Synthetic Pleasures Documentary Film Lara Lee director, George Gund producer Played by: Robert Carrillo Cohen
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Game I Core Wave: "The primary distinction between inside and outside." |
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I found Synthetic Pleasures to be a radical documentary film about the virtual, artificial, or synthetic worlds that surround us. The film was really visually exciting. I mean really visually exciting. The film is full of beautiful computer animation, great music, and very thoughtful people. The computer animation is some of the best I have ever seen. When I think of Virtual Reality, I usually think first of video games and my concerns over their effects on people. My son got a Nintendo 64 for the holidays and I was very glad to have Synthetic Pleasures handy to watch with him that morning before he hooked up the Nintendo. I figure if my son is going to immerse himself in this stuff, the best I can do is give him some perspective on it. Synthetic Pleasures entertained both of us a lot and gave us a great overview from which to think about these issues.
Deeper Virtual Reality is often described as immersive. But Synthetic Pleasures made it clear to me, just how deeply immersed we already are in a "Blade Runner" world of pervasive man made changes. The film includes sections on virtual weddings, virtual travel, virtual sex, virtual war, body modification, smart drugs, you name it. The section on "smart drugs" reminded me a great deal of the "dial up emotions" machine you could get in the original "Blade Runner" book: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," by Philip K. Dick. I find high tech stuff can be a great value to my life as long as I can balance it with the health of my physical world. Our bodies and minds can do most of this stuff and often better. I think Synthetic Pleasures highlights these points well and makes it clear that the positive or negative use of technology is up to us. I couldn't wait to order the soundtrack of the music to this film and recommended it to all of my friends. Often I can find ambient or techno music to be overly simple, boring or grating. But all the music tracks in Synthetic Pleasures created really interesting and pleasurable atmospheres for me. I hope they produce a Volume 2. The film also reminded me of one of my favorite books about culture and technology, "Disappearing Through the Skylight" by O.B. Hardison, Jr. In it Hardison points out that when something becomes common place it becomes invisible. When we become immersed in a technology, he says, "it becomes part of the world as given -- part of the shape of consciousness, you might say, rather than the content of consciousness." My son and I like to go and play Laser Tag a great deal. But one of my favorite things about going to this one place to play is that they have this great sign on the wall that reads, "ACTUAL REALITY." WhooHooo. There's a new game to play.
-- Robert Carillo Cohen
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