Competiţia presupune:
1. Realizarea de materiale de presă scrisă și audiovizuale – eseuri, reportaje, portrete, interviuri, film documentar – pe următoarele teme:
-Itinerar clujean „Paşii Poetului”
-Itinerar românesc „Repere în spaţiul mioritic”
-Itinerar european „ Ipostaze europene”
2. Realizarea unui eseu vizual pornind de la una dintre poeziile poetului
3. Traducerea într-o limbă străină a unui text din opera poetică a lui Lucian Blaga
4. Elaborarea de recenzii pe marginea unora dintre materialele publicate pe parcursul anilor în Caietele şi Meridianele Blaga, apărute cu prilejul fiecărei ediţii a Festivalului Internaţional „Lucian Blaga” (acestea pot fi consultate pe site-ul www.societateablaga.ro )

Concurs_Lucian_Blaga

Expozitia Sombras - Andreea Mogos

Miercuri, 9 iunie 2010, a avut loc vernisajul expoziţiei de fotografie Umbre (Sombras) semnată de artista Andreea Mogoş. Evenimentul s-a desfăşurat în cadrul Galeriei de Artă Nicole Blanco, Espacio Niram din Madrid, Spania şi a fost organizat de scriitorul şi directorul revistei Niram Art, Fabianni Belemuski. La discuţii au mai participat şefa Departamentului de Jurnalism, din cadrul Universităţii Babeş-Bolyai (UBB) Cluj-Napoca,  conf. univ dr. Elena Abrudan, galeristul António Calderón de Jesús, istoricul de artă Lara Gala şi scriitorul Héctor Martínez Sanz.
„Expoziţia Andreei Mogoş stârneşte într-adevăr contradicţii. Artista redă activitatea cotidiană din împrejurimile Madridului servindu-se de umbre, reflexii, transparenţe şi lumini. Titlul expoziţiei, Umbre, nu face decât să întărească ideea că prezenţa Andreei Mogoş aici, în Spania, cu siguranţă va lăsa urme”, a precizat directorul revistei Niram Art, Fabianni Belemuski.

„Arhitectura minimalistă a spaţiului în care au fost realizate fotografiile a determinat viziunea artistei asupra realităţii. Uniformitatea coloristică, strălucirea şi transparenţa albului şi lipsa detaliilor s-au translatat asupra personajelor surprinse în fotografii;  ele îşi pierd detaliile, care contribuie în mod firesc la identificarea figurilor. Soluţia arhitecturală de iluminare a spaţiului permite pătrunderea luminii naturale prin cadre geometrice mari şi crearea  unor zone mai  întunecate, dar facilitează reliefarea figurilor care se transformă în simple umbre care populează spaţiul conturat de efectele luminii captate de un fragment construit al realităţii”, a menţionat  conf. univ dr. Elena Abrudan.

„Dinamica fotografiilor semnate de Andreea reiese tocmai din aceste antinomii, dihotomii de  lumini şi umbre. Artista creează contextul unui început şi al unui sfârşit. Andreea Mogoş a surprins, de fapt, contextul fotografiei moderne, ceea ce conferă expoziţiei de faţă o valoare sporită. Orice galerie din Spania ar găzdui această expoziţie”, a declarat galeristul António Calderón de Jesús.
„Fără lumină nu există umbre. Dacă până acum am urmărit în fotografiile mele surprinderea emoţiilor de pe chipurile oamenilor şi relaţiile care se stabilesc între aceştia, abordarea  vizuală a fotografiilor din expoziţia de faţă reprezintă o nouă provocare pentru mine, în care oamenii se depersonalizează, devin umbre în spaţii aproape ireale”, a mărturisit fotografa Andreea Mogoş .

