Technology | PT / ES
The electric dream. Civilized violence. WAR LIFE, BEYOND THE WARS OF THE BATTLEFIELD, TOTAL WAR, WAR AS A WAY OF LIVING, the price we pay for pursuit of our technological happiness.
CIRCUS MAXIMUS
Within this mise en scène, our subject is ritualized as an invasion of diversion, an irresistible tractor beam of image — a mode of combat, addiction and isolation. This alluring glow of techno-fascination transports its devotees into a state of spectation, an opiated condition requiring intensive care to sustain this mainline high. With blind faith and extreme attention, the mass consumes without question, in artificial light, the produced image of a living spectacle. Being part of nature, what we see and hear, we become, we become what we do, we become our environment. Information, power, money, sex, fame, health, technological happiness become the 'clarities', the alluring distractions that numb our sensibilities to the presence of a larger event.
From the Scenario's POV we approach this event with the recognition of the medium as the content. This content, the electric dream, becomes our subject. It is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. Technology is the atmosphere. It drives the ritualized routines of ordinary daily living. It is the main event. We do not use technology, we live it.
EXIT VELOCITY
In vehicles of ecstasy, with cinematic engines of inertia, at audio visual speed — trans-port and tele-port blend into one. The beginning becomes the end. The port disappears in the speed of light. The nanosecond, technological speed, transforms reality as it creates an ecstatic phenomena of compelling and unparalleled intensity and duration. By the measure of human capacity, charismatic technique portends the miraculous. Electric acceleration can best be described as 'exit velocity' — an event that blurs human perceptions, shatters all meaning, drains all content, breaks the bonds to earth — producing a world that our language can no longer describe.
In the supernatural explosion of G-Force, human moorings give way, sending Homo Sapiens out-of-orbit into the void of space. The accompanying loss of original habitat and subsequent relocation to accelerated space throws nature into catastrophe, as it engenders 'normal' traumatic stress syndrome as the now normal condition of posthuman existence.
Speed creates, possesses and dominates the homogenized oneness of the global world. All locations are subsumed into the startling terra firma of the image, a binary star held in the gravity of the nanosecond, where time rides the speed of light. In the shadow of this mass, all previous definitions crumble. Electric enlightenment torches the new pantheon. The ‘time' and 'space' of history exits to an homogenized zone of no return.
Technique, while promising comfort and happiness, means power, means control, means destiny. The explosive tempo of technology is war; the untellable violence of relocation in technology is war. In this relocation, the mystery of human presence, imperfect through limits, gives way to technological certainty.
This is the working scenario for my film NAQOYQATSI – War Life*, third of my Qatsi Trilogy.
The year was 2000.
Godfrey Reggio
* NAQOYQATSI
na . qöy . qatsi (na koy' kahtsee), n.
from the Hopi Language, < each other - kill many - life >.
1. a life of killing each other. 2. war as a way of life. 3. (interpretation) civilized violence.