
Disneyland with the Death Penalty
Cyberpunk visual culture within Western pop-culture is notorious for it’s fetishised imagery of Asian bodies and cities. This can be seen in the narratives of Japanese texts, images and cities within notable science fiction like Blade Runner, Matrix and Neuromancer.
This use of Asian imagery to promote and fantasise the technological futures, often presents superficial notions of the culture, and is a highly discussed note in the visual study of cyberpunk.
This work is a response to such a “techno-orientalised” view depicted in William Gibson’s short form essay “Singapore: Disneyland with the death penalty” where he paints a dystopic view of Singapore as a hi-tech, government controlled “boring” society. My GIF visualises his Singapore,
using exaggeration as key to comment on the superficial treatment of Singapore depicted.
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Reference the article here .
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April 2018