Sombras - Expozitie foto Andreea Mogos

„Artista nu alege un motiv sau o temă spectaculoasă. Tema este ostentativă. Umbre, reflexii, transparenţe, clarobscur. Ne întâlnim cu fotografii în care centrul de imagine se mută tot timpul: artista se joacă cu spaţiile închise şi cu cele deschise. Cu toate acestea, contrastele nu dezechilibrează fotografiile. Fotografiile artistei păstrează echilibrul. Îi cer, astfel, fotografei Andreea Mogoş să ne lase lumină, în loc de umbre”, a precizat scriitorul Héctor Martínez Sanz.
„Expoziţia Sombras semnată de Andreea Mogoş prezintă un spaţiu diafan, o atmosferă de linişte. Fotografii policrome, de compoziţie care redau relaţia spaţiilor”, a declarat istoricul de artă Lara Gala.

Expozitie Sombras - Andreea Mogos

Andreea Mogoş este lector universitar doctor în cadrul Departamentului de Jurnalism, UBB Cluj-Napoca, unde susţine cursurile de fotojurnalism. Până în prezent a expus împreună cu studenţii din cadrul Departamentului de Jurnalism în spaţii convenţionale şi neconvenţionale din România.  Expoziţia Sombras este prima expoziţie de autor.

El ano 2110 - Expozitie foto Andrei Zamora

Sâmbătă, 5 iunie, a avut loc vernisajul expoziţiei de fotografie Anul 2110, semnată de fotograful Andrei Zamora. Evenimentul a fost găzduit de Galeria de Artă Nicole Blanco, Espacio Niram din Madrid, Spania.
Expoziţia a fost deschisă de directorului revistei Niram Art, Fabianni Belemuski. Invitaţii speciali ai evenimentului au fost Elena Abrudan, şefa Departamentului de Jurnalism, Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai Cluj-Napoca, şi Andreea Mogoş, lector universitar în cadrul aceluiaşi departament.
 „Andrei Zamora a expus în Madrid şi în alte oraşe din Spania. Chiar dacă pasiunea sa pentru fotografie a început în urmă cu zece ani, abia de doi ani acesta a început să expună. Expoziţia Anul 2110 ne prezintă peisaje urbane, pe un ton pesimist, o viziune asupra unui viitor sumbru. Andrei Zamora încearcă să transmită prin imaginile sale stări inspirate de lecturile lui Baudelaire şi Bacovia”. (Fabianni Belemuski, directorul revistei Niram Art)

 „Acest spaţiu expoziţional neconvenţional concentrează energiile creatoare ale unor oameni de cultură români şi spanioli.  Privind fotografiile lui Andrei Zamora, mi-l  imaginez pe artist ca pe  un personaj solitar, plimbându-se într-o dispoziţie melancolică, în spaţii urbane, populate de edificii arfitecturale mai vechi sau mai noi. Andrei Zamora exprimă nostalgia trecutului în faţa unei perspective uşor sumbre a viitorului. Opera sa rămâne deschisă semnificaţiilor multiple, care pot fi create de lectorii imaginilor vizuale propuse de autor.  (Conf. Univ. Dr. Elena Abrudan)

Elena Abrudan la Espacio Niram - Madrid

„Titlul expoziţiei, Anul 2110, mă bucură şi mă întristează în acelaşi timp. Chiar dacă argumentul verbal este de natură pesimistă, din punct de vedere vizual fotografiile sunt o încântare pentru ochi. Andrei Zamora ne propune oraşe dezbrăcate de stigmele timpurilor noastre, aruncând o privire dincolo de acestea.” (Lect. Univ. Dr. Andreea Mogoş)

Afis Expozitie 2110 - Andrei Zamora

 „În construirea semnificaţiei trebuie pornit de la titlul expoziţiei, care presupune că spaţiile urbane vor exista şi 2110 deci mesajul transmis este în acelaşi timp unul de speranţă.” (scriitorul Hector Martinez Sanz)
Andrei Zamora s-a născut la Bucureşti, 27 aprilie 1981. Fotografiile expuse prezintă imagini editate digital realizate în Madrid şi Santander.

