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BWS — Still Life With Future

Published: 2004-02-29 04:30:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 6140; Favourites: 88; Downloads: 687
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Description This is an image I created in early 1999, and rendered to print resolution. I modelled and rendered it in a ray tracer called Imagine, which I used for about a decade.

It plays around with a subject that fascinates me - old visions of the future, especially from the era of the Great Depression. It seems to me that the worse conditions became all over the country - and the world, really - the wilder and more hopeful people's visions of the future became. Because trouble was everywhere and affected nearly everyone in sight these ideas for the future were less personal - " What wonderful things will I be doing when this is over?" - but truly universal, embodying visions of how entire societies could be changed for the better. Of course, we'd still all have our own airplanes, autogyros, or rockets.

There's a lot of material in here from the New York World's Fair of 1939, as well as old science fiction and a book about "Technocracy" ( a social movement determined to remake the structure of prices in terms of the actual energy used to create... anything).
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Comments: 23

Captain-jed [2023-05-03 06:12:03 +0000 UTC]

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TomWilcox [2009-11-08 16:18:06 +0000 UTC]

Your entire gallery is breathtaking!

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White-Tean [2008-04-18 11:30:10 +0000 UTC]

does that mean in the future there's no slave labour if there is a cost based in energy? Oh, goodbye cheap shoes...

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jojomercury [2006-03-14 03:50:13 +0000 UTC]

I did'nt leave a comment before when I fav'ed this image but it came up on my random list and hit me like it did the first time with a wave of nostalgia and a feeling of home.In this world of everything has a price this is a priceless feeling that was had for free thanks to your wonderful imagination.Kudos!!
Peace&Respect Jojo

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TaNBourinE [2006-01-23 04:33:39 +0000 UTC]

Stunning work! The lighting is fantastic!

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xeNusion [2005-11-11 07:40:51 +0000 UTC]

imagine? strange enough. didnt heard something about it since my amiga days.
nice work.

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seafaringgypsy [2005-08-21 13:58:01 +0000 UTC]

I'm sure you're familiar with the band U2. Your comments on this remind me of the song God Part II off Rattle and Hum, specifically the lyric "we glorify the past when the future dries up."

I absolutely adore the lines in your work. The curves in the rocket and the radio...yeah...plus you have such great tones to your work.

It also helps that it reminds me of my room as a kid. I got into building model rockets and ham radio kits with my pop. Now I'm teaching my kid brother to do the same thing.

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-silencer- [2005-05-07 17:49:24 +0000 UTC]

Art Deco fan i see

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Faraleigh [2005-01-19 01:16:54 +0000 UTC]

I was never really the biggest fan of science fiction (yes, I like it, but, for example, it's not something I'd want to surround myself with and write about and whatnot), but that explanation you gave in the description of this picture somehow made it make more sense to me. Maybe it connects on the level where I draw my inspiration for writing... where I want to offer an escape and hope and all that wonderful stuff for people. Anyway, so I don't rant and ramble, I'll just say thank you for giving that.

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Caddielook [2005-01-02 03:43:17 +0000 UTC]

no words... great work.

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DRD-1812 [2004-05-01 19:05:21 +0000 UTC]

Flagged as Spam

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BWS In reply to DRD-1812 [2004-05-03 03:19:43 +0000 UTC]

Thanks! I'm a fan of designs from 1812's era, too .

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C-Novack [2004-03-18 20:07:14 +0000 UTC]

I've told you before how I love how pay attention to details. This one has so many from the textured pattern on the rocket to the old style radio to the overshadowed book called Technocracy. Wonderful details and well-composed image that 'zaps' the viewer back to the 50's

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a-t-o-m-i-c [2004-03-06 19:02:49 +0000 UTC]

Great job, I love the retro-science fiction look, I have to say its a really fun theme to play with if you can do it right. And you obviously can, very niece piece of work.

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BWS In reply to a-t-o-m-i-c [2004-03-07 02:35:19 +0000 UTC]

Thank you!

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orb-gettarr [2004-03-05 18:33:14 +0000 UTC]

Hey, I remember technocracy!...

You know, that rocket of yours kind of reminds me of a fat inkpen...

But I have seen that design in some of the old badly-made science fiction films of the fifties...

You should work on a flying saucer next to honor the country's period of raving over alien invasions during the fifties..

Remember the War of the Worlds debacle, where the public actually thought we were being invaded by Martians? I think that made Orson Welle's career right then and there.. (forget about Citizen Kane!)...

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BWS In reply to orb-gettarr [2004-03-07 02:31:34 +0000 UTC]

There is a web site that's run by what seems to be one of the original members of the Technocracy movement, back in the early thirties, who's pretty upset by any more recent uses of the word .

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orb-gettarr In reply to BWS [2004-03-07 23:22:51 +0000 UTC]

perhaps he's been around long enough to see that technology by itself is not the answer the world needs

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Aidelon [2004-02-29 19:45:37 +0000 UTC]

This si so wonderful. The last three peices of work I have seen all inspire a sense of nostalgia. I really like these. Nicely going.

Lilly

P.s. I love this, your work is so wonderful!

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onestar [2004-02-29 15:30:51 +0000 UTC]

It's the details in your works that I always admire, and I see many details here that are so cool.

Excellent.

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kev [2004-02-29 05:17:29 +0000 UTC]

Wow! that is gr8! I luv the retro stuff

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lord-nougat [2004-02-29 04:50:10 +0000 UTC]

Technocracy sounds somewhat more sensible than the systems espoused these days.

Also, you seem to be profoundly inspired, which I both envy and applaud!

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BWS In reply to lord-nougat [2004-02-29 04:54:21 +0000 UTC]

Like most of these ideas it makes a lot more sense before you look at it more closely. Figure that in order to set the price for a bushel of wheat you need to add up the energy that every step in its production chain consumed; and then, you have the same price for any bushel of wheat, whether it was grown and harvested in a huge corporate farm or by a sharecropper. It's just a little too complicated to be practical unless the engineers in charge determine exactly how every step of every process MUST be carried out, which is high on my list of Ideas of Hell .

But thanks!

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lord-nougat In reply to BWS [2004-02-29 05:00:47 +0000 UTC]

Hahaha!! Yeah, that sounds like micromanagement hell now that you mention it!! Some of the best sounding ideas just can't work because of those pesky details!

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