Page 236 - Cyberculture and New Media

Alev Adil and Steve Kennedy 227
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In High Techne R.L Rutsky identifies how utopian representations
of technology are “‘spiritualized’, infused with an eternal fully present spirit
of life” whereas “in dystopian representations, the coming to life of
technology is presented as the product of an occult or supernatural
knowledge, of black magic…. The ‘dead’ technological object never
becomes fully living; it remains merely a simulation, undead, a technological
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monster or zombie.” Whilst anxieties around master/slave dialectic are
commonly expressed in cinema, and Spielberg seems to be making explicit
visual and verbal references to the Holocaust in depiction of the Flesh Fairs
in Artificial Intelligence: A.I., the crucial issue isn’t simply about whether
humanity is served or subjugated but whether the machine, cyborg or alien
attains individual sentience and morality –becomes auratic. From Rachel in
Blade Runner, the Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day to David, we
love the machine that manages to become imbued with the aura of individual
identity.
In Artificial Intelligence: A.I, David’s genealogy stretches from the
classical Hellenic myth of Pygmalion through Collodi’s Pinocchio to
Shelley’s Frankenstein. The film is inspired by a Brian Aldiss short story
Super Toys Last All Summer Long. The weave of discourses contained in the
imprinting spell or formula that makes David love Monica eternally reflects
this mixture of discourses – the natural (hurricane), aesthetic (tulip, dolphin),
philosophical (Socrates) and scientific (particle). A binaristic opposition
between machine utility and aesthetics is refused. Like cinema itself, David
needs both “flat fact” and “fairy tale” in his quest to become real. Cinema is a
medium whose aim is primarily psychological, and certainly in its popular
and commercial incarnation, film speaks to a collective imaginary or
unconscious rather than straightforwardly representing any individual
authorial intention or psyche. Symbols, whatever the medium they are
communicated in, operate in a discursive mode, which is distinct from logical
analysis or any rational epistemology, although they engage with the same
ontological dilemmas. Where technology becomes penetrative and aggressive
in the (paranoid) Frankenstein complex, it is prosthetic (memorial) in
mourning. The two approaches to conceptualizing technology are not
mutually exclusive. These films move between paranoia and mourning:
between the fear that the collective intelligence of technology will enslave
individual sentience and the hope that technology can stop time and return
our lost loved ones to us. In doing so they contribute to the Heideggerian
quest for essence.
As a technology film belongs in the modern world characterised by
enframing. As such it can be seen as an element central to dominant
discourse and normalising practice. However, it can equally operate at the
level of poiesis within a postmodern setting as Rutsky points out, to the