2003 classic. Mapping the Matrix

2008

Ground zero, carbon zero, and Coke Zero -- what's the connection? The year 2000 was once symbolic of the future -- the world of tomorrow filled with utopian possibilities for art, science, and technology. Entering the millennium, something is awry in the spirit of tomorrow for there exists a strange pattern of zeros in culture and technology, all related to the space-time coordinates of the future. There is ground zero, carbon zero, Coke Zero, and many others. What do these zeros suggest? Void or emptiness, end or beginning, the past or the future for utopia? It is ground zero for theory. Drawing from art, media, science, and philosophy, Barry Vacker uses zero as countdown and blastoff for theorizing the existential conditions of postmillennial culture. And here is the key question -- are any models for a future utopia possible after the three zeros of 2000? As part of my experimental book series, Zero Conditions is available in high quality paperback and Kindle via Amazon.

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Medium, 2019

Selected for the Film, Culture, and Philosophy sections of Medium, this essay uses the "zero" as a starting point for exploring the relevance for these two films twenty years after their release in 1999.

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The Matrix in Theory, 2006

This essay examines the cultural context of the Matrix trilogy in order to understand some of its tremendous popularity. The first film was made before the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the second and third films afterwards. The first film suggests that the Zionites could be read as (good) terrorists, the later films characterise Zion in the terms of the United States fighting an evil force utilising Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Matrix itself is portrayed as offering a highly desirable reality, one better than the “real” 1999 which it simulates. This produces an ambivalence in viewers about whose side they should be on. The three films are apocalypse films. The story’s apocalyptic past is figured using connotations of the Holocaust. However, the apocalypse that the films conjure is associated with white American racial anxiety about being numerically, and culturally, overwhelmed by those designated as nonwhites.

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2012

Doomsday scenarios. They proliferate in our culture, from economics to ecology, theology to technology, biology to cosmology, James Bond to Slavoj Zizek, Plato's Atlantis to Lars von Trier's Melancholia. With creativity and critical insight, Barry Vacker shows why apocalyptic memes replicate and have built-in survival advantages. He also explains how the doomsdays reveal the deeper challenges facing human existence — the philosophical apocalypse effected by our lack of cosmic meaning in the vast universe. Have we really embraced our true existence on Spaceship Earth floating in the cosmos of the new millennium? Our calendars say we have passed the year 2000, but have we really entered the new millennium? The End of the World — Again offers an original, exciting, and (for some) terrifying critique of culture in 2012 and beyond. Available in high quality paperback via Amazon.

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An extended film review of The Matrix 15 years on, using digital poetics and Jungian analysis

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2015

The aim of this essay is to analyse a rather unique example of a literalization and visualisation of Baudrillard’s philosophical ideas about simulation in a mass culture product, the movies The Matrix Trilogy. Baudrillard’s approach of three orders of simulation is in turn applied to ‘unpack’ the Matrix Trilogy. CONCLUSION Maybe the message is that The Matrix can be substituted with any of the following: Capitalism, Communism, Religions, Totalitarian Orders, Technology, Drugs, Media, Selfish Gene, and the meaning of the parable would not change: we are all enslaved to one system or another and made to believe we are free or that we ‘choose’ to be part of it. Maybe the Matrix is a complex riddle without a solution. It all depends on your point of view and what you know. It’s a maze of self referential signs that lead to no exit and mirroring each other. The Wachowskis have no answers but only questions. What is the Matrix? Who is controlling you? Are you going to take the red pill or the blue pill? Is our existence real? Is it meaningful? Do we have a purpose? Do we have REAL choices?… Isn’t after all the fate of the Matrix franchise the perfect metaphor for Baudrillard’s third order of simulation? (blinking) To be Continued.... UPDATE My daughter sent me this video that talks about the music score of the movie. It is an absolute must to watch. This movie never stops surprising me. https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=HhRjn_jpQxk

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Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact, ed. Nicholas Zurbrugg, Sage Publications, London, 1997, pp. 64-90, reprinted online in International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, January, 2005

Animatic apparatus; animatic; the animatic; animation; computer animation; post-cinema; hypercinema; hypercinematic; hyperrealist film; the hyperreal; the uncanny; the fatal; the artificial paradise; Seduction, Illusion, the Principle of Evil of Baudrillard; cinema; cinema studies; animation studies; theory of animation; Film Studies; film theory; Jurassic Park; Steven Spielberg; Elias Canetti; André Bazin; Gertie; Sergei Eisenstein; Winsor McCay; Tom Gunning; Roland Barthes; Gilles Deleuze; Thierry Kuntzel; Jacques Derrida.

