eca graduate research school

Sci-fi movie is always an inspiration for architects, urban planners and scientists. Blade Runner released in 1982 is the first movie taking account of the city occupied with screen media. By inputting the urban screens in a city, Los Angeles, in the year 2019, Blade Runner has got a great attention in many academic discourses related to postmodernism[1] and media city.[2] The film doesn’t take place in a spaceship or space station, but in a city. The city of Blade Runner is not the ultramodern, but the postmodern city (Bruno 1987: 63). Blade Runner has been convinced  its stage design as a realistic solution with today’s technology and could be treated as an early blue print for phenomenon of symbolic city. By taking an example of opening scene in Blade Runner, this paper try to address how screen media in both form and content can function as a way for symbolic expression in the urban city.

In the opening scene, there is a flight vehicle flying slowly across the cityscape. Through the continuous camera moving, what catching our eyes is a pyramid look megastructure covered with thousands of windows twinkles with the lights in the dark. It is the first impression of the city in the film. According to stage designer, Syd Mead’s design concept, the randomly light source is a reflection from instant TV channels changing where people are sitting behind the window and watching different channels at the same time.[3] Each window represents a single block of pixel based on the same system (TV) but operates individually without any interruptions from others (blocks). When the building carries the bulk of pixel blocks, it shows a dynamic and fluid pattern whereas the accumulation of pixels becomes an iconic image. The concept of this megastructure has proved a visible working reference for Paul Virilio’s “Electronic Gothic”.[4] Virilio notices that the development of hi-res building covering with screen serves as the similar function with the narrative of Gothic church windows. In Blade Runner, a pyramid look megastructure becomes a modern church where a reflection of TV channels is telling the story for the metropolis.

From another aspect, flying toward the megastructure is by means of entering into the city in the filmic narrative. The megastructure is a metaphor of the night gate to the city. The integration of building and the light provide a unique identity at night such as the Empire State Building lighting rainbow roof lights over New York City. It can be seen as a nighttime landmark by indicating the direction for the pilot:  Where is in/ out? Where is the front side / back side? How far from the building? Can we see the lights? In comparison with material architecture and immaterial architecture, the diffusion of light and shade reveals forms, which are distinct and tangible. In the other words, buildings are no longer volumes in light. They become light in volumes (Scheerbart 1967: 17). The argument between material and immaterial architecture can be related to the screen as the form and the images as the content; and the combination of screen and images is a representation of urban space.

Otherwise, when we look at the form of this megastructure, the pyramid appearance can be seen as an extended concept from the crown of the central tower (figure 1) in the film Metropolis (1972). On the one hand, the tower in Metropolis represents a metonym for power of authority as skyscrapers in modernism. On the other hand, the crown dome represents a function of church in the city center.[5] Based on this explanation, Ridley Scott extends the symbolic meaning of tower by combining the form of pyramid with the content of mass media. When the pyramid covering with screen media, the power of authority has been replaced by this new power of TV. In that, Blade Runner prophesies the upcoming media city on the one side and the prevalence of pop culture on the other. It also demonstrates a shift from modernism to postmodernism.

(Figure 1)