[-empyre-] Christiane Robbins: Resolution for Digital Futures

[Timothy Murray]

Back .... in the future.

It was 1984 (the Orwellian year) when I found an 
impressionable  version of myself at the Walker 
Art Center (Mpls.) attending Robert  Wilson's 
epic opera, the CIVIL warS.  The CIVIL warS has a 
notable  subtitle, "a tree is best measured when 
it is down."  This is an  old USA folksaying 
which Carl Sandburg used for the title of his 
chapter on the death of Abraham Lincoln. To 
invoke this folksaying in  response to Tim and 
Renate's call, at this moment in time, somehow 
seems appropriate.

Did someone say we even need yet another version 
of a digital  future?  The future isn't just the 
future ... it's us  ... and we're  imploding and 
exploding and who knows where we'll land ... but 
as  they say "a tree is best measured when it is 
down."

Clearly, the people of the USA are not hopeless, 
as we have  concretized that hope into our 
democratic process.  This will be  legitimized 
later this month when Obama lays his hand firmly 
on the  bible of Abraham Lincoln himself.  Let's 
simply hope that we have not  encased it without 
leaving any room for air.

But Š back to Š In the Future.  It was during 
this performance of  CIVIL WarS that I first 
heard David Byrne accompanying score(s) for  the 
Knee Plays , a sub-story that is woven through 
the tapestry of  the CIVIL wars.  It is a series 
of brief encounters which, as a  group, tells a 
tale of a tree, a boat and a book. In actuality 
they  functioned more as a punctuation - a 
diversionary hit - a call and  response between 
the major acts.

Relevant to this empyre post is a song from the 
Knee Plays titled  "In the Future" which has 
stayed with me to this day.  During my  commute 
on the 6 hour rather inglorious stretch of 
California's I-5,  I often listen to its' smart, 
percussive play and (at the time)  prescient 
lyrics:

"
In the future everyone will be very fat from the starchy diet.

In the future everyone will be very thin from not having enough to eat.
In the future it will be next to impossible to 
tell girls from boys,  even in bed.
In the future men will be "super-masculine" and 
women will be "ultra- feminine."
In the future everyone's house will be like a little fortress.

In the future everyone's house will be a total entertainment center.
In the future water will be expensive."
Š.

At times, we hover between the glam surface play 
engendered by  Silicon Valley giants and the 
dystopic Armageddon scripting of  science fiction 
which obscures our own sense of individuated 
vision  and agency.  As such, I invoke David 
Byrne's In the Future ( full  lyrics/link below ) 
as substantiation of such a moment when our own 
imaginings and desire went beyond the mere 
futuristic ... went beyond  the incessant replays 
of the production designs of science fiction, 
big box mallification and an amped-up reality 
distortion field  generator.  It speaks to when 
we can move beyond the always evolving  - but 
always really the same - the mash-up of market 
driven repros  of escapist dungeons and dragons 
Gothic ruins which have escalated  into Grand 
Theft Auto and Second Life - or the 
cyber-cinematic  clichés of a post-apocalyptic 
society - or the covert  militarization of our 
uber-entertained inner spaces - or the desolate 
outback settlements where well-fed New Agers have 
transformed the B  character actors of 70s 
Americana into an endless loop of the cast of 
the living dead - or the chirpy, 
self-enfranchising brandscapes of  social 
networking - stimulating a drip stream of muddled 
authenticity  and ambient intimacy.

In the Future speaks to a time in the past - and 
perhaps one soon  again - when we were/are 
really Š here Š and, truth be told,  where here 
is anymore seems only to be able to be found with 
a  divining rod.

So there it is Š my ( perhaps unresolvable ) 
resolution - my hope  - is for us all to unmask 
underlying structures of perception that  both 
frame and affect the visual experience of our 
global condition  of what Homi Bhabba refers to 
as " where is here?"   It is to explore  the 
currency of media images as a platform where 
abjection and desire  have become 
indistinguishable and, as such, to rather 
judiciously  expose the pervasive state of 
presumptive anxiety and flatness  engendered by 
the digital within our global cultures.



Knee Play 12:
In the Future

In the future everyone will have the same haircut and the same clothes.

In the future everyone will be very fat from the starchy diet..
In the future everyone will be very thin from not having enough to eat.

In the future it will be next to impossible to 
tell girls from boys,  even in bed.

In the future men will be "super-masculine" and 
women will be "ultra- feminine."

In the future half of us will be "mentally ill."

In the future there will be no religion or spiritualism of any sort.

In the future the "psychic arts" will be put to practical use.

In the future we will not think that "nature" is beautiful.

In the future the weather will always be the same.

In the future no one will fight with anyone else.

In the future there will be an atomic war.

In the future water will be expensive.

In the future all material items will be free.

In the future everyone's house will be like a little fortress.

In the future everyone's house will be a total entertainment center.

In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very happy.

In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very filthy.

In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very healthy.

In the future TV will be so good that the printed 
word will function  as an art form only.

In the future people with boring jobs will take pills to relieve the  boredom.

In the future no one will live in cities.

In the future there will be mini-wars going on everywhere.

In the future everyone will think about love all the time.
In the future political and other decisions will 
be based completely  on opinion polls.

In the future there will be machines which will 
produce a religious  experience in the user.

In the future there will be groups of wild people, living in the  wilderness.

In the future there will be only paper money, which will be  personalized.

In the future there will be a classless society.

In the future everyone will only get to go home once a year.

In the future everyone will stay home all the time.
In the future we will not have time for leisure activities.

In the future we will only "work" one day a week.

In the future our bodies will be shriveled up but our brains will be  bigger.

In the future there will be starving people everywhere.

In the future people will live in space.

In the future no one will be able to afford TV.

In the future the helpless will be killed.

In the future everyone will have their own style of way-out clothes.

In the future we will make love to anything anytime anywhere.

In the future there will be so much going on that 
no one will be able  to keep track of it.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngVGxYLRrZ0


Send "In The Future[knee Play 12]" Ringtone to Cell Phone



Christiane Robbins (US) is an artist, 
director/producer, researcher, and  educator 
based in Los Angeles + San Francisco, CA.

-- 
Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University