transhuman Tragedy of Nature vs Nurture."
In this www.high-tech world of "ambient awareness" via Twitter and the imminent Google chip implant, what are the boundaries of the human body, the reaches and worth of a soul? We're scientifically engineering our own memories, digitally enhancing, click-and-dragging our emotions into compartmentalized albums on Facebook. Does new technology give us longer lives, or lesser appreciation for the lives we create? In terms of reality extending beyond the narrative of our lives -- on blogs and Facebook walls -- and becoming stretched and indestructible like a science fiction-esque cloudless sky of singular consciousness, I think of Zadie Smith's incredible essay, "Generation Why." Click here to read the whole article. How does the timelessness of a cyber-sky affect the crafting of our personal design, avatar personas, online presences, and beautifully fragmented-and-integrated, constantly moving-and-improving personal narratives?
When we undulate involuntarily along a 'feed, moving like breath, rhythmic and typing, editing has become synonymous with existing.
Check out this amazing short film about the 'Today' project by Jonathan Harris. Harris creates and maintains a permanent string of images as a narrative life memory by taking a picture every day (it's like stop-motion soul-scribing):
This reminded me of something I listened to a while back on This American Life called 'Plan B.' The story near the end of the program reveals the rather mundane and somehow surprising and heartbreaking fate of inanimate objects. Click here to listen to the program.
Everything leaves traces behind. Everything has a narrative reality. But how permanent can a narrative become in terms of the traces it leaves behind? In the film Never Let Me Go, Kathy stands on a hilltop where lost things vanish. The feeling of that scene made me think of the fate of people as 'things' in science fiction and how modern science is transforming the fate of the narrative into cyber-sci-fi (even transforming within the narrative to extend beyond the boundaries of the narrative -- soul and memory dissipating in an easily accessible and expansive digital sky). In the story of our lives, humans trickle down a hill, fall to pieces and disappear into a Milky Way river of lost objects, live-streaming over the narrative horizon. We are carried away in the afternoon breeze. Gone?
Digital imprints are impressive. Nothing is ever lost or permanently erased on the Internet. We can shape beautiful designs and memories in the pixilated sand, untouched by the wind.
... just a passing thought :)
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