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Image by Jeffrey Wang – All Rights Reserved – Click Full Size
Two images that show contrasting angles of a theme being explored by the super talented creative, Jeffrey Wang. From the calm healing hands of angels that we sometimes feel around us, pushing through the fabric of reality from some realm of energy and love, to soothe our pains or simply hold us upright with confidence and power. To the claustrophobic experience of calamity that comes out of nowhere – the series of disastrous events nobody could have foreseen that tear us down from our fabricated pedestal of personal happiness, leaving us screaming into the dark hours of night and hunched against the fear that something malign has invaded our space.
Image by Jeffrey Wang – All Rights Reserved – Click Full Size
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Born in New York, Jeffrey Wang lives and works in the Far East. This duality of racial and cultural influences has left its mark on his creativity. Described as a visual artist – his skills reach deep and masterfully into the realms of branding, graphic design and fashion. Wang himself sees these images as portraying the danger women face against the power of material consumerism to overwhelm and consume the sense of self – women (and men) who forget who they really are, beneath the mannequin model caresses and couture of an icy smooth, art-exhibit slick, cold-hearted industry.
Still from Genesis video by GRIMES – click for full size
Before I say anything else. Go to Amazon or iTunes and buy this album – Visions, by Grimes. It’s phenomenal. If you know me or are familiar with my blog you’ll know I don’t make recommendations lightly. These guys like The Hacker’s album – Rêves Mécaniques – ingested through a sparkling haze of aerosol narcotics.
The video is from the single GENSIS (free download on soundcloud), taken from theVisions album. Great visuals that are suitably edgy and memorable to do justice to the jaw-dropping native talent of the album and artists its representing. This is great music but the video helps place it in the gritty gloss of tomorrow, embossing the sounds with the hallmark of Cyberpunk culture: 20 minutes into the future.
It’s David Lynch – Lost Highway – meets Olympic Airways by the Foals – just with more fake nails and lip gloss. Sniff deep and suck hard on the gong-pipe. This will make your face crease with a languid smile beneath half-lidded eyes.
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On a personal level, the sight of people so absorbed by alternative fashion that they appear almost alien – who are also riding around in combustion engine vehicles whilst carrying modern medieval weaponry – just captures the quintessential dichotomy of the world of Yellow Dawn. Yellow Dawn is the Earth of the near future after a cataclysmic event delivers apocalyptic changes to life on the planet. Survivors either cluster around a few Living Cities or cope with the new wilderness – bushcraft and patched-up technology. But a video like this shows the almost freakish collision of city survivors heading out into the new wilderness. Naive and thinking they can head out for some quick thrills facing off against a hostile environment or capable fear-junkies who have the ability to back up the action? How well they cope depends on what kind of guides they’ve invested in, and what kind of jacked up biological systems they’ve got inside of them – thanks to bioweave implants or the more grungy, hardcore tech of cybernetics.
It’s also another stellar signing by those devilishly clever folks at 4AD (think Dead Can Dance and Clan of Xymox) and more recently the ludicrously talented Purity Ring. Cyberpunk today. Yup. It’s happening super quick now. We’re sliding towards a singularity of burned chrome.
THE BLACK LAKE: The Earth has been ravaged by an event known as Yellow Dawn. Ten years later, survivors are putting lives back together and probing the frontiers of a new Wilderness; whilst overhead the orbital colonies slide across the sky, removed and unaffected. Five men leave the fortress island of Malta on an expedition to the sub-Arctic waters above Scotland. They intend to undertake scientific observations of an alien meteorological phenomenon that has followed the apocalyptic event. What they find is a cosmic horror that seethes amongst the shadows of a shattered Earth. It is a story of escape and wonder, of madness and terror. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of harsh reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a novel that tears open a rent in the boundary of reality, providing a nerve-jarring glimpse of the Outer Chaos and the horrors that lurk just beyond the threshold of our fragile, human existence.
Cyberpunk Citizen by Julia Noni – All Rights Reserved – Click Full Size
Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet. Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.
A very evocative image created by photographer Julia Noni capturing model Ajak Deng in full fashion pose, complete with chilled caffeine drink and wearable technology (conceptualised by Barbara Loison). In the my near-future sci-fi universe the choice for how people input output falls into the categories of total immersion (cybernetic implants connecting a device directly to the neural cortex) through to passive observers who utilise softscreens, hardscreens or wearable data viewing technology known as DVFrames. This photograph has actually expanded my own perceptions of how I might describe DVFrames – taking me away from the cold functional lines of things that look like chunky glasses to this über fashion statement: wraparound semi-faceplate formed from solid hydrogel in a range of urban colours.
You can see more of Julia Noni’s work here - although none of it crosses over into the cyberpunk genre. Merely a pleasing (futuristic) coincidence for this shoot. .
Joji Kojima – All Rights Reserved – Click Full Size
Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet. Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.
If you consider artists like LADY GAGA to be at the forefront of the fusion of cyberpunk concepts with present day reality, then Californian Joji Kojima is one of those creative drivers helping such artists realise that vision.
Kojima produces captivating work that pushes up against the boundaries of surealism and the bizarre.
And yet it is work that successfully invades the mind of the audience rather than repel it.
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Most importantly, Kojima is helping to forge a platform for other creatives to step onto and explore these themes in an environment where culture is being redefined at an ever increasing rate of change. Implant technology, synthetic biology, cybernetic prosthetics, exoskelton mobility systems, vat grown muscle and spray-on skin, and the evolution of viable bipedal robots and aeriel drones. Military and medical tech is backwashing onto society, whether you like it or not; some people are embracing it whilst others gather together online or in physical groups to protest against it. And in the near future, roughly 20 minutes into the future, the influence of such technology on every day life is going to escalate into the realm of the profound.
