Neonopolis (Hong Kong)
Where the Wired Things Are
2017
2017
The vast sprawling leagues of crumbling dreams and connective tissue, the pulse and the impulse, the will to power that kept the consensual hallucination that was neonpolis humming, growing, agglomerating, accreting, coalescing … no one was really sure but the rumours were strong. Somewhere high in the clouds of static and smog, betrayed by a vague and opalesent grey-green glow, a few putrescent shades off the stuff that passed for blood in a synth, the Other was pulling the strings, pushing our buttons, leading the dance.
Black Night
2017
2017
'Dark night, black night. Ah, around sequential circuits with interspersions of insipid neon they go. All the while the rain comes down. Incessantly. The precipitation lubricates the tracks. Ah that glint and shine. It's almost hallucinatory. Certainly those wet verges, smeared rainbow colours don't appease the eyes. They dazzle and frazzle an already disturbed mind.
Then there are the ears and what they hear. The rattle of the big boxes. Mobile boxes with seats. The hard pressed, into those seats, listen to wheels on steel. Steel on wheels as they fettle the metal.
Screech. Power lines hum. The commuters bums are numb. It's a long drag to the Sub_urbs. Where the neon glow recedes into the dark night'.
Then there are the ears and what they hear. The rattle of the big boxes. Mobile boxes with seats. The hard pressed, into those seats, listen to wheels on steel. Steel on wheels as they fettle the metal.
Screech. Power lines hum. The commuters bums are numb. It's a long drag to the Sub_urbs. Where the neon glow recedes into the dark night'.
The Dream Police
2017
2017
Keep your electric eye on me babe. Put your ray gun to my head. But this ain’t no moonage daydream. This is the Big Chip. The circuit that never sleeps. Yes, you are under surveillance.
The dream police exist. Step out of line, speak out of turn, think outside the stream and you will be terminated, liquidated, vaporised in the blink of an eye in the sky. You take your creature comforts where you can find them. Because life tends to be nasty, brutish and short, even though we have cracked the genome and can live forever. Eternal life? You can keep it.
Give me a cold beer, a hot synth and some spuntini salad.
The dream police exist. Step out of line, speak out of turn, think outside the stream and you will be terminated, liquidated, vaporised in the blink of an eye in the sky. You take your creature comforts where you can find them. Because life tends to be nasty, brutish and short, even though we have cracked the genome and can live forever. Eternal life? You can keep it.
Give me a cold beer, a hot synth and some spuntini salad.
K/Zone 5.2543 BW. Habitat Sector 1456/H
2017
2017
The MRT (MAss Replicant Transport System # 1
2017
2017
The MRT (MAss Replicant Transport System # 2
2017
2017
servo_Synth4
2017
2017
servo_SYNTHS # 9
2017
2017
W/Zone 10.2543 AWS. Habitat Sector 2334/H # 1
2017
2017
W/Zone 10.2543 AWS. Habitat Sector 2334/H # 2
2017
2017
Mind Games # 1
2017
2017
MRT (Mass Replicant Transport System) # 12
2017
2017
See these Eyes So Blind
2018
2018
They’ve been watching you for a thousand years. Which to the Other is a day. The trick is to see and yet not to see. And by doing so, lessen the chance of being seen. Scene: a superfast train, total brain drain. Is she a synth that’s been thrashed within a nanoparticle of her life, plug pulled, dessicated and dejuiced; or just another sad sack of flesh, fluid and bone ground down by neonopolis and its unrelenting stresses and pressures? Only her handler, high up in the towers, knows for sure. But in the cracks, the crevices, the interstitial spaces and especially within the chemicals, respite can be found. In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree.
servo_Synth3
2017
2017
Fragmented Ride
2017
2017
Pleasures of the Not Flesh # 1
2017
2017
You could find anything you wanted in the pleasure zone. Mostly we wanted imperfection. The second sexual revolution, the coming of the synths, had sated our desires, made us bored with beauty. Perfection was a platitude, symmetry stifling. You might as well be fucking a Stepford Wife or a Barbie doll. Ho-hum. So the new servosynths strove for something else; the flaws, the flab, a whiff of decay, a blast of flatus. The ineffable desirability of broken, dirty things. Most of us had long since lost the ability to deal with actual humans. Why bother? And how would you know half the time anyway?
