The new flesh
Remember this? David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome” came out in 1983, one year before William Gibson’s “Neuromancer”. “Death to Videodrome! Long live the New Flesh!” Everything in the movie is meaty and physical- cassettes are inserted into navel slots, heads are inserted into TV’s;
All very metaphorical and clever- images that speak of the power of images and the plasticity of culture and identity. It’s amazing, though, in another sense, the physicality of the imagery avokes a journey that had only then just begun. Our physical interaction with the screen in our living spaces was being transformed by video and remote control.
I’m very interested by the kind of work that’s being done in the realm of design, to change the way that we interact with the screen and the “space” beyond it. I recently posted about Johnny Lee’s use of the Wii remote to create 3D affects on ordinary TV’s, but there is also a huge amount of R&D going on in the area of 3D TV at Philips, Samsung etc.
The Wii remote is so succesful that it’s evolving the gaming industry. Here is a concept for a future Wii controller, from Yanko Design;
Presumably the journey from joysticks, keyboards, game pads and wand controllers, to this type of brain-activated design, will be a long one.
