Fragile Machine
“What is this” [life] ?
“Where am I”?
“Who are you?”
“Who am I?”
These basic questions haunt possibly everybody of us. They were the root of creating gods and myths. Or the first thing god planted in us. Holy books of all faiths try to answer these questions. So does science – but still most of us feel little personal confidence in the answers we listen to. The basic flaw with these question maybe is, that we know the answers but never will be able to know the answers, maybe we can feel them.
“Fragile Machine” is the title of a 30 minute short film by a group of artists called Aoineko. Aoineko is Japanese for dark blue cat. What are Aoineko? Musicians? Designers? Net-artists? All of these. In 2002 Aoineko received worldwide recognition for their online art project Superelectronic. A year later Aoineko created Sentosa Mikano a sequel to Superelectronic. Sentosa Mikano is the starting ground for the Fragile Machine short movie. Besides working on these projects the group created beautiful pieces of music, art prints as well as design work for French Thierry Mugler.
A constant theme of their work was the symbiosis of technology and nature. With their latest work Aoineko tries to find their own answers to the basic questions of life. Questions of the past and present can be answered most easily in a vision of a future where the main elements of the questions are freed from the complexity of today’s reality. Fragile Machine therefore takes us into an mangaesque cyberpunk future.
Synopsis (contains spoilers)
This is the story of Leda Nea, a young scientist at Göln Remedios. Leda lost her daughter Mary six years ago and still mourns her loss. During an experiment that is part of Project Zero Leda’s body dies. Her soul remains tied to earth.. Project Zero is the attempt to create artificial life. One year after the shattering of Leda’s body her soul enters one of the newly assembled androids that are the result of this project. Taking control Leda tries to flee but initially fails. She succeeds in a later attempt to escape and flees both her captors and the captivity of the city. Confrontation with nature and the absence of omnipresent technology instils Leda with the question of life and its appreciation. Again she is pursued by her body’s creators. For the second time Leda’s body is shattered and her soul flees. Her soul is no longer tied to the forest or Neroma Kai, the city, but to herself. Finding answers to the basic questions of life is the key for salvation.
Once she found her key, her soul flees and Neroma Kai, her past existence, is destroyed in a cleansing quake.
Interpretation (contains heavy spoilers)
The beauty of Fragile Machine lies not only in its artwork, but its story and complexity. Watching the movie like an ordinary mainstream movie will probably leave you with an impression like “nice, but so what?”. There is no easy way to answer the questions of life. The answers are given as metaphors and memories. According to Fragile Machine the answer lies within oneself.
The movie plays with symbols and religious myths. It is a story of death, birth, death and eventually salvation. This circle of death and rebirth reminds me of Buddhism. It is a story on the personal level that Leda has to find a life that allows her to find the answers that break the circle.
Leda grieves her lost daughter. Project Zero, the very same project that shatters her body, is her brain-child. She is victim and committer. Her own creation destroys her and we cannot be sure if Leda welcomes this or it was an accident. The movie remains unspecific about this. Without body and memory her soul is lost half way between life and death. The movie asks “what has she lost to allow her to give up her very self”? But what is her self? Her body, or her memories or her soul? It is not matter that makes Leda – she possesses an android body later. It is not memories for her past memories are hidden and her new body doesn’t have access to them. It is her soul. Maybe the question at the end of chapter one is hinting that Leda didn’t loose biological life in an attempt to exit from existence, but that she lost the key that would allow her salvation. Salvation maybe both in life as well as in after-life.
Reborn, Leda has to start anew. Fleeing her aseptic hospital-prison she enters the forest. Forests resemble cities for they host and house life. But while Neroma Kai like all human cities is made of steel, concrete and glass that mirror mankind’s strive for power and material prosperity, a forest symbolizes organic growth and death that creates new life. Within this forest, Leda experiences life. Can androids smile? For the first time in the movie Leda seems to be alive and contempt. Experiencing the wonders of life Leda analyses life, dissecting it with technology – her scanner eyes. But she doesn’t find the answers to the implied questions of life. Instead she finds destruction again through pursuing drones. While her soul leaves her broken android shell, lotus and water lilies bloom – revealing her formerly hidden beauty and purity. Yet salvation is as far as physical life. Her soul is “cast adrift in a sad sea of red”. Cleansed from her body and its detractions but aware of herself she confronts herself with the questions of life. She realizes what motifs drove her and while her android body is salvaged and repaired, her soul finds freedom in hating herself not anymore. Without Leda’s soul the Project Zero android remains a complex piece of technology –unable to live. Leda’s past flies past her, her memories of the city are left behind in the final chapter of the movie. It is called “Source without divide” which can be interpreted in many ways. I’d prefer to see it as synonym for salvation as Leda is undivided and not distracted anymore. In the end she is unified with her lost daughter.
