Lifeboat Foundation

Artifacts, Artifictions, Artifutures 0.4

In the final part of this installment, I will analyze a few more mainstream music videos with future-friendly memes and motifs, this time looking at videos mostly from 2010. In the last two installments, I argued that the increasing prominence of future-friendly memes and motifs as well as themes of self-empowerment via technology in mainstream music are significant insofar as such an increasing prominence extends the general awareness and potential-recognition of futurist or futuristic concepts, causes and potential crises, and insofar as it presents a sexy and appealing vision of the futuristic gestalt and of technology both high (e.g emerging, converging and otherwise-radically-transformative technologies) and low (e.g. consumer electronics).

This final part of the present installment will be my last dip in the mainstream as far as this series in concerned (although I am finding some of these EDM beats getting stuck in my head, despite myself). The next installment will consider some future-infused visuals and videos made by artists of EDM and electronic-music-“proper” (as opposed to the recent mainstream incorporation of EDM beats as a musical foundation).

Following that we’ll take a more pragmatic and discerning eye to the near future of music, considering how certain existing and on-the-horizon enhancement technologies could potentially disrupt the music industry and dramatically increase the variety and diversity of new music still to come.

All of the following images are the copyright of Interscope Records.

Continue reading “Future-friendly Memes & Motifs in Mainstream Music pt. 3” »

The Rocky Mountain chapter of the American Institute of Astronautics & Aeronautics (AIAA) will be having their 2^nd Annual Technical Symposium, October 25 2013. The call for papers ends May 31 2013. I would recommend submitting your papers. This conference gives you the opportunity to put your work together in a cohesive manner, get feedback and keep your copyrights, before you write your final papers for journals you will submitting to. A great way to polish your papers.

Here is the link to the call for papers: http://www.iseti.us/pdf/RMAIAA_Call_For_Abstracts_2013-0507.pdf

Here is the link to the conference: http://www.iseti.us/pdf/RMAIAA_General_Advert_2013-0507.pdf

I’ll be presenting 2 papers. The first is a slightly revised version of the presentation I gave at the APS April 2013 conference here in Denver (http://www.iseti.us/WhitePapers/APS2013/Solomon-APS-April(2013-04-15).pdf). The second is titled ‘The Mechanics of Gravity Modification’.

Continue reading “Mechanics of Gravity Modification” »

Artifacts, Artifictions, Artifutures 0.3

In the last installment I argued that the increasing predominance of futurist themes, memes and motifs in mainstream popular media (focusing on mainstream music and music-videos) is making future-friendly and technology-dominated concepts, aesthetics and general gestalts increasingly attractive, appealing and sexy to mainstream audiences. I then argued that this is good for futurist and futuristic topics in general because it increases popular awareness of the future and makes the wider public more willing to entertain and consider futuristic notions, concepts, causes and contraptions. The dehumanising, disenfranchising, deterministic and alienating connotations that surrounded technology (especially high-technology — i.e. any non-consumer technology, like those used by military and public industry, or else very-high-end consumer technology and/or technologies that are as-yet only conceptual, embryonic, in their infancy) during the latter half of the 20th century, created in part by the massive scale of destruction made possible by advanced in technology and exemplified by the 1st and 2nd World Wars, are being supplemented by sexy and self-empowering memes and motifs that are increasing future-friendly and technology-sympathetic.

In this follow-up installment, I will analyze a few more real-world examples of future-friendly mainstream music videos, giving additional real-world credence to the claim that mainstream music is indeed featuring futuristic concepts and aesthetics to an increasingly greater degree. This will hopefully be my last dip into the mainstream, at least as far as this series is concerned — so for all you real EDM heads longing for some more references to EDM-music proper, don’t worry, you won’t have to wait for long.

The majority of music videos discussed here are by will.i.am. This is not to say that connotations of the future aren’t present or prominent in tracks and videos by other mainstream artists — as demonstrated by the discussion of Tyga’s Molly in the first part of this installment, and in the discussion of Nicki Minaj’s Starships in the next and final of this particular installment — but will.i.am seems to be ahead of the game on this one, importing futuristic themes and scenes in every single music video I’ve yet seen by him. Moreover, he seems to have made an explicit vow to help bring topics centering on and sympathetic to transformative technologies, technological advancement and the future in general to mainstream audiences.

Continue reading “Future-Friendly Memes & Motifs in Mainstream Music pt. 2” »

True or False:

a.) Is I?

b.) I is.

c.) Am I?

d.) I am.

Continue reading “Inbinairy Inqueery” »

Artifacts, Artifictions, Artifutures 0.2

In the last installment, I argued that the futuristic aesthetic of electronic music, evidenced by the themes and imagery used in the music videos for both electronic music proper and more mainstream tracks that have heavily incorporated EDM beats recently, is helping to make the future and advancing technologies seem cool to mainstream audiences. I went on to argue that this improves our chances of a safe and fulfilling future vicariously by increasing the general awareness of advancing technology and the radically-different state the future may hold as it unfolds, and by replacing the alienating, dehumanizing and disenfranchising connotations of technology that grew up in the latter half of the 20^th century with a memetic aesthetic that is new, exciting, self-empowering and sexy – and using the same themes, sounds and imagery that helped foster the old, negative aesthetic.