Joji Kojima – All Rights Reserved – Click Full Size
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Joji Kojima (born 1987 in California, U.S.A.) majored in graphic design, photography and typography in Tama Art University, Tokyo. In 2010 he established his own brand, JOJI KOJIMA. He has published his works at shops such as RESTIR in Tokyo, L’ECLAIREUR in Paris, and JOYCE in Hong Kong. He is also engaged in providing various artists in and around Japan with costumes and art directions.
Image by Terrorcat – All Rights Reserved – Click for full size
Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet. Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.
Another simple yet striking image by Terrorcat. A fusion of industrial club culture and the daylight hours operator who wants to express guarded sexuality and “don’t fuck with me” attitude. The edgy character of Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace version) injected into a post-apocalyptic setting – a personal persona cobbled together from whatever has been scavenged from the Dead Cities. Loving her work. Definately inspiration for a character in one of my novels; maybe a Novapunk for the next Yellow Dawn book.
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Terrorcat has a repository of photos exploring this theme.
IRON MAN PROJECT { cyberpunk novel } Ex-special forces man, Vincent Brent, is tough, ruthless and highly trained; he’s now using his skills for whoever will pay him without cashing in the bounty on his head. In this world of the near future, the UN has failed. Wars are fought in boardrooms through attorneys and politics, and on our streets with private armies of military or criminal assets. In Sicily, the Chief of Security for one such corporate alliance struggles to survive as hidden forces attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Both these men find their fates intertwined. In the cross-hairs of powerful adversaries, they must both make decisions of life and death in a choice between command and conscience. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of brutal reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a complex novel that will keep you turning pages until the end.
This is a wonderfully simple but effective piece of design. Adds new meaning to the idea of going out with bare legs. Comes via Abduzeedo, a site that thrives on inspiring and educating people with demonstrations of tips and techniques in design and photoshop.
Future fashion or post-apocalyptic decadence? Photography by Danil Golovkin – All Rights Reserved
Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet. Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.
Danil Golovkin is a Russian fashion photographer who has a spectacular eye for detail. These images come from a series that he calls Garbage Reign. For me, these characters could fit very easily into a decadent post-apocalyptic scenario, where the “top of the pile” survivors perpetuate the same-old human instincts of social isolation and exclusion through fashion – are you a part of the club? Equally as much this is pure cyberpunk, figures who float through the parties held by one of the corporate dynasties, members of the social elite or grifters waiting for the moment to move in on their mark. Certainly these are images good enough to inspire a myriad of ideas.
DOG EAT DOG { novel } takes place in the near future, after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen unleashed when a corporate cargo hauler crashed into the atmosphere; breaking up as a fireball across the sky, it showered Southern Europe and North Africa with a deadly rain of infected debris. Ten years later, over seventy percent of the human population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. So called ‘Living Cities’. The vast majority of human habitation is abandoned to the undying creatures left mutated through a brutal twist in the infection. Greed and corruption are left hovering over this bleak and brutalized domain and a cosmic horror is now free to infiltrate the remote abandoned corners of the Earth. Above this, the orbital colonies spin within artificial gravity wells, impartial observers, unaffected by the shocking events below. Within this mix the lives of two survivors collide: a renegade intelligence agent and a cold-blooded master of violence, shaping events with their virulent hunger for money and desire to carve their name onto this new world.
Toxic Bride by The Terrorcar - All Rights Reserved (click for full size)
Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet. Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.
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Another great image from Terrorcat. Techno rave culture meets the potential of a Cyberpunk future where people slip into ever more fragmented social niches – swapping from one to another, depending on the whim or needs of the day. With so much flexible identity how do we really tell who we really are? Except as the person staring back at us from the reflection in the mirror when we’re curled up on a sofa on a rainy Sunday afternoon; our favourite baggy comfort jumper on; pot of coffee on the sun-bleached and varnished wooden floor; dead glow sticks gathering dust beneath the vintage French club armchair; a packet of self-heating ramen noodles on our lap, steaming in the air that’s chilly because of strict energy rationing – a preference to have the luminous glow of a touch-matrix-holographic display floating just beyond the sofa’s edge… projecting text and video feeds from a mash-up of our favourite content providers. Data sponge. Waiting on the next new trend to replicate, master and perfect. What opinions to recycle to create interesting dialogue.
Girl hides behind a mask of white hydro-gel and holds hand of a hidden love. Or “cardboard cut out perfect man” projected onto a virtual canvas by smart image-mapping technology. Image perfected. Blog updated. Concept verified. Move on to something new. Who needs a real partner these days?
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Terrorcat has a repository of photos exploring this theme.
Cyberpunk ¦ digital photography – Toxic Alert by Terrorcat
Terrorcat - All Rights Reserved - Click for full size
Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet. Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.
Very sci-fi cyberpunk, Terrorcat yet again captures a high-definition blend of street-style fashion and a hint at some aspect of life in the not-too-distant future. She could be a member of any Occupy derivative primed and prepared for the next over-zealous crackdown by corporate-funded security teams; or a reveller within some orbital habitat, catching a boost of strawberry scented oxygen to feed muscles before the next clubbing high, stepping into a free-fall dance zone.
Terrorcat has a repository of photos exploring this theme.
Sears Online Department Store shows it’s taken the policy of accessibility for all to new levels.Click the image above to see offers you’ll want to DIE for. Very cool.