EXPOSICIóN FOTOGRáFICA DE ANDREI ZAMORA: “EL AñO 2110″, http://www.madridenmarco.webege.com/documents/eventosmadridenmarco.php?entry_id=1275690476, Revista Madrid en Marco
Madrid: „Anul 2110” sau cum vede artistul Andrei Zamora Spania peste 100 de ani- http://www.adevarul.es/stiri/se-intampla-orasul-tau/madrid-anul-2110-cum-vede-artistul-andrei-zamora-spania-100-ani, Adevarul
 
Absolvent clujean, expune la Madrid- http://www.ziuadecj.ro/action/article?ID=44953, Ziua de Cluj

http://journalism.polito.ubbcluj.ro

În data de 1 iunie 2010 la ora 13:00 s-a vernisat expoziţia de artă vizuală organizată în cadrul Salonului de Primăvară al Scriitorilor în care membrii filialei Cluj a USR (Uniunea Scriitorilor Români) şi-au expus lucrările.
Preşedinta filialei Cluj a USR, doamna Irina Petraş, a vorbit în deschiderea acestui eveniment, subliniând aspectul inovator al unora dintre exponate.

“Art Nouveau a fost mai mult decat un stil aparut la granita dintre secolele XIX si XX. Noua arta a reprezentat o noua viziune asupra societatii moderne si asupra metodelor de productie. Evidentierea importantei manufacturii fata de productia industriala a constituit o incercare de redefinire a operei de arta.  Din punct de vedere vizual, stilul Art Nouveau prezenta modele decorative in care se impleteau formele organice intalnite in natura. Noul stil a aplicat tehnici industriale si a folosit materiale moderne. Acesta abordare a fost reprezentata in pictura, arhitectura, mobilier, design grafic, sticlarie, bijuterii, ceramica, metaloplastie, textile sisculptura. Astfel, frumosul si armonia au devenit parte a vietii cotidiene.

Art Nouveau a avut o influenta profunda asupra miscarilor artistice contemporane. Dupa revenirea puternica din anii 50-70, Art Nouveau continua sa se regaseasca fragmentar in noile stiluri artistice  ca revolta impotriva sobrietatii artei abstracte, incercand sa readuca in viata si in arta deopotriva culoare, rafinament, eleganta”.

http://www.uniuneascriitorilor-filialacluj.ro/

Studenţii masteratului de Producţie Media din cadrul Departamentului de Jurnalism, Facultatea de Ştiinţe Politice, Administrative şi ale Comunicării au expus în cadrul expoziţiei de fotografie MOZAIC vernisată luni, 1 februarie la parterul Iulius Mall (fostul restaurant Oca Bianca).

Fotografiile au fost realizate în localitatea Stana (Cluj) şi au ca scop investigarea vizuală a spaţiului rural dintr-o perspectivă urbană. Coordonatorul acestui proiect este colega mea Andreea Mogos.

Autoarea este preocupata sa descopere aspecte mai putin obisnuite ale realitatii, capabile sa comunice privitorului mesaje legate deopotriva de relatia omului cu natura si spatiul construit. (a declarat Andreea Mogos)

The participants found the presentations interesting and the debates stimulating.

The conference opened on May 21^st with the Official Welcome Address delivered by Senior Lecturer Ph.D. Elena Abrudan, Head of the Journalism Department (Babes-Bolyai University) and General Conference Chair, followed by the the Rector’s Address delivered by Professor Ph.D. Andrei Marga.

Four other keynote speeches followed: Web 2.0, Social Networks, and Media Students – Professor Ph.D. Melissa Lee Price (Staffordshire University), Researching the Blogosphere – Senior Lecturer Ph.D. Georgeta Drulă (Bucureşti University), Bare and Share – Culture of File Sharing in Romania - Szakáts István (Altart Foundation), Academic Websites and Web Rankings – Senior Lecturer Ph.D. Alina Andreica (Babes-Bolyai University).