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This paper aims to propose a tentative consolidation of Baudrillardʼs notion of the Real as that which is inaccessible through its status as always-already reproduced, and Žižekʼs development of Lacanʼs notion of the Real as that which resists symbolic signification and imaginary representation. While both notions (as well as their authors) bear obvious variances, they also share similarities insofar as they designate an unapproachable beyond that can only be apprehended in retrospect. Through the analysis of The Matrix and its criticized ties to Baudrillardʼs ontological stance on simulacra and simulation, that I tie to a Žižekian ontology, I venture a Baudrillardian/Žižekian/Lacanian frame that is then used to discuss The Thirteenth Floor, a film that appears much more radical in its problematization of the Real. By proposing a parallel conception of the Real through Baudrillard and Žižek, the aim of this paper is first and foremost the opening of Žižekian media studies to Baudrillardʼs theoretical framework.

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2015

AI or Artificial Intelligence, beyond technical and scientific application, is one of the most common grounds of technological ideas explored in science fiction films as well as cyberpunk novels. Contemporary science fiction films and novels offer technological adventures where the boundary of human fantasies, adventures and romances interfuse with technological future which tends to blur the age-old conflict between science and religious belief. Blending with visions of science and technology, many of these science fiction films and novels portrait fantasies or quests (for salvation, immortality, overcoming physical illness, innovation, power etc.) as posthuman crises of a post human dystopia while this posthuman condition also offers determinations for transcending any earthly limitations of human existence. This paper intends to explore artificial intelligence within the area of popular science fiction novels and films, which incorporates the fantasy of techno-salvation in the near future of singularity through overcoming the carbon limitations of human, fusing essence of spirituality with technology as well as extending spiritual beliefs into technological faith. Investigating fictional depiction of “Artificial Intelligence” as a transhuman or posthuman idea in science fictions, the paper tries to trace out the potential patterns of technological salvation for humankind while it does also find humanizing or dehumanizing elements in these science fictions about the problematic and politicized power relations of binaries like human/machine or human/non-human. This paper is conducted through qualitative research, especially operating within textual analysis of William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer and visual methodology incorporating some contemporary sci-fi films like Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Alex Proyas’ I,Robot (2004), Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix (1999), José Padilh’s Robocop (2014) and Wally Pfister’s Transcendence (2014). Therefore, the paper contends that artificial intelligence, as a posthuman entity in popular science fiction and films, integrates the fantasy of techno-salvation where technology is fused with spirituality extending spiritual beliefs into technological faith. Thus, it tries to destabilize traditional concepts of spiritual beliefs; and at the same time, re-appreciates and re-appropriates the spiritual ideas of omnipotence, heaven, immortality etc. through better comprehending of science and technology.

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This collection of essays explores how science fiction films and computer games attempt to come to grips with the changing conceptions of the world around us, and our identity within it. This book focuses on developments that have taken place in science fiction media over the last two decades. The central concern is with technology: special effects technology used to create the special effects in media such as films and computer games; and the way the media examples themselves image and thematize the role of new technology within their narratives. This book is concerned especially with exploring a diverse range of experiences that science fiction can offer its audience. Ranging from film examples such as Matrix Reloaded and Avatar to game examples such as Doom 3, one aim is to explore how similar themes of technological advancement in the hands of corporations and governments are conveyed across the different media technologies - the cinema and computer games. In addition, the book explores how film affects technologies and science fiction themes have begun to slip outside the boundaries of science fiction media and have entered the social realm - through 'special effects' that are rudimentary forms of artificial intelligence, through 'real' robots that are becoming a growing industry, and in the construction of our urban spaces which are deliberately modeled upon utopian images drawn from science fiction.

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