2001 Space Odyssey

 2001 Space Odyssey 

10/11/2022 

 

Just before the hurricane, my group decided to create an artistic representation of the memories disappearing both from the world and from Roy’s consciousness with black and white images. We took on a more simplistic view of the loss of Roy’s memories to hit home, the severity death has on severing anything left unsaid from society. Additionally, we discussed raising a headshot of Roy in color off the page with images in the background. Unfortunately, the execution lacked any contribution on my part for reasons that I can’t excuse. And in place of my failure to physically construct our project, I will explain the contributions that I would have brought, had I worked alongside my group members in the creative design process.           First off, the craftsmanship, attention to detail, and photo selection was spot on from Jaclyn and Sofia. I loved how they built a little table to stand the photo of Roy on, so it popped even more from the black and white memory photos. To add more volume and surface area to the project, I could have helped to stand the entire project up, so it was a rectangular prism. From there I would have loved to print and collaborate on more images depicting the places Roy had been and the memories he had made in his very short time in existence. We then could have added additional levels. Another raised platform could show Roy’s favorite memories, or we could categorize them by location or time. And then, I imagine one final, small, raised platform on top with Roy’s picture just like Sofia and Jaclyn had because it drives home the message and is very aesthetically pleasing to the eye.  

            Another way to further expand upon the distance that grows between Roy as an individual and his conscious memories other than the physical distance displayed by each raised platform, I imagine contrasting the images from light to dark in levels. I have some limited experience in editing images and could play around with the shadows and contrast levels of the photos on each level, so those at the top appear darker whereas those at the bottom, where the piece starts can be fully colored. I imagine the photos on the lowest tier being both the happiest of memories and being in more abundance since they are created early on, free of fear of termination and hatred for the Bladerunner and humankind. 

            With this design in mind, I’d like to share my own interpretation of the Blade Runner excerpt…  

            “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” 

            What first strikes me in this quote is the sheer amount of things Roy was able to witness in his short time in existence. He witnessed more than most humans in an entire lifetime and his death brought a complete loss of all these eyewitness accounts to exciting and intriguing events. The “tears in rain” portion creates this image in my mind of someone melting into rain from up above and falling toward earth alongside every other rain drop during a storm. The significance is that there isn’t any. Anything that falls from the sky is deemed rain and for a fleeting second, lands in someone’s eye, bounces off an umbrella, or smashes into the pavement in an instant. All the rain blending into massive puddles that wash away into sewers and drainage systems. They are then carried out to larger reservoirs and out to sea, blending in even further so that no one can distinguish one drop from another. The same applies to lost memories. If no one knows to search for or can recognize a memory, it blends in with everything else, never to be seen or shared again. The same applies with the one rain drop that was absorbed by a trillion others in a matter of seconds and can never again be separated.