The afternoon session of the conference started with a digital art exhibition featuring digital artworks provided by the Altart Foundation and several Journalism students. The participants were especially captivated by the works of first-year Journalism student Ovidiu Duţă.

Each of the two following panel sessions – Researching New Media Systems and E-business Management – was opened by two extremely interesting keynote presentations, one on Data Mining and Knowledge Representation by Lecturer Ph.D. Cristian Săcărea from Babeş-Bolyai University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science and one on E-business Management delivered by Lecturer Ph.D. Robert Buchmann from Babeş-Bolyai University’s Faculty of Economical Studies and Business Management. Presentations in both panels started up debates on the role of e-marketing, studying virtual communities and their impact on consumer culture. Both panels also featured presentations from business professionals – Paul Lupoian and Cristian Popa from Alphasoft presented methods of digitizing print and using it for research and Sergiu Biriş, the General Director of Romania’s top website the Trilulilu video-sharing portal who presented ways and means of managing a business based on user generated content.

The first day of the Conference ended with a dinner at Piramida Restaurant where the participants had the opportunity to get to know each other better and discuss future projects.

The second day of the conference had a more heterogeneous approach to new media within the Digital Media and E-publishing, Online Society Dynamics panel. The participants proved interested both in presentations covering niche topics such as Studying Sexuality through the Internet (Sebastian Bartoş, M.A. student in Clinical Psychology) or In-Game Advertising (George Prundaru, M.A. student in Interactive Media) and the broad topic of blogs and the way they have shifted traditional socio-cultural paradigms. Assistant Horea Badau held an inciting presentation entitled Bloggers -  A New Community of Leaders. Also, presentations like the one by Lecturer Ph.D Radu Bîlbîie (“Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu) on a Narrowcasting System for Public Institution lead the way towards the final event of the conference, the Interactive Multimedia Student Presentations.

Two teams of Journalism students presented their projects. A team of first-year students (Andrei şi Cezar Candrea, Irina Breniuc şi Iulia Becheş) presented an online portal designed as a meeting place for student passionate about photography, a portal that will soon host photo galleries of Journalism students. The other team comprised of second-year Journalism students (Radu Morea, Andrei Leczfalvi, Claudiu Dănilă) presented a remarkable interactive visual guide of the Journalism Department, allowing navigation through different rooms, browsing equipment and interacting with professors.

This first edition of the conference was all in all a great opportunity for establishing common grounds between specialists from different fields, thus opening the way to a truly interdisciplinary approach to new media in Romanian scientific research with considerable market applications.

General Program Chair

Senior Lecturer Ph.D. Elena Abrudan – Head of Journalism Department

Program Chair

Assistant Radu Meza

Programul conferinţei:eadim-academic-network-conference

Rezumate ale lucrărilor prezentate:

Visual Culture in New Interface Design

 conf. univ. dr. Elena Abrudan - şefa Departamentul de Jurnalism, FSPAC, UBB

 As technology develops, one cannot help notice the general tendency that media machines follow: simpler, slick designs with fewer colors, fewer buttons, with just a few multi-purpose controls. This is one of the effects of the convergence of technology that allows all media to be displayed on the same screen. As Lev Manovich puts it, we are witness to the advent of the universal media machine. Be it a universal media machine we keep at home on a desk, one we carry around in a bag, or one we keep in our pockets, we notice how they have changed over the last decades from bulky, difficult to operate machines, full of buttons and blinking LEDs to these comfortable and esthetic, monochrome, slick surfaces that only carry one or two once omnipresent buttons, sometimes even none.
In these new designs for digital media machines, both for hard and soft interfaces we find that technology is becoming transparent, completing the shift from digital technology control for IT specialists to digital media consumption for the masses.
Arthur C. Clarke once said “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Can it be that this is exactly what we are starting to achieve through simple, smart designs for smart multi-purpose interfaces?
This paper means to explore visual culture in the universal digital media machines’ both hard and soft interfaces designs with respect to the latent, fundamental desire of humans across history to practice magic. Discussing the design trend started by Apple with their iPods, iPhones and Macs, moving to the simple yet astounding Google and then to slick, transparent, visually rich, yet simple to use operating systems look and feel: from Mac OSX to Windows Vista, this article will try to encompass modern visual culture in digital media migrating towards magic in order to better fulfill the consumer’s need to be empowered.

