The Day I Hacked My Dad's LAM Project


Intro [1]

1 /

From the beginning 💗


Dad started this work with some expectations about it.
During its course he found himself trying to figure out the best aproach for the theme he was interested in - Cyberpunk & Avatars.
It could be expressed on so many levels:
a) A digital archive from what others write and make about this topic, like some sort of distorted datapool of counter-information and resistence and reports about the old and the digital countercultures; b) it could be based on the Communication Wars series (2009), which was a moment in time where he was able to be mature enough while technically capable to express his opinions about avatars and the impact of the virtual in his life; and c) it could also be this big-curated-artwork which comprised all of the before and where several languages would be explored: video, illustration, graphic design, visual arts, research, and several subjectivities in the methodology.

Many references are used to illustrate this post-modern vision of science fiction from the early 80s (dad was born in 83), which took on a life of its own. Some might say it is where we are heading in our current culture.

The process and not the result, is OUR project.

Cyberpunk [1]


Fiction Book /

S / C / H / I / S / M / A / T / R / I / X

Cyberpunk [2]Cyberpunk [3] Cyberpunk [4] Cyberpunk [5] Cyberpunk [6] Cyberpunk [7]Cyberpunk [8]

Schismatrix is a kaleidoscopeic space saga from Bruce Sterling (1985). There are two major superpowers in the solar system - the Shapers, who use genetic engineering, psychology and conditioning techniques to improve human potential, and the Mechanists, who believe in cybernetics. Mixing design and visual graphics, dad managed to create images based on it's ideologies.

Non-Fiction Books /

Index


Sociology and Cultural Studies



Authors


  • Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs (1993)- Mark Dery
  • Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (1993) - Mark Dery
  • Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (1996) - Mark Dery
  • The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (1999)- Mark Dery
  • I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (2012)- Mark Dery
  • The Mechanical Bride (1951) - Marshall McLuhan
  • The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) - Marshall McLuhan
  • Understanding Media (1964) - Marshall McLuhan
  • The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967) - Marshall McLuhan
  • War and Peace in the Global Village (1968) - Marshall McLuhan
  • From Cliché to Archetype (1970) - Marshall McLuhan
  • The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (1989) - Marshall McLuhan
  • Present Shock (2004) - Douglas Rushkoff
  • Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age (2010) - Douglas Rushkoff
  • Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say (1998) - Douglas Rushkoff
  • Playing the Future: What We Can Learn From Digital Kids - Douglas Rushkoff
  • Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture (1994) - Douglas Rushkoff
  • Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace (1994) - Douglas Rushkoff
  • Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge: Cyberpunk, Virtual Reality, Designer Aphrodisiacs, Artificial Life, Techno-Erotic Paganism (1992) - R.U. Sirius
  • The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook ed R.U. Sirius, St. Jude (1995) - R.U. Sirius
  • How to Mutate & Take Over the World: an Exploded Post-Novel (1997) - R.U. Sirius
  • 21st Century Revolutionary: 1984–1998 (1999) - R. U. Sirius
  • Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House (2004) - R.U. Sirius
  • True Mutations (2007) - R.U. Sirius
  • Future Shock (1970) - Alvin Toffler
  • The Third Wave (1980) - Alvin Toffler
  • Powershift (1990)- Alvin Toffler


Literary Criticism


  • Across Wounded Galaxies - Larry McCaffrey
  • Storming the Reality Studio - Larry McCaffrey
  • Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives - Graham J. Murphy & Sherryl Vint
  • Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson - Dani Cavallaro
  • Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative - George Edgar Slusser
  • How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics - Katherine N. Hayles
  • Notes from the Pop Underground - Peter Belsito
  • The Pocket Essential Cyberpunk - Andrew M. Butler
  • Razor girls: genre and gender in cyberpunk fiction - Lauraine Leblanc
  • Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction - Scott Bukatman
  • Thinking Robots, an Aware Internet, and Cyberpunk Librarians (1992) - R. Bruce Miller & Milton T. Wolf
  • The Tomorrow Makers - Grant Fjermedal
  • True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier - Vernor Vinge
  • Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intersection of the Postmodern and Science Fiction - Sabine Heuser


Cyberspace



Technology


  • Engines of Creation - Eric Drexler
  • New Minds Science - Howard Gardner
  • Out of the Inner Circle - Bill Landreth
  • Reality Check - David Pescovitz
  • In the Beginning Was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson
  • The Cathedral & the Bazaar - Eric S. Raymond
  • The Jargon File - Various
  • The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
  • Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies - Nick Bostrum
  • Chaos - James Gleick
  • Faster - James Gleick
  • The Information - James Gleick
  • What Just Happened - James Gleick
  • The Age of Intelligent Machines - Ray Kurzweil
  • The Age of Spiritual Machines - Ray Kurzweil
  • The Singularity Is Near - Ray Kurzweil
  • How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed - Ray Kurzweil
  • Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation (1992) - Steven Levy
  • Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (2001) - Steven Levy
  • Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984) - Steven Levy
  • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (2011) - Steven Levy
  • Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (1994) - Steven Levy
  • The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (2006) - Steven Levy
  • The Turing Option - Marvin Minsky


