Little Utopias:
Synthetic Island & Transhumanism
In this blog, Oliver Meacham, a neurodivergent local artist, talks about the process of designing a cyberpunk inspired utopia, and how the world he designed created the basis of his video mini-series, ‘Synthetic Island and Transhumanism’, as part of B arts project Little Utopias. The video Oliver created is available to watch at the end of the blog post.
Author - Oliver Meacham 19th November 2021
Photograph taken at Little Utopia’s Showcase evening in October.
Synthetic Island & Transhumanism Documentary
One day, we all got given a task to design our own “little utopia” - the little being literal, since we all had to design our utopia in cardboard boxes.
Everyone else had already taken the props that looked like natural vegetation. Instead, I was getting inspired by the world of cyberpunk. I decided to design a concept similar to one once thought up by Dubai, which was synthetic islands.
This gave me the freedom to design the island for how I pleased, for example since the entire island was synthetic and was made purply for synthetic purposes, there was nothing stopping me from making the sand pink and the rocks yellow.
And instead of the concept of augmentations to the human body [as in cyberpunk], I figured as the world gets more progressive, perhaps the concept of switching your species would emerge. And instead of limiting it to animals that exist, I came up with the concept of changing into a mythical animal, such as a black and white furry eel, or a dinosaur head glittery amphibian snake.
I’ll admit most of the ideas were a little lovecraftian, but in positive way, which still came with the idea of a chaotic good world that I originally planned for in this little world.
Photograph taken at Little Utopia’s Showcase evening in October.
The first time Richard Redwin [lead artist on Little Utopia’s community project] came over to ask about my utopia, I told him everything I had already written above me, and after a few back and forth of talking to each other, that was when I found out the concept which was called “transhumanism”. Richard told me about a comic series called Transmetropolitan, a cyberpunk world in which a few of the residents would transition their species, which helped me flesh out the world I was imagining.
I have ADHD you see, I’m neurodivergent, so whenever I’m focused on a genre and I get to create the style and ambience, I have to make this world regardless of how small it is.
Because after all, in Transmetropolitan, the only species they transition to is alien, while in my world anything is possible!
So when my mother got a call saying an artist was interested in my “little utopia” I was ecstatic to build more ideas for the ingredients of my synthetic island.
At home, I started to learn more about what I wanted in this world, and I took a lot of inspiration from a YouTube video by Jimmy McGee - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI7LUbKZtfM. Below are some of the phrases I picked out:
“Billionaires travelling to space just to one up each other is funny, but the pile of bodies they claimed to get there definately isn’t”
“It’s a feeling no game before it has ever quite created. There are chaotic games, even one about wars, but in those games, the player is always situated pretty firmly within history. It could be a real or fictional history, but games always try to give a sense of place and time. Cruelty squad pretends to do that, but it always throw the players off balance””
That was when I decided that the little utopia was going to have a miniature story too.
These were all just ideas, until I met Richard Redwin, the same guy that introduced me to Transmetroplitan. To my surprise, as soon as we had coffee, he took out a huge piece of paper the size of two tables and we started listing out ideas and writing a formula from them.
We surprisingly had a lot in common, at least when it comes to creativity, and when we starting making things up, this came with story ideas. Richard’s idea was that the future will come, but we shouldn’t rush it, which I incorporated with my ideas I took from the videos I had seen.
We cooperated together well and even if we did come up with dystopian ideas, as he put it: “Utopias are just dystopias that work”, which helped greatly with my story idea.
Photograph taken at Little Utopia’s Showcase evening in October.
So, how did we get from the idea, to the finished mini-series?
Day 1 - Story Design
When we were sharing sci fi flicks and philosophy, it was apparent that the story would be inspired from his quote “utopias are dystopias that work”. We settled on the idea of a talented but complicated individual who made an army of clones. The clones are like sentient computers, but also people who are born with only one purpose - to exist as property workers to substance the island or as enforcement. There is a “generational” identification on the clones in order to tell them apart the lower generations.
The 100s-400s are the smartest but selfish ones, being the only generations self aware of their existence. 500s-600s are lower versions than their previous generations, but are too egotistical and so insecure that they would lie about their number in order to make it lower (but this would be obvious that they are lying). 700S-900s are dependent on their boss to make the choices, but will always chose their way of completing a task despite how destructive they may be which is where the cowboy police would make an appearance making them the closest to the design to what the boss intended.
The 1,000s only lasted to 1,300s. They are the only inventions where reality affects the boss heavily, after one of his clones botched up the augmented organs he has been reliant on these workers to maintain him and his house but are completely removed from their independence and thoughts they often fail the most simplest of tasks where it get’s revealed that the janitor is the one to accidentally kill the boss.
Day 2 - Costume Design
The outfits were from a cheap theatre set made for kids or by kids, this is where I would compare clothes with what I had and what they had which was mostly dominated by cheap looking fancy clothes both blazers and fur-coats which was then decided that the bigger numbered clones would where the fur- coats and the lowest the fancy ones.
The one the boss wore was an overside gold suit and bucket hat, which helped me read the line without anyone seeing my eyes unless the timing was perfect. Later, I would use my own jewellery to match my gold suit and black bellbottoms zebra shirt and black hat for the cowboy and then the tie and white shirt for the other clones.
Day 3 - Set Design
The interior design of the work place was made from props from previous shows or junk we found in cardboard boxes… I think because there was this instance where Richard let me used his detached smashed car mirror for the cowboy introduction.
Either way, I saw this as a mix to the y2k aesthetics that I wanted and I even explained the idea to Richard that he agreed with.
Then if I remember correctly that’s where Richard came up with the ideas for tv advertisements to tell the story through short videos visually.
Days 4-8 - Production
I sent half the scripts to Richard, and did the other half at home,emailing him and then I got all the outfits ready for tomorrow.
Day 5 was when we did the recording session.
Day 6 was when the room got built and Richard showed me the rooms and what they’re supposed to represent. Later, Richard took me to the offices to show me the editing on my videos, which was how the laser pistols came into play.
Day 7 was where the tree showered up and since I already explained the biotech of the island working like a body with blood cells we decorated it with vegetation and a smoke machine which I had the main control of it and I later just came up with the function for the rehearsal on day 8.
What’s Next?
This project has helped to improve my self esteem and even encouraged me to design more ideas. For example, at college, I came up with the ideas of biological piazza due to the facts that fruit cut in half looked like it had veins in our photoshoot lessons.
And now, the one I’m currently working on has it’s own lore about switching to a different planet which helped me improve my skills on premier pro.
This isn’t limited to work at college, B arts have invited me to work in their offices every Thursday to start my drawing skills which would help me get into the specifics of my ideas and what I want.
They talked about making my idea into a theatre somewhere in march so if they’re true to their word, from my own pocket I would like to use my budgets for the outfits and props or I could make the props since at one point I wanted to do that
Only problem is is - how I would get the clones to look like me?
Oliver Meacham