timespace coordinates: 1955 > early 1980s Mercer, Ohio. Mercer is home to the Mercer Center for Experimental Physics, an underground facility known as the Loop. It is there where researchers attempt to “make the impossible possible”.
Tales from the Loop is an American science fiction drama web television series based on the art book of the same name by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag(536). The series premiered on Amazon Prime Video on April 3, 2020. All eight episodes of the first season were released simultaneously. (wiki)
David Baird from the B.C. Catholic characterizes the series as “a set of loosely interrelated meditations upon ephemerality, the impact of technology, and human vulnerability infused with a mild science fiction savour” and considers it “a beguiling fusion of forward-looking nostalgia”.
“A computer engineer investigates the secretive development division in her company, which she believes is behind the disappearance of her boyfriend.”
Alex Garland that left quite an indelible mark with his Annihilation and Ex Machina is now back with a Hulu (FX on Hulu) series largely about quantum computing, the fabric of reality, alternate history, Silicon Valley, affects and technology. It is also true that this base realty of the Silicon Valley has somehow (at least BC/ Before Corona) come to crowd out every other reality. I want to briefly highlight what struck me most about the series, it is a very mysterious, vague, eerie episodes that play with non linearity and temporal paradoxes, so a plot-line synopsis will completely miss the mark. I am also thankful that it avoids all the boring old determinsm-non determinism discussions and all the free will dead alleys. What is more important is what is left unsaid, or where one can extend and speculate with and around this series. It looks and feels in a certain way, which is definitely a lack in most your run-of-the-mill Sci-fi’s. The closest I can think of is the wonderful noir Cold War Sci-fi 1973 World on a Wire by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In my mind it almost picks up where the other one left.
Devs could be all matter of things, I had good friends who recommended the series (big thx to that) speculating about the title of it even, so I am not gonna continue that venue here. Also no major spoilers I hope.
It is first I think a quant (?!) entrepreneur space, before it is a quantum computing space hosting the ideas and the very hermetic, secretive environment where the possibilities of quantum computing are slowly emerging as the each episode slowly. It is almost a chosen self-image of West Coast Institutes and Tech Giants. But instead of lofty, Alphabet (Google) AI golems, it’s rather the particular circumstance – it is animated by intimate loss close to home. I can see that it is inspired and could in its turn inspire (fictional?) the design of future enterprises. It also illustrates the quasi- sacral character of such a re-search lab, the secretive self-absorbed atmosphere, where the toughest and most brutal number crunching meets contemporary art meets gnostic ideals, where each level of access or mystery is approached with kabbalistic reverence mixed in with the most vulgar, violent and bloody means.
It incorporates what Eric Davis (Techgnosis) and others have highlighted, when recognizing that such secular Institutes and limited access facilities exude an almost monastic air, and the more lowly or titillating and profane its actual results, aims or content, the more it speaks to us in tongues. It also speaks of the banality of access & time travel, of surfing history, of prying into the wounds of the past. Its stark, minimalist, highly aesthetic look is a statement of the whole rapture of the nerds maybe. It might be repulsive, sterile but it is what it is, it is made in the image of its maker. And the maker needs to inhabit this floating, suspended fractal golden cube. At the same time this detachment from the lowly, from matter, even its dealing with bodies that are burned, suffocated, drowned speaks about a certain fury applied, a violence suffered and thrown at the flesh it needs to instantiate in order to surpass. It is almost as if bodies have to be martyred in order to achieve any measure of earthly detachment or technological success.
2. Same time there is some incredible almost melodic, tonal interplay of sentiments, they are not just attachments for the audience to approach such a difficult subject, in fact one can feel how these affects that seem almost autonomous, a shadowplay of research into abstruse knowledge. Affects intervene, subtend & promote actions, also interfere, flash forward, move around and lead the whole highly abstract endeavor. What I like is its lack of theoretization, its sub theorizing. Of one needs further metaphysical trajectories one cam search it elsewhere. Devs is almost a key illustration of Rani Lill Anjum and Stephen Mumford have (in more philosophical terms) boldly posited in their path breaking 2018 book – a third modality (“dispositional modality” DM) or tendency, beside the other two – necessity and possibility.