Through a broader perspective Fragile Machine deals with the question what makes a person. In the beginning of the movie we’re introduced to the subject by an animated doll that tells Ledas’ story based on surveillance data and her memories stored within the system. In a world where memories can be stored (and probably be modified and rewritten), what is reality? Who is I and who is everybody else? It is Leda’s soul that is unique and no technology is able to capture or even recognize it. Her soul is both anchor that binds her as well as flame that lets her find salvation. Challenging this interpretation might be the fact that the narrator doll itself cites from memories but hides her daughter’s soul in the final chapter. So doesn’t our perception and memory of the world define it?
Looking at the city and Göln Remedios depicted in Fragile Machine I couldn’t help myself but think of the bible and the tower to Babel. According to the old testament, Babel was destroyed by God for its sins in trying to reach heaven. Göln Remedios’ headquarter resembles the tower of Babel, reaching into the realm of god. Göln Remedios promises artificially designed life. Praying hands under pure white masks as well as short impressions of baroque statues of angels complete the link to Babel. And as the tower of Babel was destroyed Neroma Kai and the Göln Remedios Tower are destroyed at the very same moment Leda Nea’s soul is freed.
Fragile Machine offers its viewers many more symbolic clues and riddles. The story reminded me of the Homunculus. A cobweb holds both a prosthetic arm as well as other parts of technology. Are we caught in a web that is spun around technology?
Dolls and masks play an important role in the movie. Stuffed toy dolls remain the physical memory of Mary Nea, Leda’s late daughter. Jointed dolls stand bare and lifeless in a store but seem to flee when the city is destroyed. Lea herself is depicted as a marionette of the machine twice. The narrator is a doll – but then she is able to speak freely, to access memories and comment them. To describe metaphysical concepts. Of course this could be just a trick for the ease of story-telling, but then the narrator becomes part of the narration in the final chapter herself. Like a Babushka (which actually are inspired by Japanese nested dolls) the narrator hosts the soul of Mary Nea. Maybe the dolls depict how we are both object and subject to a system called life?
Masks as well are paradox. While they hide the expression of their wearers, they can clarify expressions. Masks hide and reveal at the same time. Maybe the answers to the question of life is like a mask, hidden and revealed?
Artwork
Interpretations and riddles aside, the artwork is beautiful. It is hard to compare an artists’ movie rendered on a dozen customized PCs with a full-scale multi-million dollar production like e.g. Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy. While the human characters look somewhat doll-like (no interpretation here) and some animations look to slick to be real, the movie creates exactly the atmospheres it wants to. The city design is inspired by Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell) and Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira). Other city scenes bear a certain resemblance with Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Wong Kar Wai’s post-modern rainy neon-cities. The final chapter cites surrealist works and partly reminds me of the final scene in Takeshi Kitano’s Hana Bi. It is interesting that all these influences themselves are dealing with the same questions: What is life. Who am I. Each with a different approach and answer. The photography itself is influenced but remains independent and creates its own beauty and power.
Fragile Machine has almost no dialogue and relies on the visuals as well as Aoineko’s music. Each chapter has its own message to tell, it’s own visual setting and music style. Music and visuals are almost symbiotic and match each other perfectly. The music changes from aggressive electric to elegiac eclectic. The vocals by X are worth listening to, they tell their own story – and if that isn’t enough, her voice is beautiful and bears power.
Fragile Machine does give an answer. Leda Nea’s answer. But it helps asking the right questions. And if you don’t want any answers, the movie is impressive never the less for its artwork and music.
Fragile Machine is available as DVD for $18.- at http://www.fragilemachine.com/
More information about Aoineko at Aoineko’s Webpage
