Avatars, Frankenstein, Computer Games, Science Fiction and Otherness

Before we start back on our digital cultures unit and the discussion of “The Body and New Media” , I thought that it was worthwhile adding to my comments in the number of my entries over the last month or so that explored Romanticism and the sublime. I also began to examine some of the general themes of cyberculture and cybernetics. I began to ponder the continuing power exerted over our collective imaginations of one of the great creations of horror fiction. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) claimed to be the first science fiction novel, infuses elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic Movement. It is seen as a critique of enlightenment ideas and a warning against the technological advancements promised by the industrial revolution and science. The tale can also be seen as a critique of the French Revolution and horrors of the Terror that it unleashed.


Today the name Frankenstein has become synonymous with anxieties over science ‘going too far’. We see this in collective responses to GM crops and what we refer to as ‘Frankenstein foods’. Genetic engineering also conjures up images of the ‘mad doctor’. Science then, instead of benefiting humankind, is seen to be threatening its very existence.Frankenstein also encodes other fears and anxieties. In what way is Frankenstein’s creature monstrous? Does the creature embody our fears of difference/the other? For example, what anxieties are being expressed in James Whale’s 1931 adaptation? Are we meant to feel sympathy for the creature? Different contexts may generate different meanings. What kind of fears is expressed with films and comic books like the X-Men? Ian McKellen speaks very eloquently about his role in the film (no video posting I am afraid). The Cyborg Handbook discusses the character of Wolverine and other popular cultural examples alongside science fact.

As well as looking at the many contemporary manifestations of Dr Frankenstein and his terrible Creature: from computer games to film, animation and cybernetics, we may note that the novel also alludes to other earlier myths: creation stories, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, the Jewish myth of the Golem and classical mythology (as suggested by Shelley’s subtitle: the Modern Prometheus).

Some more contemporary examples:

Chico Macmurtrie, Machine and Robotic Performance Artist:

Stelarc: Performance artist whose work focuses on extending the capabilities of the human body.

Chico Macmurtrie, Amorphic Robot Works: http://amorphicrobotworks.org/works/index.htm

Stelarc Online: http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/

Digital Culture 4: Control Society

Cloud Culture: http://www.counterpoint-online.org/cloud-culture-a-new-counterpoint-publication-and-ica-debate/



Deleuze, Postscript on the Societies of Control: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=GIus7lm_ZK0

Digital Culture 3: Archive Fever

Memory Trade: A Prehistory of Cyberculture by Darren Tofts & Murray McKeich.

The above book Memory Trade: A Prehistory of Cyberculture, is full of digital illustrations of bodies by Murray McKeich that are part Svankmajer, part Giger and part Tetsuo: both surreal and technofetishist in nature.

Chapter 3: Total Recall.

"The appeal of recollection is this jump by which I place myself in the virtual" - Gilles Deleuze.

This chapter deals with the technology of writing as an extension of human memory. It gives us a history of technologies: from the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks: the Socratic complaint about logocentrism; to the the calculating machines of Liebeniz and Babbage.

Vanervar Bush

Memex (1945)

"He [mankind] has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory."

Ted Nelson

Hypertext was coined by the researcher Ted Nelson to define writing done in a non-linear or consequential verbal structures made possible by the computer. The use of hypertext would produce an essay or story that would offer multiple paths of alternate paths in linking segments. Literature in Nelson's mind is characterized as a system of interconnected documents.

Hypertext presents cultural artefacts that are interactive, that is pluralistic in its discourse and polyvocal, freeing the reader from the dominance of the author. Hypertext enables scholars to find linkages through tracing keywords through single books and whole bodies of scholarship.

Borges, The Library of Babel: http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html