Values in Design Futures

May 21

What do androids actually dream about? An Analysis of the movies Blade Runner 1982 Blade Runner 2049

One morning, I received a message from my father appreciating the 2am sunrise picture. He said. “Internalizing the experience and following our experienced conscience will lead us towards a strong future’”. Here in Finland, I was trying to write an essay based on a movie that depicts a post-apocalyptic future for humans, as the director of the movie describes it as “Brutality” (Denis Villeneuve, interview 2018). So, what according to my father was an ‘experienced consciousness’? What values shape it? How is it carried forward into the future which would make it a strong one? What is strong and what is weak? His words may have been loosely stranded together. But the design of nature influences values for the future (Bruno Latour, 112 Design-Cornwall).

Blade Runner’s Production Designer Dennis Gassner in an interview with Deadline stated that, “Everybody is learning, everybody’s understanding, and everybody’s contributing. That gives us strength for the future.” This may demonstrate how values are and were built across the world contributing to a design future of the past, now and the future. The 1982 Blade Runner movie depicts a convoluted future of the time in the year 2019, a dystopian future where ‘androids’ created for slave labour need to be put down as they were developing human-like emotions. Gassner said, “When LED did not exist neon worked, LED was used as it was available, cheap and contemporary”, indicating a non-existent technology for that time but which is widely used now. In the 2049 version, architecture is more clearly depicted with the settings in Tokyo, Japan which is one of the fastest growing and dense urban settlements.

“Brutality” of emotions is reflected when the characters, relying on technology for emotional needs, are conditioned to be numb to any kind of real emotions. ‘Human emotion’ is a value which continues into the future, despite the harsh realities. The nature of reality in the depicted futures is that technology is in everybody’s hands, ‘real wood’ has a great value (when Officer K takes it for analysis), power lies with few individuals (the giant Tyrell Corporation building), ‘services’ take care of all needs and of survival in a dual world. The future depicted does not seem entirely illusory in the 2049 film, as in current times development and societal progress is based on technological advancement and access to evolving technology across the world.

The world stood where it did in the movie, probably because of the envisioned future propounded by theorists and practitioners or ‘designers’ of various kinds. As Dennis R Morgan writes in “The dialectic of utopian images of the future within the idea of progress”, his views on a utopian agenda or image for the future is “However, since this large-scale social reconstruction effort necessarily takes place over long periods of time, ideas and ideals change, so the successors of the grand project may not view the blueprint the same way as those who originally conceived it” (Dialect of Utopian Images, Dennis R Morgan).

Climate as seen in the movies looks like the world is at its end, no sun is ever shown, but it rains persistently, and is grey and dusty. There is not a sight of a tree or a plant, except for the surprise appearance of forest and a Dove (symbolic) in the Blade Runner 2019. Food source is mainly of protein rich insects, and the ‘farm’ looks dour. In all, it looks like an awful situation for humans to try and survive in such a world. Yet, nature’s ordinance remains that everything must cease to exist at some point, Replicants alike. But I wonder why bees were alive in an area supposedly highly radioactive.

In addition to brutality and services, women or females seemed to be the only prominent things advertised for the public, besides “Off-world- More space, Live Clean” displayed constantly on hovering vehicles. What value did sex and women carry into the future, where everything is being manufactured, including life and emotions? There were no jobs, per-se. With money or currency not being represented in the movie, one would question how transactions were made. Could it be rewarded through services? It is puzzling, however, that the only time a reference made to money was the call cost 2 Dollars when Deckard called Rachel over what looked like a futuristic skype call. Another point to note is that there is no sense of time. How would ‘time’ be kept in the future? Both films do not lay emphasis on the concept of time-keeping, except that Replicants nor anyone is immortal.

There is also not much detail of how structures are built. Rather, it seems like the building that survived over the years used to have a strange architecture with pipes and tubes jutting out of the buildings. The fact that LAPD still exists and its headquarters is one of the newest buildings that stands tall tells us that it is where the power probably lies. Besides LAPD, Wallace Towers, supposedly being 300kms tall, is a gigantic structure (Meta Workshop: Blade Runner 2049 Miniatures). The designer(s) were evidently Tyrell Corporation and Wallace Towers, working hand in hand with LAPD to control.

The conclusion that I draw from the dystopian scenarios of the future depicted in both films is that in the future nothing is free, everything and everyone becomes a slave through hard surveillance. Why is everything so very human-centric anyway? My mind strangely associates the scene where Rick Deckard and Rachel escape to Adam and Eve, if they were ‘a value’ is the design future of the order of things in the universe.

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