Philosophy


  • The System of Objects (1968) - Jean Baudrillard
  • Seduction (1979) - Jean Baudrillard
  • Simulacra and Simulation (1981) - Jean Baudrillard
  • Simulations (1983) - Jean Baudrillard
  • America (1986) - Jean Baudrillard
  • The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991) - Jean Baudrillard
  • Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? (2009) - Jean Baudrillard
  • The Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics (1987) - Arthur Kroker
  • The Possessed Individual: Technology and the French Postmodern (1992) - Arthur Kroker
  • SPASM: Virtual Reality, Android Music, and Electric Flesh (1993) - Arthur Kroker
  • Data Trash: Theory of the Virtual Class (1994) - Arthur Kroker
  • Hacking the Future (1996) - Arthur Kroker
  • The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche and Marx (2004) - Arthur Kroker
  • Body Invaders: Panic Sex in America (1987) - Arthur Kroker
  • Digital Delirium (1997) - Arthur Kroker
  • Life in the Wires: The CTheory Reader (2004) - Arthur Kroker
  • Critical Digital Studies: A Reader (2008) - Arthur Kroker


Film

Yup, another Index


Blade Runner


Blade Runner is an adaption of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It is known for its futuristic noir style.

Wikipedia - IMDB - RT 92% - Youtube Trailer


A documentary on the making of Blade Runner, Dangerous Days, was released in 2007 as part of The Final Cut's release. - Wikipedia - IMDB - RT 92% - Youtube Trailer

A sequel, Blade Runner 2049 was released in 2017. - Wikipedia - IMDB - RT 82% - YouTube Trailer


Three short films were made to promote Blade Runner 2049 before its release:


Alien Series


David Cronenberg


John Carpenter


The Matrix


Neill Blomkamp


Philip K. Dick


Robocop


The Terminator


TRON


William Gibson


Other movies


Japanese Cyberpunk


Proto-Cyberpunk Movies

These are movies made before Cyberpunk was a thing, but stylistically influenced the genre.


Hacker Movies

Movies set in the present day but with computer hacking as theme/plot device.


Documentaries


Related and of Interest

Not strictly Cyberpunk, but these movies are often loved by cyberpunk fans or influenced cyberpunk fiction.


Subgenres /

Vaporwave Aesthetics

Vaporwave [1]Vaporwave [2]Vaporwave [3]Vaporwave [0]

Vaporwave, like many other aesthetics, gives you nostalgia and has been described as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern consumerism and the soulless glamour of late capitalism. Like Cyberpunk, it shares a seemingly disdain for mainstream capitalism, but Vaporwave is more sarcastic and mocking compared to Cyberpunk, which is more open with its disdain for the corporate dystopia

Experimental /

Imagining the 90's

tribute [1]tribute [2]tribute [3]tribute [4]tribute [5]tribute [6]tribute [7]

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." - a book from my dad.

Project /

Authorship, Design and Avatars: The Literary in the Artificial Archive of My Words Works

ap [1]ap [2] ap [3] ap [4] ap [5] ap [6] ap [7] ap [8] ap [9] ap [10] ap [11] ap [12] ap [13] ap [14] ap [15] ap [16] ap [17] ap [18] ap [19] ap [20] ap [21] ap [22]

This is the project dad presented to the PhD programme. It's in need of fine tuning and i do hope he gets the necessary help to refine it before the end of the year. It would be amazing if he could get a scolarship and could be 100% dedicated do this academic pursuit. If not, i guess dad needs to focus on professional work because he's older now and he can't continue playing both sides.

Avatars /

Shop Online!

AVA [1] AVA [2] AVA [3] AVA [4]

Well, even a young girl wants to go shopping. Please support me! Next stop is to create a Patreon account but my dad says it's too soon. The premise would be to give the hability to the people who supports me, a saying in the way in which i will conduct my work! 14.99€ each artwork, printed in a 20x20 cm fine paper. Framing can be discussed.

Avatars /

Maria Sancho

Maria [1] Maria [2]Maria [3]

In the dawn of this age that begins for you, through the mist of your doubts and misunderstandings, she has returned, from the depths of her soul, the queen of the navigator's race.

