Blade Runner: The Cyberpunk Movement

The cyberpunk movement was a phenomenon that took place during the 1980s through to the 1990s. Starting from a literacy basis from the works of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ [1984] [fig.1]. Science fiction it self has a huge history that resulted in the birth of the style of narrative and aesthetic all starting with Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ in 1818 all the way to the big space operas of the 1970s. The movement is built on the foundations of the concept of artificial intelligence that has a history of its own in the history of mechanics as well within literature and film. Cyberpunk being such a visual form of literature in the 20th century it has taken influence off many different art movements and art cultures. Comic books have been a

The digital information age being the main theme for these stories. William Gibson given the most credit for the style however many filmmakers may argue that it was Ridley Scott’s adaption of Philip K. Dick’s novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ [1968] titled ‘Blade Runner’ [1982] was the first example of the cyberpunk era and not William Gibson’s literature. This being because of the argument over aesthetic over narrative. Blade Runner follows many of the traits of a cyberpunk in a visual sense however it does lack significant amounts of the cyberpunk narrative content. Blade Runner before the concept of cyberspace was considered a ‘future noir’ or a ‘tech noir’ for its resemblance to the film noir films of the 1940s. As much as this movement had such an impact in the 1980s and 90s, it has started to decline although the most current examples of the cyberpunk visuality is seen through Japanese manga and amines illustrated/created by examples such as ‘Blame’ [1998] manga illustrator Tsutomu Nihei. All these discussions involved the discovery of how the cyberpunk movement has become either a visual narrative to be followed or simply a visual

It is widely considered that English author Mary Shelley is the founder of science fiction literature with her ground-breaking novel “Frankenstein” [1818]. The recreation of a human being from various body parts was the first story of its kind ever written until that point in history. This is very familiar to the concept of modern robotics in fiction where we use man made materials to make a living conscious artificial intelligence inside a human shaped machine. You see the first example in literature of man made objects infused with a human cyborg by the poet/author Edgar Allen Poe in “The Man That Was Used Up” in 1839 from a short story about a man named “John A.B.C Smith” who was injured from war, gets his missing body parts replaced by glass, wood or metal. An early representation of real life prosthetics and implants that were being produced in the Victorian era. These could easily be compared to cybernetic enhancements that are seen in the cyberpunk movement. In fig.7 there’s an example of these highly decorated prosthetic arms as exhibited in the “Robots” exhibition at the Science Museum in London [2017], this one dressed in the neogothic style, these were made from the 1850s up to 1910. The 19th century was filled with science fiction references from its literature and its developments in prosthetics which are still being developed