Extracting and Representing Knowledge from Popular New Media Systems
Analyzing Online Social Networking Systems in Web 2.0

 Radu Meza

This paper explores the academic research relevance of online social networking systems such as Hi5 or Facebook using state-of-the-art data collection and analysis methods.
Although it is a widely-known fact that online social networking systems hold immense amounts of data (there are over 2 billion registered users in the popular online social networking systems), there is still little academic interest towards exploiting this resource for knowledge, but more importantly, we have yet to develop the tools for such research. This attempt is meant to open new paths for future research of complex new media systems by combining data mining methods with alternative representation models.
The main goal of this study is to extract a large sample of user data (name, age, sex, location, favorite musical genre etc.) from the Hi5 social networking system (which is very popular in Romania, having about 2.5 million registered users) and use formal concept analysis, a data analysis method theorized by Rudolf Wille that has not yet reached its full potential especially in social studies. The conceptual clustering and conceptual hierarchies that this data analysis method can provide are relevant for extracting meaning out of Web 2.0 data content tags. Statistical tools are also used to complement this new approach and offer a full, clear picture of the data in question. Another objective of this paper is to provide a map of the virtual social links in the system. This web of interconnected nodes, can provide information on the structure of virtual social networks (whether or not they follow the model of scale-free networks like Albert Barabasi proved real social networks or the Web do; whether their structure is “continental” or “insular” and to what extent we can consider these popular emerging systems to be “small worlds”).

« James Cameron’s The Abyss : Digital Communication as Apocalypse »

Paper for the workshop on Science Fiction and Symbolic Communication, chaired by Elena Abrudan, of the11^th Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas at the University of Helsinki, 28/7-2/8 2008.

Abstract

James Cameron’s science-fiction blockbusters often suggestively problematize mankind’s relation to technology. The Terminator films were thus based on the idea of the nascent Internet as a nervous system that could become self-aware as the subject of technology and promptly dispose of its human parasites. These dystopian visions have also had their utopian counterpart in The Abyss, the first film to use digital special effects for “morphing”, significantly used as a metaphor of the new mode of being made possible by global electronic communications. For the advent of this technical revolution is part of the Christian imagery of eschatology and conversion, translated to different states of matter, that functions to suggest the shift in human consciousness accompanying the transition from the rigidity of analog technology to the fluidity of digital technology. It thus symbolically locates salvation for an embattled mankind in the self-revelation of a liquid realm of instant communication overcoming all outward divisions in a unified global consciousness field. It thereby manages to transfigure its historical moment as a kairos bringing the Heavenly Kingdom within reach of earthly realization: 1989 as the meltdown of  Cold War blocks, on the eve of the emergence of the borderless global cyberspace of the Internet. Marshall McLuhan saw the creative artist as an “early warning system”, grasping and portraying such shifts in the economy of the sensorium even ahead of their full unfolding in technology, history and culture. Cameron’s The Abyss can illustrate this view, being a mythic epiphany of mutations then still around the corner that became discernible in it retrospectively. It thus uses Christian motifs to give narrative expression to world-historical shifts best conceived in McLuhanian terms. For instance, this is a film about beings dying to themselves and painfully learning to live in a new element to save others, and particularly about humans breathing a liquid instead of air to reach a new “heaven” in reverse in the depths of the ocean, inhabited by angelic creatures whose technology gives any form to water, like CGI does to screen contents. The dark sea stands for the fluid, all-encompassing acoustic space of electronic technology, as opposed to the visual space at the surface, where solid states and their steel vessels are poised on the brink of nuclear war; it is the overcoming of their sharp opposition of homogenizing units that is signalled at the end by the literal emergence from underneath them of the marine “Heavenly Jerusalem,» like the “global village” brushing aside the Gutenberg logic of territorial nation-states and industrial ideologies.

