Post 1. Romanticizing the Robot in Cosmic Soundscapes
“Heaven is Real”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0uBFMr_AKw
✨The above link will take you to the first song on the 2007 album Love is Real [Lacan, anyone?] by John Maus.
✨”Tenebrae”: also a good one set to some interesting imagery, aka nudity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6UkzIN5hlQ
“This deserted planet: it is so wonderfully, completely silent”. Watchmen (1986)
The title of this post refers to the similarly dreamy spaces in which we find these post-human beings, where each “creature” seems fixed on a type of earthly artifact. Both blue men (gendering) seem immersed in thought; perhaps they are capable of emotion, longing for whatever it is they miss back home.
✨The first image serves as the cover art for Love is Real (2007), an album by electronic musician John Maus. Further research of this image led me to discover its first appearance on the cover of The Metallic Muse (1972), a collection of short stories by science fiction author Lloyd Biggle, Jr.:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiJgcXMzdXKAhWJOiYKHfNsC2IQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mausspace.com%2FphpBB3%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D4%26t%3D18174&psig=AFQjCNHZZPJPK-zsSOaroKvN3znjjCqg_w&ust=1454372890688523
The garishly pink cosmic imagery has at its center, a robot playing the violin. What appear to be the letters S-P-Y label its glistening armor. The juxtaposition of this futuristic bot and its classical instrument offers a surrealistic portrait of blended technologies. Is playing the violin a learned trait here? How long does it take to perfect this skill, if at all? What role does memory play for this post-human robot?
🎻Apparently, creepy violin-playing robots are a thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzjkBwZtxp4
✨The second and probably more recognizable image is of Dr. Manhattan, the emotionally and physically damaged superhuman in the graphic novel Watchmen (1986). His transition (through disintegration) from human to the Other renders him a type of post-human entity, one who contemplates the realities of time, and other encounters with the symbolic order. Sitting on Mars and holding the “sands of time”, he solemnly reflects on the nature of his doomed planet. Is there solace in a post-human reality? What does humanity look like outside the confines of material Earth?
Both images also play with the idea of sound, particularly sound in the vacuum of space. Calling on the introductory chapters of The Acoustic City, we have learned that sound is possible, even where sound/noise is void or inaudible (such as in space).
Also, this (obviously manipulated) recording of the Comet 67P is personally unnerving:
https://soundcloud.com/esaops/a-singing-comet
