War of Future Past: Reality Futura
"We Futurists ... seek to realize this total fusion in order to reconstruct the universe making it more joyful, in other words by a complete re-creation. We will give skeleton and flesh to the invisible, the impalpable, the imponderable and the imperceptible. We will find abstract equivalents for every form and element in the universe, and then we will combine them according to the caprice of our inspiration, creating plastic complexes which we will set in motion."
-- Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero, "Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe" (1915)Call it a Worked Example for a nonexistent GURPS Electropunk, or an Alternate Artistic Earth -- Reality Futura welds the Futurist "road not taken" of modern art onto an inverted World War Two. In this reality, technology, politics, and even strategy are driven by artistic axioms behind the sooty scrim of the material world. The mood is intense action, arcing ahead on the sound of horns and motors. The world may be dystopian, but it's a dystopia on fast-forward. Futurist adventures should be cinematic, over-the-top tales of epic antiheroism; Ayn Rand on crystal meth or Jack London on crack. It's Tim Burton's Speed Racer, it's Fritz Lang's Star Wars -- it's the World War of the Future!
"The red holidays of genius have begun! There is nothing for us to admire today but the dreadful symphonies of the shrapnels and the mad sculptures that our inspired artillery . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 14, 2000
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