Symbols of Change in a Shattered World

 Jules Verne, Begum’s Millions (Les 500 millions de la Bégum)

Paper for the workshop on Science Fiction and Symbolic Communication, chaired by Elena Abrudan, of the11^th Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas at the University of Helsinki, 28/7-2/8 2008.

Abstract

Peter Schulman, Old Dominion University, USA

         “Nous sommes malades, cela est bien certain, malades de progrès,” Zola announced in Mes haines. “Cette victoire des nerfs sur le sang a décidé de nos moeurs, de notre littérature, de notre époque toute entière.” Can Zola’s famous statement be applied to Jules Verne’s vision of the 19^th-century as well? Although Verne’s most famous works such as Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours and Vingt-mille lieues sous les mers are considered by many to be encomia to technology and progress, the recently rediscovered manuscript of Verne’s dystopic vision of Paris in the 1960′s, Paris au Xxème siècle, so scathingly denounces the dehumanizing aspect of modernity that it also points to the latent uneasiness with his era that would resurface in full in the later 500 millions de la Bégum which has been traditionally seen as a “turning point” in Verne’s career in terms of his own ideological evolution from sunny optimist to guarded pessimist. Written shortly after the Franco-Prussian war, Les 500 millions de la Bégum paints a grim nationalistic picture of two scientists, a  benevolent Frenchman, and an evil, despotic German who each inherit millions from a long-lost relative. Whereas the Frenchman, le Dr Sarrasin, creates a utopia on the West Coast of the United-States called France-Ville, the German, Herr Schultze, builds Stahlstadt or “City of Steel,” a dystopic mining village bearing an uncanny resemblance to Verne’s hegemonic 1960 Paris: “la liberté, l’air manquaient dans cet étroit milieu” (100). Indeed, Stahlstadt is essentially a slave camp similar to  Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. While France-Ville is a socialist society appropriately situated along the Pacific Ocean, Stahlstadt is a war mongering proto-fascist state, an environmental disaster which produces cannons to bellicose nations in general and to Germany in particular: “L’opinion générale était d’ailleurs que Herr Schultze travaillait à l’achèvement d’un engin de guerre terrible, d’un effet sans précédent et destiné à assurer bientôt à l’Allemagne la domination universelle” (102).

               While Paris au Xxème Siècle was dismissed by Verne’s publisher, the venerable P-J. Hetzel, as an unpublishable  “erreur de jeunesse” in favor of his more cheerful tales of adventure and travels, Les 500 millions de la Bégum is the first of Verne’s novels to present both utopic and dystopic views of society. Moreover, it is also the first to feature a truly evil scientist, Herr Schultze,  who is obsessed with initiating a proto-nuclear war on France in an attempt at German world dominance. A product of a general post-war, anti-German sentiment in France,  Les 500 million is also a fulfillment of  Verne’s general fear of global annihilation that he had to stifle after Paris au Xxème Siècle’s failure. As Arthur B. Evans has explained, the nationalistic, thanatos-driven microcosm Verne depicts in Les 500 millions in fact mirrored  a more general trend in post-Industrial Revolution France in which the “utopian focus of the French bourgeoisie of the Second Empire and the Troisième République began to shift with the times. The traditional utopian ‘nowhere” was soon replaced by a potential ‘anywhere;’ the pastoral setting by the industrial; personal ethics by competitive expansionism.” As such, Les 500 millions can be seen as more than  a simple cautionary tale of what happens when science and technology fall into the hands of an evil leader: in many ways, Verne’s shift in concerns towards the fin de siècle went hand in hand with France’s as well.