Weird naturalism (to pick on another term employed by E Davis) or weird aesthetics (to use Steven Shaviro’s phrase) is full of such vague incentives, a lure that leads nowhere or to something else, where the affective drive breaks loose, ways in which theyaare effective not only as anchor points of personal history or quest but as oscillating, flipping over constantly into impossible reaches and improbable planes, madness and make believe, false leads and unfinished plans. The most normal, the most homely feels made up in a way that the candy and endearing 1990s schematic VR, especially in movies and musivc videos never made the real feel. It maybe started then, but now every vintage furniture or lighting feels artificial, highly composed and rendered (not surreal in the old sense) but nevertheless compelling and etherReal.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, often shortened to Buckaroo Banzai, is a 1984 American science fiction action/adventure film produced and directed by W. D. Richter and written by Earl Mac Rauch. The premise centers upon the efforts of the polymath Dr. Buckaroo Banzai, a physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot, and musician, to save the world by defeating a band of inter-dimensional aliens called Red Lectroids from Planet 10. The film is a cross between the action/adventure and science fiction film genres and also includes elements of comedy and romance.
Buckaroo Banzai has been adapted for books, comics, and a video game and has attracted a loyal cult following. (wiki)
Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is a direct-to-video animated film adaptation of the 2011 comic book crossover “Flashpoint” by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert. It is scripted by Jim Krieg and directed by Jay Oliva. (wiki)
Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013) is an alternate reality horror story (…), where The Flash (voiced by Justin Chambers) changes the past and transforms the present into world at war. In this alternate future, Flash has no powers, Bruce Wayne is dead (turning Wayne’s father into a brutal masked vigilante), and superheroes Wonder Woman and Aquaman are vicious warlords ready to destroy the earth in their blood feud. It’s the butterfly effect as comic book apocalypse and it’s a dark, brutal animated film. Warped-mirror versions of beloved DC heroes are turned into bloodthirsty warriors murdering one another (and even slaughtering children, albeit off-screen) until the frame is littered with corpses, and The Flash needs to recover his speed to set things right. This one earns its PG-13 rating (it features bloody violence and even some mild foul language) and is aimed at a more mature graphic novel audience. The voice cast includes Michael B. Jordan as Cyborg, Cary Elwes as Aquaman, and Vanessa Marshall as Wonder Woman. (Sean Axmaker)
Californium is an exploration game co-developed by Darjeeling and Nova Productions with financial support from the French broadcaster Arte, and released in February 2016 for Microsoft Windows and OS X. Californium was developed as a tribute to science-fiction author Philip K. Dick on the 30th anniversary of his death. The player controls Elvin Green, a struggling writer dealing with family matters, as he discovers the means to manipulate reality, and explores several surreal landscapes. (wiki)
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Windows 7 or Higher / Processor: Intel Core i3 2.00 GHz / Memory: 4 GB RAM / Graphics: DX9 (shader model 2.0) / Storage: 2 GB available space
Behind the Curve is a 2018 documentary film about flat Earth believers in the United States. Directed by Daniel J. Clark, the film was released in the United States on November 15, 2018, and for wide release on Netflix in February 2019.
The documentary offers an examination of the flat Earth idea from various perspectives, including prominent flat-Earthers Mark Sargent, Nathan Thompson, and Patricia Steere, as well as astrophysicists from Universities including UCLA and Caltech. It features clips from the 2017 International Flat Earth Conference, held in North Carolina, which attracted hundreds of attendees (wiki)
The film pays tribute to the work of seminal horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, with many references to his stories and themes. Its title is a play on Lovecraft’s novella, At the Mountains of Madness, and insanity plays as great a role in the film as it does in Lovecraft’s fiction. The opening scene depicts Trent’s confinement to an asylum, with the bulk of the story told in flashback, a common technique of Lovecraft. Reference is made to Lovecraftian settings and details (such as a character that shares the name of Lovecraft’s Pickman family). Sutter Cane’s novels have similar titles to H.P. Lovecraft stories : The Whisperer of the Dark (The Whisperer in Darkness), The Thing in the Basement (The Thing on the Doorstep), Haunter out of Time (The Haunter of the Dark/The Shadow Out of Time), and The Hobbs End Horror (The Dunwich Horror), the latter also referencing Hobbs End underground station from Nigel Kneale‘s Quatermass and the Pit.
The film can also be seen as a reference to Stephen King, who, like Lovecraft, writes horror fiction set in New England hamlets. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 