Do Octopi Hear Electric Emmylous or Every Novel is a Sequel; On "Electric Sheep" by Amy Globus

"Every novel is a sequel," writes acclaimed novelist Michael Chabon in his thesis on popular culture, Maps and Legends. The future cannot exist with out being firmly rooted in the present and past. Everything that will happen does so in response to something that has happened or is happening. This is the basis for Amy Globus's "Electric Sheep". By referencing Phillip K. Dick's sci-fi opus, Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep, she is engaging in the same conversation as Dick and Chabon, but in her own voice, from her own time and perspective. The Dick novel details the exploits of individuals who are targeting robots, a malicious but necessary member of their society. Globus chooses the octopus as the misunderstood creature of fear, one that is relatively benign is the present world. The soundtrack is a mostly forgotten pop-country ballad by Emmylou Harris run through digital audio processors. This gives the video an echoey, faux-space feel, that engages both with Dick's novel as a projection of the future and engagement with the past.

The visuals force viewers to reassess in a disturbing light an animal that rarely crosses the thought of contemporary American culture: The Octopus. The creature is shown in extremity, squeezing through glass tubes, contorting like a body artist warning against apocalypse. The majority of the shots are close- to extreme-close ups. It is easy to forget that one is watching an octopus as the frame is filled with pink and orange folds of flesh, the suction cups pulling the subject through the frame. This intimacy with the viscera of the octopus is disturbing; the animal seems to to ebb and and flow, expand and compress, a gelatinous part of the water.Because the octopus is relatively foreign to the quotidian aspects of the daily life, these images are arresting, disturbing. The octopus is isolated from the water or any oceanic environment; it is enclosed in a sterile environment for the purpose of the video frame. By abstracting the octopus from any recognizable surroundings the viewer is only given portions of the animal's anatomy to consider, creating a sort of alienation of the subject with in the viewer's world. But, the viewer is also alienated with in the world of the video, these images would not be nearly as disturbing if given a context such as a PBS Nature special. There is nothing to connect the viewer to the contemporary world, and so, these pictures, video technology aside, could have been from any time, there is no context for these images. However, like Dick's novel and Chabon's thesis, the octopus exists here and now, but when given prominent light, out the safe context of scientific study, it seems unnatural, threatening, and futuristic.

Where the images are disturbing and abstract, Emmy Lou Harris's "Wrecking Ball" stirs that sleeping part of the brain where nostalgia lay, best left alone. The digital effects applied to the track are simple: reverberation and and delay, along with a few awkward mechanical groans. The tinny, empty sound that (in this piece) alter this late-career hit for a country legend, invokes many of the half-assed science fiction movies that purport that outer-space is an endless nothing of echoes and vaguely mechanical noise-scapes. Many will recognize "Wrecking Ball" and will be confused (much as this writer was) by the Garage Band effects applied to the piece. However, the choice to use this semi-forgotten song with cheap digital effects causes the viewer (experniencer?) to wonder if the present trend (in popular music) to use sampled chord structures and drum loops lends itself to a future of a minimally altered past. In an era when so many "legendary" artists and bands from 30 yrs. ago are touring just to capitalize on their status as "legends" it is necessary to wonder what the future of culture will offer. The answer, according to Amy Globus, is one of the past filtered through technology. The effects applied to "Wrecking Ball" are such that anyone could have applied them with their trendy iMac. These effects sound cheesy and outdated to the contemporary ear, even though they are current in consumer technology. The soundtrack suggests that the future will be recongnizable as a relic of the past, but filtered through a digital medium.

These visual and audio elements combined cause a thesis on a contemporary world moving toward a strange and disturbing future that is undeniably rooted in what we are comfortable with today. The piece ultimately warns viewers thatt though the future may be frightening (the octopus) or cheesy (Emmylou remixed), it is a concept that is only reassessing the ignored portions of the present. Like Dick's robots which are grown out of the labor-saving devices that are currently taken for granted or the hit songs of yesterday that we've forgotten about until they are again staring us in the face. These very specific examples of a future rooted in the past, become a metaphor for something much larger. The distopian worlds of Phillip K. Dick or the wasteland of Cormac McCarthy's the road all have a back stroy that relate to a forgotten factoid that blow up into an undesirable future. The piece warns that, like an octopus, a politician, if left unconsidered, can turn into something disturbing and threatening.