Avatars /

Peter Paxx

Peter Paxx [11] Peter Paxx [12] Peter Paxx [13] Peter Paxx [16] Peter Paxx [15]Peter Paxx [17]Peter Paxx [13]

Peter Paxx was dad's first avatar. At least it started that way, a persona in the digital world, who transcended or descended from the virtual world into the physical reality. Peter Paxx was a musician, sky instructor and an artist. As difficult as it is digging into our own past, i still selected and share with you some of his work. The majority is inaccessible to me and if I understood correctly, there is something called The Amazing Flash and.. well, it's also in my dad's external harddrives: meaning difficult access for me. These works i found on his computer. Peter Paxx is currently away, crossing this world of wonders since 2014, when I was born.

Project /

Communication Wars 3.0

Wars [0] wars [1]wars [2] wars [3] wars [4] wars [5]

Communication Wars in its essence aimed to be a research in media and arts, taking beginning in the excessive communication and consequent system overload from the point-of-view of autorship in visual creativity. Watching from today's perspective, there wasn't big changes in the way we live today and at that time in particular. A time in which communication was presented as a value as supreme as it is innocuous in its illocutionary and performative consequences. Communication Wars are enunciated then as a pre- or even post-apocalyptic way of living in a world suffocated by the formal structures of instituted power, but also by individual egos. Due to my dad's extensive practice as a producer of visual imaginaries, both as a graphic designer and as a visual artist, he presented himself in this project not only as a collector of available information, but also, and in particular, as the starting point for the questioning itself.

Videogames /

M / E / T / A / L ... G / E / A / R ... S / O / L / I / D

MetalGearSolid [1]

Metal Gear is a series of action-adventure video games created by Hideo Kojima and developed and published by Konami. It deals with genetics and the moral implications of genetic engineering; how identity can be affected by the philosophies of one's society and the effects of censorship. It also deals with how the time and place one lives in (a "scene") affects their identity, how politics change along with the times and hyperreality, the inability to distinguish fact and fiction in an information saturated world. Dad played all of them and he really digs it's creator, who then went to create the apocalyptic Death Stranding videogame.

Videogames /

Overwatch (2016)


Overwatch is an online team-based game generally played as a first-person shooter. The game features several different game modes, principally designed around squad-based combat with two opposing teams of six players each. Players select one of 32 pre-made hero characters from one of three class types: Damage heroes that deal most of the damage to attack or defend control points, Tank heroes that can absorb a large amount of damage, and Support heroes that provide healing or other buffs for their teammates.

Each hero has a unique skill kit, defining their intrinsic attributes like health points and running speed, their primary attacks, several active and passive skills, and an ultimate ability that can only be used after it has been charged through dealing damage to enemies and healing allies. Players can change their hero during the course of a match, as a goal of Overwatch's design was to encourage dynamic team compositions that adapt to the situation.

Overwatch is set sixty years into the future of a fictionalized Earth, thirty years after the resolution of what is known as the "Omnic Crisis." Before the Omnic Crisis, humanity had been in a golden age of prosperity and technology development. Humans developed robots with artificial intelligence called "Omnics", which were put to use to achieve economic equality, and began to be treated as people in their own right.

The Omnic Crisis began when the worldwide automated "omnium" facilities that produced them started producing a series of lethal, hostile robots that attacked humankind. Initially, individual countries responded with various programs which eventually failed to ward off the Omnics. The United Nations quickly formed Overwatch, an international task force combining these individual programs to combat this threat and restore order.

Curious enough, transmedia storytelling plays a major role in Overwatch. The backstory of the game and its characters are described through animated shorts and webcomics. Heroes come from a variety of national/ethnic backgrounds, and occasionally speak in their native languages during matches. I've linked two or three videos of the backstory. There is a chronological order to view them as many things have happened from the beginning until now. Still, here they are in their full glory. Watch them. You'll love it.

I could say many things about this game as it's very inspiring to me, breaking away from the classic noir, dark and gritty future dystopia, even if it's set in one. As a bonus, i've uploaded a video of my dad playing.



Gameplay:



What is this all about?

Portuguese version
coming soon!

My dad wanted to create avatars of his colleagues from the PhD program. He would use a generative and data-driven algorithm focused on a noted behavior and pattern. With this artifact it would become an ongoing narrative already started in the beginning of the semester, he said. At the end of each year he would change the parameters and new images would be revealed. By the end of the phd program he would have content enough to make several exhibitions and publish a book. I told him not to, he still insisted blah, blah, blah, new visuals, digital archives and whatsoever. I raised my Occupy Web Street flag and that was the end of it.

Now, this website acts on three levels. First, as an homage to a fictional lawless subculture in an oppressive society dominated by computer technology and big corporations. Secondly, it acts as a showcase of the artwork made by him and edited by me. Thirdly, although the setup scenario is cyberpunk-based, and that's the main focus, we also explore aestethics on posthumanism and all the 'punk' of it. In addition, this website also operates as a digital archive with active links 😄

I will continue to update this website and i'll post here and there when the project reaches its end. ... Thank you for your understanding and patience while I strive to improve your navigation.

Bonus Content!