Confession time. I’m struggling to reconcile my time management as the semester ends and summer begins. I fade into the ever night of daydreams and cyberscapes where I can read, and play, and laze about in a transhuman journey through mediated experiences.
Long story short, I received a PS5 from our research lab, you know, for research — right! How did I score such a position? — and as I find myself exploring the narratives of established IPs and those in the indie scene I keep returning to this question about transhumanance. What is it to transcend outprsekves? To become..l in the words of Rob Zombie, more human than human?
From the Ghost in the Shell to Her, Digimon to Fitbit, we continue to seek to find an answer to this marriage of ape and machine. It’s been ongoing since the dawn of simple tools, archaeologically speaking. Our adaptation of transhuman modifications is kind of what makes us more human than animal, if you will, so what happens when you take the next step? When the hammer becomes equally important as the hammer-user? When the computer and its operator become one?
This prose poem arose from long nights of delirious prose. Scrambling to meet deadlines for the upcoming release of our first steam game (holiday 2023). As the writer and game designer I feel intimately tethered to this project and while I realize there will come a time that we release this creation into the wild, I can’t help feel like a part of me will untether. I will unravel. We know the importance of releasing the thing and letting it go come what may. But in the new economy of iterative regeneration can we really let go, or must we now redact our best practices and repolish, remodel, reshape, republish the thing based on feedback, etc?
Binary Hearts
In the neon-lit alleys where data streams flow like molten code, a symphony of electric hums reverberates through the night. The city breathes in the whispers of encrypted secrets, pulsating with the rhythm of a clandestine revolution.
The cyberpunk rebels, shrouded in shadows, move like fluid shadows themselves. Their souls etched with defiance, they navigate the labyrinthine streets, where flickering holograms of advertisements dance seductively, promising a taste of virtual ecstasy.
In smoky jazz dens, the air thick with nostalgia and the scent of burnt circuits, the syncopated beats of futuristic jazz mingle with the clinking of glasses and murmurs of clandestine deals. A saxophone wails in anguish, its melancholic notes piercing the fabric of reality, unraveling the secrets of this dystopian metropolis.
This is a world where the boundaries of flesh and machine blur, where augmented reality paints vivid tales upon retinal canvases. The rebels, adorned with neon tattoos and cybernetic enhancements, defy the limitations of their mortal shells. They are the harbingers of anarchy in a world drenched in corporate control.
Hackers with deft fingers dance upon the digital precipice, breaking through firewalls with whispers of forbidden knowledge. They breathe life into artificial intelligence, birthing sentience within the tangled web of algorithms. Their digital graffiti adorns the virtual walls, a subversive art born from the ashes of conformity.
Amongst the flickering neon signs and buzzing hovercars, the rebel troubadours sing songs of revolution. Their voices, raw and unfiltered, echo through the concrete canyons, carrying tales of liberation and defiance. They amplify the pulse of dissent, their words a symphony of rebellion that reverberates through the city’s core.
In this cyberpunk tapestry, where the boundaries of reality bend and blur, the jazzy discordance of anarchy intertwines with the neon-lit dreams of a transhuman future. The rebels dance on the edge of chaos, fueled by the electric energy of a world caught between the seduction of progress and the yearning for freedom.
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