Have you ever thought about infinity? It’s kind of an unquantifiable challenge, in as much as anything you think rather than something you imagine could be true. I’ve always been a fan of decent sci-fi, I’m not the sort that glibly follows every science fiction series on TV or jumps on the latest movie just because there’s a hint of space or time travel. No. I grew up with sci-fi because, in the instances it is well conceived or written, it would help me escape the humdrum reality of my own life.
As a child, a very young child, (according to my mother I was a mere one and a half years old) I managed to steal away on my trusty go-kart, and pedalled a mile or so from home in the middle of the night. I was quoted by the police as saying I was waiting for a UFO to pick me up and take me away from Bromley, Kent, UK, The Earth. That fascination with all that is not "our reality" has stayed with me ever since. Unlike fantasy, unlike much of fiction, the science fiction I enjoy has to play a whole series of hard and fast rules, it’s far more difficult to apply one’s ideas to a false reality than our own, one has to discover and nail down the boundaries, the precepts and concepts, the laws of nature, physics, everything that we utilise to at least stumble through an understanding of our own temporal space.
I don’t particularly like the term science fiction, it’s not something I’d choose, but most alternative descriptions would sound too much like they were literally taken from the pages of a trashy sci-fi novel for me or anyone else to contend with. So we’re stuck with a rather dated terminology that I’m sure sounds more comfortable in the 1950s, a time that coined the phrase the "Atomic Age" amongst others. I particularly enjoy the idea of exploring parallel realities, even our dreams offer a glimpse of that possibility. As a young teenager I’d spend many a miserable moment imaginatively escaping into the mind of another being, sometimes an animal, my pets around me, the birds flying outside my window, sometimes more abstract, such as a neutron reaching the surface of the sun, or a boulder perched on a mountain high, being gently rocked by the wind, ever closer each day to tumbling down the steep ascent and disintegrating under the force of friction and gravity.
My sci-fi is here, it’s right before our eyes, it’s the possibility that all of this is an illusion, or that linear temporal space is merely a construct developed in order to prevent this race of highly developed apes from tearing itself to pieces. There are no limitations until the enquiry has begun, and then the laws of chaos begin to take effect. Much like my favourite work by Michael Kutsche, an award winning illustrator and 3D artist, based in Berlin.
His down-to-earth approach to impossibility, to the idea of exactly what we all imagine, or at least our collective aggregation of film, television and art iconography is extremely refreshing, not to mention the astoundingly lifelike approach Michael takes towards his subjects. "Coming Home" sums up the basic tenets of many sci-fi films for me, in particular Planet of The Apes. I love the original first movie in the franchise, the others I’d rather not mention, for me there is no reason why man’s own capability, or in fact any race, to have meddled in their own evolution, that is only an impossibility under the confines of a construct known as linear time.
Science itself has near replaced all other religions as a belief system, believe it until something better comes along. Still science has made many mistakes in the past it has also helped to predict the future, even, to a degree has science fiction (with a little help from the more way out members of the scientific community). Take an old episode of Star Trek, the 1960′s TV series, back then they were carrying around mobile phones, powering up photon drives and teleporting here, there and everywhere. The first technology is here, the second is in development, the third probably won’t be here in my lifetime, but it will more than likely arrive.
Something we don’t have to imagine is genetic experimentation, it’s already here and for all the positive arguments the thought of humans tinkering with their own genetic make-up does still give me the chills. It’s like a toddler sticking a fork in an electrical socket, they really don’t have any idea why they shouldn’t into they’re lying on the carpet, mouth frothing, body shaking in shock.
Boxer by Michael Kutsche confidently strolls straight into the quandary that is genetic manipulation, something that is bred to do the job, flesh with enough autonomic ability to perform the task it was designed to do. My primary fear, one I have had since I can remember, is that Man will repeat the mistakes of history and deliver a whole new age of racism, genetic elitism, a subject confidently covered by the film Gattaca amongst others.
In a world of 6.5 billion, many of whom are starving, living in poverty, without work, lacking in resources and surviving in an environment that is surely doomed (unless nature figures a way to finally wipe out the virus that is the human race), the Japanese have dived headlong into a 100 year program to develop robot technology. Amidst the lack and therefore escalating price of almost every material in the world, many other countries have turned to the idea of genetic technology as an alternative. For one day there maybe a race who could simply photosynthesise, or deal with a lower oxygen content, even survive in a carbon-enriched environment. Perfect for space travel, perfect for a dying world.
Recently I and my partner Chris caught a trailer for a documentary about surrogate birth mothers, some had had almost a dozen children each and graciously handed them over to childless couples around the world. Unlike Christina, I found myself once again spinning forth into a parallel reality, a possible future, where a subspecies of humanity had been specifically developed with the aid of advanced genetic technology to do one thing. Give birth.
A species that needed nothing but a collection of simplified organs including the womb to perform the task, no mind, no consciousness, no limbs, a technology of flesh, disposable after it’s purpose had been performed. A mirror of nature itself, whereby the Black Widow spider consumes its partner immediately after consummation, this creature, this living machine would need nothing but the intake of simple food stuffs and a set of bowels to evacuate the waste until the child had been born. The future can be terrifying, especially if you have a habit of extenuating a line of thought, a series of logical progressions to the enth degree.
I find this tenet, this proposition cropping up again and again in Michael Kutsche’s work, this piece is called Bioseed.
As a child my ideas of the future were glittering, sparkling lights and warp speed jaunts across a mainly benevolent universe, adventure, discovery, perchance a meeting with a highly advanced race to take us under their wing. This vision, however, couldn’t possibly stand the test of time, or the weight of insurmountable evidence, that human nature, that all nature, is inevitably perfunctory, and for those with an emotive reflex to existence, as do many if not all of our race, cruel.
We are the dominant species of the planet, we have all but exhausted every supply, every natural resource, we can’t afford to escape the ensuing disaster that awaits us, our own self-made destiny. Instead we will be reduced to cannibalism, genetically mixing and matching what scraps we may find amongst ourselves and the remain species around us in some vain attempt to survive a collapse in the natural world, whatever form it may take.
See the rest of Michael Kutsche’s fascinating art at:-
http://michaelkutsche.deviantart.com
http://www.mistermk.de/