God and the Machine: Gnosticism and science fiction

Paper for the workshop on Science Fiction and Symbolic Communication, chaired by Elena Abrudan, of the11^th Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas at the University of Helsinki, 28/7-2/8 2008.

Abstract

Theo Malekin

Glasgow University’s Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts

My work explores the paradoxical pursuit of religious/mystical vision in science fiction.  My particular focus would be on Philip K Dick, especially ‘The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch’ although other examples spring to mind: Gibson’s Neuromancer, the Matrix films, for instance.  What interests me is that they share a gnostic sense of the cosmos as fallen, and comprised of deceitful appearances – indeed Platonic as well as gnostic.  Science fiction is not alone in resorting to gnosticism as a response to the ‘disenchantment’ of the world, but it is ironic that the most purportedly materialistic of literary genres has in the last few decades produced some of the most intensely religious literature.

This paper addresses the persistence of the religious impulse in the scientific age by focusing on two novels by the seminal American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.  These books respond to what Max Weber described as the “disenchantment of the world” with a Gnostic vision of a fallen cosmos.  In The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Dick’s protagonists escape appalling drudgery by communing with quasi-divine presences in which individual identity dissolves, mediated in a parody of the Eucharist by the drug Can-D.  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? similarly depicts the Earth after an ecological catastrophe.  Here empathy has become the spring of religious life as individuals subsume their identity in that of Mercer, a technologically mediated saviour-figure repeatedly attempting to escape the world of death.

Dick’s novels envision the world in bleak terms: a death-world where religious promises of salvation offer little hope of escape.  At the same time, it suggests that technology and science do not engage the basic issues of being human, and his dystopianism indeed suggests that technological mastery is bound to fail. Dick’s work is nevertheless profoundly, if paradoxically, religious.

Mirrors Voices: The Return from Solaris, Mars and Japetus

Fernando Kuhn

Universidade Metodista de São Paulo (Brazil)

swocean@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a reflection involving science-fiction works such as Stanislaw Lem´s “Solaris”, Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” and Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: a Space Odyssey”, among others, in context to issues as cyber society and biotechnology. Symbolical aspects of this convergence are also approached in this attempt of interpreting and figuring out such echoes of these different worlds, spaces – how many, and which ? – supposedly reserved for humans – how many, and which ? … and what kind of? 

We can hear Zarathustra shouting “behold, I teach you the Superman!”, but we can also hear Snow whispering that “we can observe, through a microscope, as it were, our own monstrous ugliness, our folly, our shame”. Yet it is still possible to find the discardable human leaving the gates of the millennium behind, and coming to bring us the isolation of the excluded. The “archetypal Fool”, insisting on existing despite representing nothing as a citizen – and soon, as a being – he is also there.

As Bradbury’s Martian speeches, “what does it matter who of us is Past or Future if we are both alive, for what follows will follow, tomorrow or in ten thousand years. How do you know that those temples are not the temples of your own civilization one hundred centuries from now, tumbled and broken? You do not know. Then don’t ask. But the night is very short. There go the festival fires in the sky, and the birds”.

 And so Superman appears, and gets lost while spying among so many windows. But there is also a Kafkian K. on the mirrors, several of them, confused, paralyzed; and so many bored souls demanding for the invasion of the body snatchers; and there is still a man in the crowd, a Poe’s man, walking, walking, walking, walking, walking in search of the world, following and dictating the flow towards the dawn of a new man.

Will they be so many, or simply one? And how many will this world be for?

The mythologist’s voice echoes: “When you see the earth from the moon, you don’t see any divisions there of nations or states This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people that we are one with”. And from above, like a “fool on the hill”, a Russian cosmonaut in Andrei Ujica documentary “Out of present”reflects about the changes on Earth during the months he passed in the space: “Today is day, tomorrow is night”.

Maybe he is right.