Pleasures of the Not Flesh # 2
2017
2017
You could find anything you wanted in the pleasure zone. Mostly we wanted imperfection. The second sexual revolution, the coming of the synths, had sated our desires, made us bored with beauty. Perfection was a platitude, symmetry stifling. You might as well be fucking a Stepford Wife or a Barbie doll. Ho-hum. So the new servosynths strove for something else; the flaws, the flab, a whiff of decay, a blast of flatus. The ineffable desirability of broken, dirty things. Most of us had long since lost the ability to deal with actual humans. Why bother? And how would you know half the time anyway?
The Medium is the Message
2017
2017
Beneath neonopolis flowed the medium; a kind of ectoplasm that superconducted digital signals and electromagnetic pulses. It was a liquid city beneath a city, clogged with the detritus of decommissioned synths and the odd human corpse that had been, well, liquidated. If this ur-city had a lifeblood, this was it, this thin, clear watery soup that connected the dots, made the synapses snap and the wires hum. It was the fuel, really, but we were putting out the fire with gasoline.
Off the Grid
2017
2017
Eventually we were all reduced to shadows. Tune out, turn off? Oh no, you were on the grid, in the grid, of the grid, eternally, inexorably, inevitably and intractably. In the beginning was the grid, and the Other smiled and saw that the grid was good. Good god. Was this what the city had reduced us to? Scuttling shapes, shades, simalcra, human palimpsests, serried ranks of digital elipses; the obverse of the platonic ideal, folorn, forgotten figures flitting through digital twilight.
The White Car.
2017
Paper Make Hahnemuhle Paper Type Semi Gloss Photo Silk Baryta 310gs:
2017
Paper Make Hahnemuhle Paper Type Semi Gloss Photo Silk Baryta 310gs:
The white car The white car could often be seen in the city late at night, cruising slowly like a shark, or simply stopped, watching, waiting. It glowed softly through the neon soup. It had no number plate or ID. Did it even have a driver? It flowed along with the bright red corpuscles of the taxis through sclerotic lanes. Was it a white blood cell, fighting some unseen infection? Or was it a new virus?
“Through a glass darkly, I hold up a mirror to the twisted skeins of stories being played out on the seething streets. Welcome to Neonopolis.”
Paper Make & Type
Paper Make Hahnemuhle Paper Type Semi Gloss Photo Silk Baryta 310gs:
Print Sizes
(2AO)
118.9 x 168.2cm paper size
98.9cm x 148.2cm image size
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
US$1,800.00
(A0)
84.1cm x 118.8cm paper size
74.1cm x 98.9cm image size
Edition 5 + 1 AP
US$1,300.00
(A1)
59.4cm x 84.1cm paper size
39.4cm x 64.1cm image size
Edition 5 + 1 AP
US$1,000.00
(A2)
42.0cm x 59.4cm paper size
32cm x 39.4cm image size
Edition 5 + 1 AP
US$850.00
(A3)
29.7cm x 42.0cm paper size
19.7cm x 32.0cm image size
Edition 5 + 1 AP
US$499.00
(2AO)
118.9 x 168.2cm paper size
98.9cm x 148.2cm image size
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
US$1,800.00
(A0)
84.1cm x 118.8cm paper size
74.1cm x 98.9cm image size
Edition 5 + 1 AP
US$1,300.00
(A1)
59.4cm x 84.1cm paper size
39.4cm x 64.1cm image size
Edition 5 + 1 AP
US$1,000.00
(A2)
42.0cm x 59.4cm paper size
32cm x 39.4cm image size
Edition 5 + 1 AP
US$850.00
(A3)
29.7cm x 42.0cm paper size
19.7cm x 32.0cm image size
Edition 5 + 1 AP
US$499.00
to see more of the series, please click the following link;
https://richardmarkdobson.com/photographer/personal-work/fiction/neonopolis/1
