Inspired by two of the P5.JS PRACTICES, CyberEncode is another attempt of video processing with pixel manipulations, a showing of appreciation towards cinema in different forms. Can the recreation of film footages become something more? And what are some interconnections between three films made in different countries from the different decades?

What would a trip to Jupiter be like? I knew that I wanted to recreate something based off 2001: A Space Odyssey without a heartbeat. The main reason to choose the renowned Stargate Sequence is not because of its eerie journey to Jupiter, from one space to another, but also the technique Stanley Kubrick utilized while filming this scene. It was an experimentation with slit-scan photography where the filmmakers have to “build the new equipment, new types of cameras and lighting systems”.

Back in the 60s, there's no comparable computer-generated imagery technology when the Bresenham's line algorithm was only developed in 1962.

Thus, my plan is to reverse-engineer the scene using the computer graphic technology at that time as a degeneration of the existing footage, which became the pixel-based discrete graphical display.

What other science fiction may be as significant as 2001? Someone else would name Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky or Blade Runner by Ridley Scott. But I’d say Stalker adapted from a novel called Roadside Picnic. Instead of an expedition into outer space, I would like to shift my focus to the exploration into the unknown regions on Earth. There is “the zone” and “the room”. “The zone” is an enigmatic and dangerous wilderness where the normal rules of reality do not apply while “the room” is capable of granting only true desires. And this particular scene was when the trio of visitors entering “the zone”, unnerving but dreamlike. The choice of dots is a migration from the print quality of Sots Art, pop art that was introduced to Soviet Union during the 70s, and also inspired by Soviet space-age mosaics, to match with the eerie electronic score of the clanking railway car wheels.

Akira was another film I wanted to do so badly but I could not fully understand that film. I chose Ghost in the shell instead, the Japanese anime made in 1995 which is distinguishable from the horrible remake in the recent years.

The three components of human psyche: id, ego and super-ego is critical to Ghost in the shell, which is also reflected in its triangular logo in the movie poster. And the specific shelling scene denotes the making of the Major as a cyborg, but she later finds out about her implanted memory and subconsciousness, goes on her journey looking for self-identity.