In this installment I’m going to provide some empirical support for the claim that imagery and themes in recent music videos shows such music to generate positive future-friendly connotations and memes. I’ll first analyze some mainstream music videos employing such futuristic images and themes. Then, in the next installment, I’ll analyze music videso for tracks that are EDM-proper, showing that these futuristic connotations aren’t just a result of mainstream artists importing electronic styles into their own sonic milieu, but are also exemplified by artists who have been on the electronic music and EDM scene since before it blew up in popularity.

Let’s start with a look at November 2011’s “Scream & Shout” by will.i.am and Brittany Spears. All images copyright Interscope Records.

“Scream & Shout” (2011)

Continue reading “Future-Friendly Memes & Motifs in Mainstream Music pt. 1” »

This poem was originally published at Transhumanity

Seamingly: I think, therefor I am.
At least: I remember thinking, therefor I was;
Be-cause. we can see ourselves thinking.
Cause seeing is be-leaving and believing is
synominous with being (I think?).
Does one virtually need to think in order
to really be? How could thought itself
predicate being if one needs to be before(.)
the(y) can see for(e) the(m)selves the selfseen
eye of this idea of I (infingressive
twin-twin(n)ed mirrors that see eachother
with equal clarity and con|fusion)? Might it
be that existence is everythere
and what I vainly call “I am” is nought butt our
awareness of our awareness of
our own(ed) existence in interlaced relation
to our underbase awareness of
(n)or(m)ative awareness itself? In other wor(l)ds
refedbacklooped perception, butt a
type(o)n) of more me(x)t{r}a-convoluted ware of
a-wareness. No need for some irreproachable
animessence, just a sum}airy
folding whose phasal geodynametry a
hydrological analog to (more…)

Artifacts, Artifictions, Artifutures 0.1

This article was originally published at Transhumanity.net

A futuristic aesthetic is taking the music industry by electric storm. Electronic music has seen a bigger rise in popularity over the last decade than any other genre of music. It seems to be the most invasive genre of the past decade as well, having been incorporated into pop music’s sonic repertoire to an increasingly greater degree throughout the 2000’s. Now it seems like the large majority of pop songs use EDM and electro-based styles as their foundation – whereas it used to be dominated by RnB.

Electronic music, and particularly the new, “popularized” varieties of EDM making their way into the tracks of more mainstream artists, is making the future seem cool and sexy to mainstream audiences!

It is beginning to replace the lifeless and alienating aesthetics associated with technology over the 2nd half of the 20th century, all hard edges and clean delineations – an aesthetic which makes us associate technology with a dehumanizing force that sunders enchantment from life by taking all mystery out of it. Such a sentiment seems alien to readers of Transhumanist rhetoric, but I think that most people have been generally untrusting of technology since the havoc it wreaked in the 1st and 2nd World Wars.

Continue reading “A Futuristic Aesthetic Invades Mainstream Music” »

!i

we too are spectators to . . . oʇ sɹoʇɐʇɔǝds ǝɹɐ ooʇ ǝʍ
ǝɥɔʎsd sןןɐ-ɔ ʇ\ı ǝɹʇɔǝds ǝɥʇ . . . the spectre i/t c-alls psyche
converts of the sectator . . . ɹoʇɐʇɔǝs ǝɥʇ ɟo sʇɹǝʌuoɔ
ɟןǝs pǝןןɐɔ-ʇɐǝsuoɔ ɹoʇɔɐ-ɹɐɥɔ . . . char-actor conseat-called self
to be is to see inside ; . . . ; ǝpısuı ǝǝs oʇ sı ǝq oʇ
pǝɹıɟ ǝןɐnboɹnǝu ǝsuǝs\ǝʞɐɯ oʇ . . . to make/sense neuroquale fired
as/in response to itself . . . ɟןǝsʇı oʇ ǝsuodsǝɹ uı\sɐ
(pǝɹınbǝɹ sǝʎǝ pǝʇɹǝʌuı) . . . (inverted eyes required)
soul: A user interface . . . ǝɔɐɟɹǝʇuı ɹǝsn ɐ :ןnos
¿ɹǝsn ǝɥʇ sı oɥʍ :ןןǝʇ\ʎɐɹd . . . pray/tell: who is the user?
self is t/here when de-sired . . . pǝɹıs-ǝp uǝɥʍ ǝɹǝɥ\ʇ sı ɟןǝs
pǝɹıʍ ʎןǝʌısuǝʇxǝ ǝsnɐɔ\ǝq . . . be/cause extensively wired
to us: the dumb search engine . . . ǝuıƃuǝ ɥɔɹɐǝs qɯnp ǝɥʇ :sn oʇ
ǝɔɐdsɹǝʇuı ǝɥʇ ƃuıʎɹǝnb . . . querying the interspace
where cons/true self is con-s{p}ired . . . pǝɹı(d)s-uoɔ sı ɟןǝs ǝnɹʇ\suoɔ ǝɹǝɥʍ
!i

As long as a recently published proof (European Scientific Journal March 2013 edition vol.9, No.9 ISSN: 1857–7881(Print) e-ISSN 1857–7431) remains unchallenged by the scientific community, this question is not only scientifically sound but also maximally important.

It would be great if this uncommon call for scientific assistance by imaginative readers across the world would find the resonance it deserves . Einstein would be delighted.