the question of and potential for machines being sentient, or at least fulfilling the functions of sentience). In keeping with the mystic’s reverence for nature and nature’s porous categories, complex harmonies and rhythms, its seasonal transitions and interrelated, interdependent species and ecologies, Shadow evinces a sometimes-vague, sometimes-definite discomfiture with the prospect of Artificial Intelligence, (i.e. Shadow also seems to hold as highly suspect the binary world of ones and zeroes: the language of computers, robotics and indeed industrialization. He harbours such suspicions not just towards the reductionist binaries of faithful and ‘infidel,’ absolutely right and absolutely wrong, Right Wing and Left Wing or West and East (which is perhaps why Shadow has not been one to publicly align himself with political parties), oppositions that are so central to the fundamentalist’s vain and infantile search for purity. Just as fundamentalists distrust the mystic, the mystic often has some misgivings of his own. Along with extraterrestrials in their interstellar craft searching for good music or conveniently-located, tasty musicians, the space age accorded Shadow one other important sub-genre, which is the topic of this short article. Subsequently, the popular “Tumble Down” from 1984’s Mystical Moods came off like a sequel to “U.F.O.” and was heir to over a decade of ‘alien Calypsos’ by Shadow. But in 1979, when the danceable “U.F.O.” appeared on the album If I Coulda I Woulda I Shoulda it was the first of several extraterrestrial-themed major hits for Shadow. Shadow’s 1972 single “Jane” featured “Visit to Mars” on the flip side and on the B-side of the single “Rap to Me” is the song “The Alien,” both songs being from the 1975 album King from Hell. “Caroni Circuit” (collage by Lawrence Waldron)įrom the 1970s to 1990s, alongside troubling us not only with the sentience of animals but also with their potential as foils of humanity and its suprematist conceits, Shadow was exploring two other lines of rival intelligences, namely space aliens and artificial intelligence.Īliens have been appearing in Shadow’s oeuvre since the beginning of his career-long before X-Files or even Close Encounters.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |