Space Fuck

F U C K

000002015 06 12

S P A C E

3

CONTENTS The Collaborators: pharrell williams page 7 ∙ Poésie Stellaire PAGE 10 ∙ Steven Universe PAGE 15 ∙ Akira: the future-Tokyo story that brought anime west PAGE 18 ∙ Jedi VS Sith: la guerre des ordres PAGE 22 ∙ Gateway ON TV PAGE 26 ∙ Designing Blade Runner PAGE 29 ∙ Tyson vs sagan 39 ∙ MESURE DE L'UNIVERS: les supernovae font de la résistance PAGE 47 ∙ Memória Descritiva page 53 ∙ EXTRAS PAGE 55

space fuck magazine ∙ #1 issue ∙ ISBN 000002015 06 12 ∙ Layout, Transcription, review AND ILLUSTRATIONS MADE BY Tania Cunha AKA MISSLAZYFATCAT oR simply MLFC ∙ LAST PROJECT FOR ESTUDO DE DESIGN ∙ FBAUP 2014/2015 ∙ DESIGN DE COMUNICAÇÃO ∙ COLLECTION OF ARTICLES IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH SOMEHOW RELATING TO SPACE ∙ OH AND THE LAST ONE IS IN PORTUGUESE ∙ TYPOGRAPHIES USED: TRUE LIES, UNIVERS LT STD AND RETRO COMPUTER ∙ PRINTED SOMEWHERE ∙ PARTICIPATED IN THE 2015 FBAUP FINALIST EXHIBITION.

5

The collaborators: Pharrel Williams To Promote their new album "Ramdom Access Memory", the Daft Punk pre-launched a serie of interviews with their collaborators. This is the slightly adapted transcript of the fourth video which features Pharrell Williams.

"The robots' music has the power to separate itself from all else that exists. They are not bound by time and space.

"I saw the robots at a Madonna party and they were just like 'well, we're doing something and we can't take our eyes off of you right now.' and I was like 'okay, but well listen, whatever you're doing just know that anything you guys need I'm always there. If you just want me to play a tambourine, I'll do it.'

"So the robots sort of reached out and they kept trying to figure out when I was going to be in Paris and when I finally ended up in Paris they were like 'what have you been working on?' I played on some of the stuff I've been working on and I was like 'yeah, I kinda

like it and it's like Nile Rogers' place' and they looked at each other, I was like 'what? You guys don't like that?' but they were like 'okay, this is what we want you to write to...' and so they played it and Nile Rogers is actually playing in the track!

"It's crazy because, you know, in two sides of the Atlantic we were both back in the same place, like let's go back to that magical time where music and the liveliness of music is what moved people.

"Because I was just so tired and extremely jet lagged, they gave me this tablet you put in water, you know, more like on holistic kind of side than like crash or whatever. They were explaining all this to me and I was like 'oh my god, I'm cool' and so I took it and 7

as soon as I took it I'm like 'ohhhh' and so it was like a burst of energy. But by the time I got on the plane back to America, I've forgotten everything and still to this day I can't figure it out if it was really the jet lag or did the robots sort of hit me with the Men in Black (blackout sound) 'You will remember nothing after this.'

"So I got to hear it with this freshest of ears and I was just blown away, I was like 'Wooh I love that and I can't believe I'm on it.' It feels like the only click out to heaven was only at a heart beat and that's what makes it really interesting because these are robots.

"When I heard Lucky it just reminded me of like some kind of exotic island. Not sure if it was on this planet or not, but it just felt like a place where it was forever four in the morning. Like when you're on an island and you can sort of see the sun rising in the sky and see, you know, that peachy color. The music was as alive as the air was. So the air was something your were gentle and kind and thankful to. Being in that world is like that and the only thing that really matters is that you've met this girl at this party.

"Getting lucky is not just a sleeping word, but meeting someone for the first time and it's just clicking.

There is no better fortune than this existence to me."

Do you have like some kind of idealized vision of how would you listen to this for the first time or who would you listen to it with?

"Oh, definitely my girl, of course."

Where would you be?

"I don't know, maybe in a car pulled up on the side of the beach and I would just let it play.

"This music is beyond 3D, it's 4D, it's in your mind.

You don't need MDMA for this music, because this music is so incredibly vivid."

8

"People lost respect for the groove. Everything is just so synthetic, they are like it doesn't really... It's just missing the gut.

"Somewhere outside of the ether that we exist on is a multitude of rounds of possibilities and alternate directions and I think they just went on those libraries and just dusted off those things.

"It's kinda like the mid-seventies early eighties of a different universe and dimension, not of this one.

It couldn't have come at a better year, it's like 2013 when everything is completely different. Things are not in a box as they used to be and if they are it's like the corniest think ever, like 'Please don't talk to me, I don't want to catch your mentality.' And that's what this music is to me, this music represent the freedom of all human beings.

"I think this record really belongs to this bit of rock that we live on. We are 7 billion people now. This is for the globe. A six years old can enjoy this album like a 33 years old, like a 66 years old, because it is music."

And where will they go from here you think?

"Up. It's were they belong. We are lucky to hang out with them on our planet. They could just get back on the spaceship that brought them here and go and leave us, but they are gracious, they are nice robots.

They choose to stay."

The Creators Project. (2013, april 15). Daft Punk | Random Access Memories | The Collaborators: Pharrell Williams. Retieved April 10, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QVtHogFrI0.

9

P

S

o

t

E

e

s

l

i

l

e

a i r e Lorsque les Daft Punk rencontrent le mangaka Leiji Matsumoto, le créateur d'Albator, ce dernier accepte immédiatement leur projet: adapter Discovery en dessin animé. Il réalise ainsi, en proposant ses visions à un large public, un rêve d'enfant.

10

Mai 2003. Sur les hauteurs de Cannes, 3 heures du matin. Un écran géant sur lequel défilent des images animées qu'on reconnaîtrait entre mille: recherché par les autorités terrestres, un pirate solitaire, accroché au gouvernail de son vaisseau spatial, de lourdes mèches balayées par le vent révélant un visage balafré et un bandeau sur l'oeil, une cape noire doublée de pourpre sur les épaules, une tête de mort sur le torse, combat les redoutables Sylvidres, ces femmes extraterrestres, végétales et humanoïdes, qui cherchent à asservir la Terre. Flasback: nous revoilà enfant, en 1979, nous précipitant dès la sortie de l'école devant Récré A2 pour suivre les aventures d'Albator, le corsaire de l'espace – l'un de ces dessins animés japonais que les parents et Télérama méprisaient. Albator est signé Leiji Matsumoto, un auteur que les Daft Punk convaincront, vingt-cinq ans plus tard, de mettre en images le film Interstella 5555, version animée de leur album Discovery.

11

La galaxie Matsumoto Trois ans avant cette projection cannoise, la maquette de leur album sous les bras, Thomas Bangalter et Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, accompagnés de leur coscénariste et ami d'enfance Cédric Hervet, partent au Japon rencontrer des sociétés d'animation, n'osant pas trop rêver de croiser le maître Matsumoto. "Non seulement on a pu le rencontrer," explique Thomas Bangalter, "mais il a tout de suite accroché à la musique et il a accepté le projet. Matsumoto vit entièrement dans les cosmos qu'il a crée. Aussi bien mentalement que concrètement. A 63 ans, il porte un chapeau avec une tête de mort, qu'il arbore en permanence dans la maison qu'il a fait construire avec une déco et une architecture très futuristes. Ça ressemble à un vaisseau. Il n'a pas créé Albator ou Galaxy Express 999 de façon détachée: ça correspond à des trucs qu'il ressent vraiment."

Akira Matsumoto naît en 1938 au Japon, sur l'île de Kyushu. Il découvre le manga avec l'oeuvre du "Walt Disney japonais", Osamu Tezuka. Dès l'âge de 9 ans, il commence à dessiner ses premières BD. A 15 ans, il participe à un concours, ce qui lui permet de publier son premier manga de seize pages, Les Aventures d'une Abeille. En 1975, il s'installe à Tokyo et gagne sa vie avec des BD à l'eau de rose pour les filles. Il se servira de ces travaux alimentaires pour affiner sa technique, mais ce n'est qu'au cours des années 1960 qu'il va commencer à dessiner les thèmes qui le passion12

nent vraiment. "Depuis mon enfance, j'ai toujours été passionné d'astronomie," explique Mastumoto. "J'ai lu énormément de livres, et j'ai posé beaucoup de questions à des astronomes. J'étais tellement intrigué par les canaux de Mars et les cratères de la Lune que je me suis construit moi-même un télescope pour les regarder! Je n'ai pas pus voir les canaux de Mars parce que mes lentilles n'étaient pas assez puisantes, mais j'ai réussi à distinguer les cratères de la Lune. Ça a été une expérience décisive: j'ai compris, a ce moment, que je pouvait concrétiser mes visions, créer mon univers."

Les années 1960 voient son style visuel et ses thèmes s'affirmer. Il passe à la science-fiction adulte (où l'on peut voir l'influence de dessinateurs français, Mézières, ou Barbarella de Forest), aux récits de guerre (fasciné par les blindés et les avions, ils se livre à une critique acerbe de la guerre), et aussi à la critique sociale, à la complexité des rapports humains et à l'exploration des valeurs japonaises: le courage, l'honneur, l'amitié et la trahison.

En 1965, pour refléter ces mutations, il change de prénom et se fait appeler Leiji, qui signifie "guerrier zéro". Il épouse la dessinatrice de mangas Miyako Maki, peu connue en Europe, mais très célèbre au Japon. Son destin est scellé: sa vie la plus quotidienne est intimement mêlée à son travail de mangaka.

Une ode à la différence "A 17 ans, en 1955, j'ai fait un voyage à Paris qui a été déterminant pour mon style. La France est le premier pays étranger que j'ai visité. Durant ce séjour, je suis beaucoup allé au Louvre: j'ai toujours été attiré par l'histoire, en particulier le Moyen Age, avec les règles de la chevalerie, dont je me suis inspiré pour Albator. J'ai vu aussi le film Marianne de ma jeunesse de Julien Duvivier. Ce fut un choque esthétique: je suis tombé amoureux de l'actrice principale, Mariane Hold. Mystérieuse, blonde, très mince, le teint pâle, de grands yeux: elle est la matrice de la pluspart de mes personnages féminins. Et le film lui-même m'a beaucoup inspiré: un monde presque fantastique, où l'illusion joue une grande part. Julien Duvivier est un très grand cinéaste." Des personnages se dessinent donc: une femme mystérieuse, tour à tour séductrice, manipulatrice, sorte de mante religieuse énigmatique et longiligne à laquelle les hommes succombent sans la comprendre. Mais apparaît aussi ce personnage de corsaire de l'espace sombre et silencieux qui se fera connaître en France sous le nom d'Albator (Captain Harlock en anglais), et son équipage, sorte d'arche de Noé de toutes les créatures "différentes et pas pareilles" que la société terrienne rejette: Clio, une extraterrestre solitaire qui passe son temps à jouer de la harpe et à boire du vin, Alfred un mécano jovial et grassouillet

à voix de crécelle, ou encore le Dr. Zéro, un médecin obsédé et toujours ivre qui ne se sépare jamais de son chat... Une ode à la différence. Le style est en rupture avec les dessins animé japonais exportés jusque-là, Candy ou même Goldorak: beaucoup d'aplats noirs, des intérieurs de vaisseaux et des costumes très "désignés," un style presque gothique mais dans la forme seulement puisque ces personnages marginaux et désabusés ne perdent jamais l'espoir et la foi dans leur combat.

Em 1975, Matsumoto se met à l'animation en tant que "concepteur graphique" sur la série télévisée tirée de sa BD Uchû Senkan Yamato. C'est un succès. En 1977 et 1978, il adapte en dessin animé deux autres de ses mangas: Albator et Galaxy Express 999. Albator parle de liberté, de résistance, de refus de l'ordre établi et de soumission à toute forme d'aliénation et d'oppression. Quant à Galaxie Express 999, c'est une réflexion sur l'immortalité, la place de la machine et le danger de réaliser certains rêves. Cette oeuvre reste la préférée des Japonais, avec son héroïne ambiguë dont on ne connaît pas les intentions ultimes. Mais à l'étranger, en France en particulier, c'est Albator qui cartonne. Cette série de succès dans l'animation perdurera jusqu'en 1985, date à laquelle Matsumoto entame une traversée du désert: en 1989, son adaptation

13

de la Tétralogie de Wagner dans la saga L'Anneau du Nibelung déçoit même ses plus fidèles admirateurs.

Ses dessins animés pour la télévision et pour le cinéma sont connus dans le monde entier mais sont loin de représenter le gros de son travail: des dizaines de milliers de pages de BD, une production gigantesque s'étendant sur un demi-siècle.

un gant à Matsumoto: "je suis fier d'être resté fidèle à mon rêve d'enfance – le manga – et à mon inébranlable volonté depuis que j'ai commencé. C'est pourquoi je fais dire à Albator 'je vis selon ma volonté, sous mon propre drapeau.' J'adore créer des histoires de jeunes hommes et femmes qui ont une volonté féroce et vivent pour accomplir leurs rêves."

Un rêve d'enfant C'est alors que les Daft Punk débarquent chez Matsumoto et lui font écouter Discovery: "Quand j'écoute de la musique, je vois toujours des images.

Le jour où Thomas et Guy-Manuel m'ont proposé d'imaginer un univers visuel à partir de leur musique, j'étais ravi. Je n'aurais pas osé le faire à partir de la musique classique, car chacun a déjà ses images. Mais il m'on fait écouter le disque avant sa diffusion, et j'étais très excité. J'ai tout de suite vu des flashs de lumière qui clignotaient, leur musique correspondait exactement aux images d'un space opera animé qui me trottaient dans la tête depuis un moment. J'ai vu dans leur proposition un clin d'oeil du destin. C'est pour moi un rêve d'enfant que de proposer mes visions à un large public. Je n'y croyais plus tellement, et puis, à l'aube de XXIe siècle, les Daft Punk sont venus me trouver! Ils m'ont dit avoir découvert Albator à l'âge de 5 ans. C'est l'âge ou l'on imprime ce qui nous influencera pour le reste de notre vie. J'ai moimême vécu cela en découvrant, à l'âge de 5 ans également, les mangas d'Osamu Tezuka."

Une fois l'accord conclu, les Daft Punk proposent à Matsumoto une histoire de base. "Un space opera," se souvient Bangalter, "autour de thèmes comme l'industrie du disque, le showbiz, les limousines, la mode, avec les vaisseaux spatiaux, les galaxies..." Chacun truffe le film de ses obsessions: les Daft Punk de leur expérience dans l'industrie du disque, de leur regard sur le star-system, Matsumoto de sa poésie stellaire, de ses récurrences plastiques, de son humour et de sa mélancolie aussi.

Un rêve d'enfant: c'est donc ainsi qu'ont peut résumer Interstella 5555. La formule va en effet comme

14

Nicklaus, Olivier. (2013, August 6). Poésie Stellaire. Les InRocks Horssérie: Daft Punk la mécanique du triomphe, 88-89.

Steven Universe Rebecca Sugar is about to make a little TV history.

And right now, she is not entirely enjoying it.

"I'm having a hard time feeling good about all this," she says, with a half-laugh, "until the first episode is on."

Sugar sounds so calm and confident, though, that she belies this case of show-biz nerves. Yet the moment must be noted.

By following her artistic passion from Silver Spring to Hollywood, Sugar has become something of a trailblazer. On Monday evening, Cartoon Network will debut its newest program, Steven Universe, officially making Sugar, at just 26, the first woman to be a solo show creator in the channel's 21 years on the air.

She is thrilled to achieve the breakthrough, but with just days until the debut, she's not focused on being the first female creator – she's too busy simply being a creator, with plenty to still decide and coordinate.

"It's definitely a whirlwind," Sugar, a veteran of Cartoon Network's popular Adventure Time, says of steering her own show to launch. "But I feel more ready than if I hadn't made so many independent comics and done so many films." Everything, in other words, feels as if it's been naturally leading to this opportunity. From that, the animator draws confidence.

Sugar's creative vision, after all, wasn't just born at Cartoon Network's studios in Burbank, Calif. Her dream to do precisely what she's now doing was launched many years ago, a coast and an ocean away, back home in Montgomery County.

"You can't wait for someone to give you a show," says Sugar. She's long been an ambitious artist who regularly attended Baltimore Comic-Con and Maryland's Small Press Expo to listen and learn from luminaries while also getting professional feedback on her portfolio. "That can't be the first time you're writing and drawing a character."

Sugar summons inspiration from characters she has created since childhood. Steven Universe may appear to be an action-fantasy cartoon about gem-powered superheroes, but beneath the bright tints and battle scenes, the show plays like an ode to Sugar's artistically supportive upbringing in Sligo Park Hills.

The program is even named for her younger brother, Steven – who is a background artist on the show.

"I realized, while working on the show, that it's not what I thought it was going to be about. It's about how much I needed emotional support in high school – just with little things, going through tough times, high school teen angst," says Sugar, who simultaneously attended Montgomery Blair High and the Visual Arts Center at Einstein High.

"My brother would just be hanging out with me, not having to say anything. If I ever felt weird around friends, Steven would always be there. I felt that would never change."

Sugar stops herself, joking that she should move on to another topic before she gets verklempt.

"Aw, that's nice of her to say!" Steven Sugar, 23, replies to his sister's sentiment. "We spent a lot of time together as kids watching cartoons, playing video games and drawing. We'd brainstorm ideas for comics together, run ideas past each other and get critiques – all of which sort of set the groundwork for what (we're) doing now."

In the new show, three female superheroes named for their gem-related powers – Amethyst, Garnet and Pearl – are shepherding irrepressible Steven, an ever-smiling boy who hasn't yet discovered his gem-power.

Rebecca says that to write each character, she thinks about how she interacts with her brother – from the laid-back Amethyst to the authoritative Garnet and perfectionist Pearl. (As for having his name in the title, Steven says: "It's always been a bit surreal, and a bit flattering, too.")

Steven Universe is set in the fictitious Beach City, but the locale "is rather significantly inspired by the beaches Rebecca and I visited when we were kids," says Steven – who also attended Einstein's Visual Arts Center before going to the Rhode Island School of Design. "There are a few not-so-subtle references to Rehoboth Beach in there. The whole town is a sort of amalgam of Rehoboth, Bethany and Dewey.

"I find it pretty cool," he continues, "that so much of the non-magical side of the show comes from something so grounded in reality."

15

16

The Sugar parents were both animation fans and always creatively supportive. Rebecca began attending North Bethesda's Small Press Expo at age 15 and exhibited her own work there by 21. "I sold a couple of books and loved being there." She grew her animation talents at New York's School of Visual Arts, where she connected with people who would lead her to become an artist on Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time – which in just a few seasons has become a huge success for Cartoon Network.

Ward is a fan. "Rebecca is so caring and empathetic with her characters. She respects them and isn't cynical with how she writes for them, which makes her characters more real, more genuine, which, I think lets her audience fall deeply into the world that she's creating," he says of Sugar.

At Adventure Time, Sugar story­ boarded some of the show's most memorable episodes, and became known to fans, too, for her scripted musical interludes (she plays ukulele and hammered dulcimer).

From there, she seems to have moved easily into her new role. "As far as being a good boss, she has a lot of respect for her crew," her brother says. "She puts a lot of trust in everyone to bring something personal to the show. It seems to me that really helps foster a creative studio environment."

With just days until the premiere, any trepidation appears to fall away when asked to share the best lessons she's learned so far. How should young artists seek a break, let alone a historic breakthrough?

"Don't wait to get permission, and don't worry about it not being good," says Sugar, her voice gathering with conviction. "Make it as good as you can and keep moving on. Don't be afraid to make stuff now.

You have to start immediately." Spoken like someone poised to shake up her "Universe."

Cavna, M. (2013). 'Steven Universe' creator Rebecca Sugar is a Cartoon Network trailblazer. The Washington Post. Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/ste ven-universe-creator-rebecca-sugar-is-an-idealistic-trailblazer/2013/ 11/01/fe622da2-4338-11e3-a751-f032898f2dbc_story.html

17

The future-Tokyo story that brought anime west Internet lore has it that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas turned down the chance to pick up the rights to the exalted 1988 anime Akira, believing it to be unmarketable in America. Twenty years later, something had changed: Spielberg and DreamWorks were in production on a live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell, perhaps the next biggest crossover anime title, with the beard buttering it up in the press as "one of my favourite stories." But he missed the chance to be there at the beginning for artist-director Katsuhiro Otomo's earlier masterpiece – 25 this year – when its enervating hyper-realism left retina burn in the eyes of action fans and film-makers worldwide.

Akira swiftly became midnight-movie fodder in the US, on a small release through Streamline Entertainment. Its dynamism and attention to detail – honed

by Otomo in the 2,300 page manga version he published during the 80s in a Young magazine anthology – caught everyone's attention. The New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote: "The drawings of Neo-Tokyo by night are so intricately detailed that all the individual windows of huge skyscrapers appear distinct. And these night scenes glow with subtle, vibrant colour.

When its characters hurtle through space, they do it with breathtaking energy."

Perhaps the metaphysical gloss applied by Otomo to his apocalyptic, future-Tokyo story – the kind of quasi-philosophical yadda-yadda that would became an anime trademark – also helped lend Akira its cult credentials. It went on release at the London's taste making ICA (also crucial to spreading the word about J-horror several years later) in January 1991. Later that year, Streamline put the film out on VHS, and a subsidiary of Island Records followed suit in the

20

UK; the company created Manga Entertainment to handle the release and exploit growing interest in Japanese animation.

"I started thinking (Akira) was more than a great film," Andy Frain, Manga Entertainment's founder, later recalled. "This might be a phenomenon. Were there more films like this in Japan? If so, we could treat them in music terms like Def Jam, a genre in itself."

Indeed there were more. Manga Entertainment alone handled Ninja Scroll, Battle Angel Alita, Vampire Hunter D, Death Note, Satashi Kon's Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue, and the infamous Urotsukidoji, becoming the premium anime label in the west in the process. Anime (and its print sibling, manga) arrived in the west at the right time; its thrilling sense of spatial possibilities and destructive gleeshowed up Disney's sentimental, character-focused approach and conservatism, as the American company slipped into its mid-90s slump. (Though Otomo had also admired Disney's professionalism when he was making Akira – he took on their practice of prerecording dialogue, which, because it slowed down the animation process, was not the norm in Japan at the time.)

Led by Akira, anime expanded the idea of what animation could be: violent, abrasive, radically stylized, thoughtful and above all, adult. It arguably readjusted expectations ahead of the later revitalisation and maturation of the industry under Pixar – sweeping away the prejudice that anything with drawings was for kids. Along with a host of other cult and alternative influences percolating into the mainstream, its presence was widely felt by the late 1990s, from the west's embrace of Pokémon fever, to tabloid moral

panics, to the obvious visual transfusion received

by The Matrix – which became the key touchstone for the next decade of Hollywood auctioneers. The Wachowskis put their debt on the record with their spin-off The Animatrix in 2003, just as Quentin Tarantino did with The Origin of O-Ren, the cartoon segment of Kill Bill Volume I. But anime's relationship with the western mainstream was elusive – all about influence, rather than grabbing the headlines directly itself. There was a lackof true breakthrough titles to follow Akira, which eventually grossed $80m globally. Otomo himself went back to completing the Akira manga and didn't resurface with another full-length feature until 2004's Steamboy. Manga Entertainment coproduced Mamoru Oshii's $10m Ghost in the Shell, which left dropped jaws in its wake but lost money in theaters. Too many foreign distributors focused on the usual talkheavy techno-orgies (such as Metropolis, Appleseed, Paprika), which left anime firmly mired in geek territory. Fundamentally, anime stayed niche. It was only ever worth around a quarter of a billion dollars annually in exports at its mid-noughties peak – less than most blockbuster US animations grossed solo.

The one Japanese company that broke out big, Studio Ghibli, did so by targeting the family demographic. But its films, carefully tied to the personal cult of Hayao Miyazaki, are so distinctive, so Ghibli, that they don't seem to belong with traditional anime.

They're a last hurrah for hand-drawn 2D animation in an age of CGI, and there's a strain running through Ghibli that's reminiscent of vintage Disney: an emphasis on craftsmanship, a cultural nostalgia and a perfectly pitched sentimentalism. Only the first of those

applies to the ruthlessly forward-looking Akira, which hits the ground running as it assembles its sciencefiction apocalypse from memories of the second world war, immortalising sensory ephemera in the beats of its glorious animation. 2019 – Otomo's era of Neo-Tokyo – is just over the horizon, but Akira's futurist soul may well now be a thing of the past.

Hoad, P. (2013). Akira: The future-Tokyo story that brought anime west. The Guardian. Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://www. theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/10/akira-anime-japanese-cartoon-manga

21

22

Jedi VS Sith La Guerre des ordres Ordre millénaire et indispensable au maintien de la paix et de la justice, L'Ordre Jedi est une organisation militaire et religieuse puissante, entièrement dédiée à l'étude, la compréhension et la maîtrise de la Force. Inversement, L'Ordre des Sith est plus mystérieux et secret. Les légendes attachées à leur empire sont nombreuses et, tout comme les Jedi, à l'origine de bien de bouleversements.

Initialement, les Jedi ne sont pas les guerriers que nous connaissons, mais un groupe de scientifiques et de philosophes qui étudiaient avec ferveur une énergie présente dans toute la galaxie, baptisée la Force. Conscients du pouvoir qui était le leur, les premiers Jedi (apparus en -25'000 av. BY) décidèrent que leur organisation devait être gérée par une instance supérieure à même d'en définir les limites, les rites d'initiation et les traditions séculaires. La date de création exacte de l'Ordre Jedi n'est pas clairement définie. Les historiens la situent généralement entre -25'000 et -20'000 av. BY lors d'une cérémonie qui aurait eu lieu sur la planète Ossus.

La fonction principale de l'Ordre est de fournir une structure permettant l'accueil, la formation et l'unité des individus sensibles à la Force. Le Code Jedi invite ses membres à la réflexion, le savoir et la sérénité, insistant sur la méditation et l'isolement. Mais de nombreux Jedi, attirés para le Côté Obscur de la Force, délaissèrent l'Ordre avant de se retourner contre lui, obligeant les Jedi à prendre les armes. Contraints à quitter Ossus, les Jedi devinrent les défenseurs de la République et les garants de la paix galacticque, oeuvrant en qualité de médiateurs ou de bras armés si nécessaire. L'Ordre établit son siège sur Coruscant, au sein d'un gigantesque temple faisant office d'académie et de quartier général.

Devenir un Jedi C'est une épreuve longue et difficile qui réclame autant de sacrifices que de travail. En premier lieu, il faut présenter un taux de Midichloriens suffisants pour prétendre à la formation, un simple test sanguin pouvant le révéler. La formation est dispensée par les Jedi dont la sagesse n'a d'égale que la maîtrise de la Force, d'où leur titre de "Maître Jedi." Chacun d'eux peut enseigner à des petits groupes d'élèves au sein de l'académie. Devenus adolescents, les étudiants les plus prometteurs peuvent suivre un maître afin de parfaire leur formation, devenant des "padawan." D'après les règles actuelles de l'Ordre Jedi, un maître ne peut avoir qu'un seul padawan à la fois. Une restriction qui trouve sa source dans les débuts de l'Ordre. Sous L'Ancienne République, il n'était pas rare de rencontrer un maître accompagné de plusieurs padawan.

Mais face à l'ampleur de phénomène Sith et l'exode massif d'apprentis accablés par une formation longue et laborieuse, l'Ordre fut contraint de statuer définitivement sur le sujet. À l'instar des Sith, la restriction "un maître pour un apprenti" resta en vigueur jusqu'à la chute de l'Empire et la refonte de L'Ordre par Luke Skywalker.

23

Les padawan promus au titre de "chevalier" se doivent suivre un code qui dit:

“il n’y a pas d’émotion, il y a la paix.

il n’y a pas d’ignorance, il y a le savoir.

il n’y a pas le chaos, il y a l’harmonie.

il n’y a pas de passion, il y a la sérénité.

il n’y a pas la mort, il y a la Force.”

À l'heure où débute la saga, soit en -32 av.BY (Episode I), on estime à 10.000 le nombre de Jedi à travers la galaxie.

24

L'Ordre Sith Durant les premiers âges de l'Ordre Jedi, un groupe de Jedi découvrit le côté obscur de la Force. Un conflit s'engagea entre les deux courants de pensée, entraînant la mort de nombreux guerriers, et l'exil des Jedi renégats baptisé Jedi Sombres (ou Noirs). Après avoir quitté l'espace républicain, les Jedi déchus arrivèrent sur la planète Korriban et y firent la connaissance du peuple Sith. Avec l'aide de la Force, ils n'eurent aucun mal à prendre l'ascendant sur cette peuplade primitive qui les assimilait à des dieux. Au fil des siècles, les Sith et les Jedi Noirs se mélangèrent jusqu'à ne former qu'une seule et même race qui conserva le nom originel: les Sith.

Les Sith ont une approche très différente de la formation. L'âge des sujet compte peu. L'ambition et les capacité physiques et (a)morales étant les seuls critères de sélection. Lors de sa création, et durant les siècles qui suivirent. L'Empire Sith se composait en majorité de Jedi déchus ou rejetés par l'Ordre Jedi.

Mais les multiples guerres internes, ajoutées aux conflits réguliers contre la République et les Jedi, allaient en faire un empire moribond appelé à disparaître.

Devenir un Sith La formation suivie par les Sith est plus opaque et secrète car elle ne répond à aucune norme, aucun parcours initiatique précis. Les archives traitant des fondements de l'Empire Sith (appelées Holocron) sont inconnues du reste de la galaxie, et nul ne semble pouvoir établir une cartographie précise de l'organigramme Sith. Dans l'absolu nous y retrouvons la même structure que pour les Jedi (à savoir un maître enseignant la doctrine Sith à un ou plusieurs apprentis). À l'inverse il n'est pas question de "grades" comme on en trouve chez les Jedi (aspirant, padawan, chevalier, maître). Tout le monde peut devenir maître à partir du moment où il trouve un apprenti. C'est en partie pour cette raison qu'ils furent presque tous exterminés, le manque de cohésion et le besoin de puissance de certains représentants conduisant inéluctablement les Sith à leur propre perte.

Conscient que le côté obscur était devenu trop faible en raison de son partage entre trop de seigneurs Sith, un dénommé Bane décida que les Sith ne seraient plus que deux à la fois, un maître et un apprenti. Avant de disparaître, il déclara qu'à l'avenir tous les Sith porteraient un nom d'emprunt commençant par "Dark." Enfin il dicta un code Sith en réponse au code Jedi disant:

Similitudes & Différences Qu'il s'agisse des Jedi ou des Sith, la Force autorise l'accomplissement d'exploits hors du commun. Les Sith parlent de "magie", les Jedi "d'osmose". Le sabre laser reste l'arme de prédilection des Jedi et des Sith, et un véritable complément aux pouvoirs de la Force.

Les premiers modèles étaient très rudimentaires puisqu'ils tiraient reliés par un câble, diminuant considérablement la maniabilité et les techniques possibles. Puis vint le sabre-laser tel que nous connaissons et dont le secret de fabrication est jalousement gardé par l'Ordre. Construit autour d'un cristal d'Adegan, que l'on trouve sur les planètes Ossus, Ruusan ou Ilum, il se présente sous la forme d'une épée lumineuse d'environ un mètre, au son reconnaissable entre tous. Chaque padawan doit construire son sabre laser au cours de sa formation (ce qui explique pourquoi ils sont tous différents), après quoi il pourra en apprendre le maniement. Quasiment indestructible, un sabre peut parer des tirs de blaster ou transpercer presque n'importe quoi (exception faite d'un autre sabre et de quelques matériaux). La longueur de la lame, sa puissance, son angle de coupe et sa conception dépendent du porteur. Ainsi plusieurs cristaux peuvent être employés pour augmenter la taille de la lame. De la même manière, la couleur de celle-ci est liée à la pro venance et l'environnement du cristal choisi (contrairement à la croyance populaire qui veut que la couleur détermine le rang et le niveau du Jedi).

Enfin le Sith préfèrent utiliser des cristaux synthétiques forgés grâce au côté obscur. Ces cristaux donnent une lame rouge très puissante, certains sabres fabriqués il y a des millénaires furent assez puissants pour briser une lame traditionnelle. À l'instar de Dark Maul, des Sith vont jusqu'à créer des sabres à double lame bien plus dévastateurs dans les mains d'un expert.

Si les Jedi et les Sith en ont une approche différente de la Force et de leur rôle, les deux Ordres en partagent les pouvoirs, les rites et la maîtrise qui ne peut se faire qu'aux prix de nombreuses années de formation. Formation qui semble ne jamais devoir s'achever.

Mais la Force est un tout unique et indivisible dans lequel le côté lumineux n'existe que grâce au côté obscur qui en assure l'équilibre.

Yoda "Il n'y a pas de paix, il y a la colère.

Il n'y a pas de peur, il y a la puissance.

Il n'y a pas la mort, il y a l'immortalité.

Il n'y a pas de faiblesse, il y a le côté obscur."

Jedi VS Sith: La Guerre des Ordres. (2014, August/September). Film(s) SP #18 , 86-89.

25

GATEWAY ON TV We’re thrilled to tell you that Fred’s novel Gateway may soon be on your TV screen.

Entertainment One Television (Hell on Wheels) in collaboration with De Laurentiis Co. (Dune and Hannibal) plan to develop and produce a TV drama series adapted from the book, which was one of Fred’s favorites, and a winner of the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1978 Locus Award for Best Novel, the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1978 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel.

The two companies were the winners of an auction with a number of producers bidding on the the screen rights to the novel. Martha De Laurentiis and Lorenzo De Maio of De Laurentiis will be the executive producers, along with eOne TV’s John Morayniss, CEO; Michael Rosenberg, executive VP of U.S. scripted TV; and Benedict Carver, senior VP of filmed entertainment. They’re now looking for a writer to do the screenplay adaptation, so interested sf writers with TV experience should contact them.

Some of you will wonder – yes, Fred knew this was coming together before he died.

Hull, E. (2014, March 17). Good News, Gateway TV Series in the Works! Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://www.thewaythefuture blogs.com/2014/03/good-news-gateway-tv-series-in-the-works/

26

27

Designing Blade Runner "There are certain moments in movies where the background can be as important as the actor. The design of a film is the script."

– Ridley Scott, Quoted in "The Making of Blade Runner"; article by Paul M. Sammon; Cinefantastique, vol.12 #5/VOL. 12, #6

At virtually the same time he began laboring on his initial script rewrites with Hampton Fancher, Ridley Scott had also begun ironing out another all-important wrinkle in Blade Runner's fabric – the film's overall "look."

This was because production design had always been one of Scott's greatest personal obsessions and strongest professional strengths. The trait had been apparent as early as Scott's first feature; The Duelists evidenced a period detail far in excess of its relatively meager production cost. Scott's nest film, Alien, had a larger budget, and the corresponding intricacy of its gothic celluloid portraiture established Scott as a world-class visualist. (Alien also turned heretofore relatively unknown artists H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb into much sought-after motion picture designers.)

Blade Runner offered Scott an even larger canvas to draw upon – yet Michael Deeley knew his director was up to the challenge. "In a sense, no major art director would ever work with Ridley, because Ridley wouldn't let him do what he wanted," Deeley points out. "But Ridley would be right in doing that. He started out in design, you know, and he always knows what he wants. Frankly, Ridley Scott is one of the best art directors ever. He draws well, has an incredible flair for detail, and a brilliant eye."

Much of that "eye" evolved during Scott's early professional training. "I was a designer, trained as a painter, then an art director, and from art direction drifted into graphic design," Scott told The American Cinematographer ("Blade Runner: Production Design and Photography," by Herb A. Lightman and Richard Patterson, July 1982). "Graphic design open up all sorts of things, because it's photography, film, and editing."

With his intensive visual background it's not so surprising that Ridley Scott believed (1981, at least) that a film's design can be just as important – and in some cases, perhaps more so – than the actual narrative. As such, he still tends to closely control as many of the visual elements of his films as possible, preferring not to simply turn a film over to a production designer, cinematographer, or special effects supervisor.

"I think there's a great tendency for a certain type of director to walk in and never be involved with his art department or with his

29

camera crew," Scott elaborates. "This is the type who's only involved with the actors and the script. Which means he then tends to be dictated to by what he's going to get. This sort of director will just point a camera at his action and shoot it. If he's lucky enough, or has had the good sense or taste to chose a good cameraman, the cinematographer will then take over. At which point this kind of director strictly works with his actors.

"I find that is doing half the job," Scott continues. "There should be a total integration on a film, a complete synthesis running through the hands of a director who is involved in everything. That includes all the design elements. Certainly, there are moments in movies when the background of a shot can be as important as the foregrounded actor, whether that background be a figure or a landscape. Because every incident, every sound, every moment, every color, every set, prop or actor, is all part of the director's overall orchestration of a film. And orchestration, to me, is performance. Just as performance is everything."

Yet Scott still had to decide on the overall look of his new film.

What was that to be? Setting Blade Runner in the year 2020, as was originally intended,* posed specific design problems.

As Scott points out, logic dictated many decisions in this area.

"The most difficult problem for all of us involved the look of the film.

The nightmare in my mind was that this 'look' would merely become an intelligent speculation concerning a city forty years in the future, and nothing more. Believe me, designing Blade Runner was more of a challenge than Alien, simply because it's much more easier to create the environment for a space film rather than a project detailing life on Earth. In any event, I insisted that Blade Runner's final look be authentic, not just speculative.

"For instance, take clothes and cars," Scott goes on. "What if you could take someone, a contemporary man, and whisk him back to the Times Square of forty years ago? He wouldn't, I think, have that many shocks in store for him. Except perhaps for the signage; neon in 1940 must have been much more impressive. A contemporary man wouldn't be puzzled by forties clothing, either, since we're seeing something of a resurgence in forties fashions right now (in late 1981, when this interview was conduced). Fashion is always cyclical.

"So your'e going through a rather frightening process every time you make a design decision," Scott concludes. "Whether it's a telephone, or a bar, or the shoes a character will wear, once it has been designed, it must be lumped in with everything else in the film. For better or for worse."

*A later decision, made well into postproduction, pushed the film’s time frame back to the year 2019. This was done after it was noticed that "2020" triggered too many associations with eye charts and the term "20-20 vision."

30

Scott's extremely complex stylistic sense was applied to Blade Runner via a number of methods. One was his self-described habit of "pictorial referencing" – omnivorously ingesting every image and artistic influence Scott can lay his hands on before he shoots a film.

"I always spend a great deal of time building a library of weird and wonderful illustrators," Scott explained in that same 1982 American Cinematographer article. "That's usually where I begin a project.

(Blade Runner's look) began haphazardly, but I found myself totally enthralled with this unusual world, and (that) led me to the path of collecting odd illustrators, odd pictorial references to things. So I try to dig out those individuals first and that becomes, along with the development of the script, the design side of the film."

One early and key Blade Runner visual influence was artist Edward Hopper's hauntingly lonely painting "Nighthawks." This famous work depicts a group of nocturnal urban dwellers frozen in silent meditation under the stark fluorescent light of a sparsely populated all-night diner. "I was constantly waving a reproduction of this painting under the noses of the production team to illustrate the look and mood I was after in Blade Runner," Scott said.

Further "atmosphere" filtered through Scott in the form of thirties photographs, Hogarth engravings and, most importantly, the skewed, hallucinatory landscapes of the then popular graphic arts magazine Heavy Metal.

"I'd always been a fan of that magazine, which dealt with what I term 'half-fantasy,'" Scott goes on to say. "In fact, I first encountered it in its original French appearance, which is called Metal Hurlant.

And I particularly enjoyed the work of the French artist Known as 'Moebius,' whose real name is Jean Geraud. He was one of the best Heavy Metal illustrators, without question. I'm still knocked out by the stuff he does. And yet, I can't put my finger on why, or what it is about the way he handles himself. Perhaps it's the way Moebius juxtaposes familiar elements with the fantastic, to make some sort of architectural or fashion statement. Or it could simply be his graphic insolence."

Yet despite his saturation in such visuals Ridley Scott had still yet meet the one man, after the director himself, who was to exert the most sweeping design influence over Blade Runner.

That meeting would soon come about. And it would arise partially through visual impressions burned into Scott during mundane business trips to New York.

Syd Mead, "Visual Futurist" Two of Blade Runner's most impressive design elements are its overcrowded streets and flying cars. Yet these did not totally spring from the imagination; instead, both were influenced by actual experiences in Ridley Scott's life. As the raid-haired director told writer/publisher

31

Don Shay in Shay's excellent Blade Runner – 2020 Foresight article (which comprised the entire contents of issue #9 of Shay's Cinefex magazine in July 1982):** "The city we represent is overkill," Ridley Scott admitted. "But I always get the impression of New York as being overkill. You go into New York on a bad day and you look around and you feel this place is going to grind to a halt any minute – which it nearly does all too often.

All you need is a garbage strike or a subway strike or an electrical blowout and you have absolute chaos.

"So we took that idea and projected it forty years into the future and came up with megalopolis – the kind of city that could be where New York and Chicago join, with maybe hundred million people living there. Or maybe San Francisco and Los Angeles. In fact, at one point we were going to call the city San Angeles, which would of course have suggested that eight-hundred mile-long Western seaboard had been transformed into a single population center with giant cities and monolithic buildings at either end, and then this strange, kind of awful suburb in the middle. I thought the idea was interesting, but the city's now been moved to the East Coast because it's raining so much.*** "Anyway, it seemed to me that in such proscenium there would be a lot of air traffic. I picked that up from the fact that I used to fly in and out of New York a lot over a period of about five years back before they stopped the helicopters landing on top of the Pan American Building. It was seven minutes from the airport to the roof and I could remember coming in in January or February – in blizzards and high winds – and landing on the Pan Am Building. We used to drift in over the city, very close to the building, and it felt like the way of the future.

"So we proceeded in that direction. (Our idea was that) the first (flying) vehicles would be police. The police, by then, will be paramilitary – they're already paramilitary in Los Angeles. Then there'd be corporate and other official vehicles and already you'd be creating a helluva traffic jam in the air. But we all agreed and felt that that was

**This issue of Cinefex, a technical magazine dealing with the nuts and bolts of cinematic trick photography, is the single most comprehensive examination of Blade Runner's special effects. *** After dropping the San Angeles idea, Scott decided to set Blade Runner's action in New York. But the film was finally relocated to occur in 2019 Los Angeles. Explains Katy Haber, "That was due to the simple, pragmatic fact that we ultimately cut a deal to shoot on the Warner Brothers lot, in Burbank, and on a few locations throughout L.A. You couldn’t set a film laid in New York and then show Harrison Ford driving up to the Bradbury Building without people in Los Angeles laughing us out of the theater."

32

pretty much the way the cities will go. And for us, it was a very nice visual notion."

Now that Scott had arrived at the idea of a congested, broken-down, flying-vehicle-choked metropolis, his next step lay in assembling a team of artists who could turn that vision into three-dimensional reality. But where to start?

It's already been noted that Scott often relies on his "pictorial referencing" process while designing a motion picture. Part of his process involves either the director or his staff combing through bookstores for hours on end, buying any and all art, comic, or picture books, and then stacking them, library fashion, on Scott's desk. After which Scott spends an equal amount of time studying the volumes for interesting artists and imagery.

It was while engaged in such a reference binge that Scott stumbled across the first collection of an artist named Syd Mead. That book's title was Sentinel, and it was published by Dragon's Dream, a small London-based publishing house run by noted rock'n'roll record album cover artist Roger Dean, in 1979.

"A lot of the art in Sentinel was a bit too futuristic for what I had in mind for Blade Runner," Scott points out. "But from his photographic, specific style, and other elements I could already see in his art, I had feeling Syd Mead would be able to pull back on his 'Flash Gordon' tendencies and place his visions within our own film's time period. I was specifically impressed with his automative designs: since Francher's script placed emphasis on certain futuristic vehicles, I felt I might be on to something. Then, when I did a little more research, found out about Mead's background and the fact that his artistic reasoning is always based on sound industrial speculations, we formally approached Syd with the idea of working on Blade Runner."

Mead was called in to the Gower Gulch preproduction offices in April 1980 by Ivor Powell and by John Rogers (who had just joined the Blade Runner team as the film's production manager). At the time, Scott's new venture was still being called Dangerous Days and was still under production umbrella of Fimlways Pictures.

Mead had been asked by Rogers to come in for a meeting with Ridley Scott. The artist agreed. Mead and Scott met, and the rest is history; soon afterwards, Syd Mead would become the most highly visible artist attached to the production.

Mead brought with him a set of uniquely impressive credentials.

First, surprisingly unlike most of the other Blade Runner personnel, was the fact that Mead was a hardcore science fiction fan. "I'd been an avid reader and appreciator of science fiction long before my involvement with this project," Mead elaborated. "In fact, in 1948, when I was still in high school, I personally met Robert Heinlein, who of course was the author of Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers and many other fine works. I'd already read everything he'd

33

written until then. I've also always been fascinated by the work of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. I think they're the grand deans of science fiction, mainly because their visions are so realistically based on hard science: chemical engineering, biomechanics, satellite communication systems and so on. In a sense, science fiction has been one of the defining principles of my life."

That life began July 18, 1933. In June of 1959, Syd Mead graduated from the prestigious Pasadena, California, Art Center; he began his professional career that same year by working for the Ford Motor Company, at its Advanced Vehicle Studio in Deerborn, Michigan.

Two years later Mead placed with Chicago-based Hansen Company, designing lavish promotional booklets for such clients as U.S. Steel and the Sony Corporation. Then, in 1970, he formed his own company, Syd Mead Inc. That year also saw Mead embark on a ten year relationship with the Holland-based Philips Electronics group as a consultant. "That experience gave me a tremendous amount of exposure to electronics," Mead recalls, "particularly to the consumer product/hardware end of that stuff." Meads has also provided the concept for a Norwegian/Caribbean cruiseliner, worked on mass-transit projects, did wide-body jumbo jet interiors, and helped design the supersonic Concorde airliner for Air France.

However, despite extensive design experience across the entire spectrum of the transportation field (particularly in the engineering aspects of the general vehicular market), Mead's primary concerns lay on what he calls "future studies."

"Actually, despite de downbeat philosophical atmosphere permeating Blade Runner, I'm an optimist about the future," Mead points out. "And my futuristic interests were actually why Ford Motor Company hired me in the first place. Not only could I come up with advanced designs that weren't impossible, but I could also project them into a complete, imaginary scenario, a full lifestyle overview which surrounded and complemented the basic object. In other words, I was producing little self-contained worlds, automobiles that were placed into fully functioning futuristic environments, as opposed to an isolated airbrush rendering of a single car on a white board."

With these imagistic skills, then, it is not surprising that Mead would eventually gravitate toward the film industry. However, Blade Runner was not the artist's first brush with Hollywood. In 1979 Mead had been hired to conceptualize the mammoth alien "V'Ger" ship of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He found himself working on that film with both the Apogee special effects company (founded and run by award-winning illusionist John Dykstra), and with effects ace Douglas Trumbull (2001 and Close Encounters), through Trumbull’s own company, The Entertainment Effects Group (EEG).

As for Blade Runner, working with Scott was, in Mead's words, "Nice. Inspiring. Very cooperative. Ridley is good to work for, because

34

I'm very visual and he is, too. He can actually sit down and draw out an idea. He did that quite a bit during Blade Runner, which gave me an immediate insight in what he was thinking about."

The drawings Scott was primarily producing at this point concerned the futuristic automobiles of Blade Runner. Designing Blade Runner's cars became Mead's first official assignment, and it was a job to which he applied his customary diligence.

"Although I eventually assumed broader artistic responsibilities and wound up creating props, street scenes, and buildings," Mead explains, "I was originally hired just to design the automobiles that would appear in Blade Runner. And I did five of them.

"As I started designing the automobiles I simply could not help but place them in a surrounding environment which I felt mirrored the industrial aesthetic which had produced these cars. Consequently, I might do a drawing of a single car, but it would be firmly grounded by a palpable environment – a real street, with real buildings and people dressed in believable future fashions. Ridley became more and more excited by this."

As Mead goes on to say, "these futuristic surroundings gradually began to illustrate and were based on Ridley's idea of 'retrofitting,' which became one of the significant design schemes of the film. It also became the word most associated with the picture; 'retrofitting' simply means upgrading old machinery or structures by slapping new add-ons to them."

Once Mead had decided on a Blade Runner production design (whether it be vehicle, prop, or set), he would then do a color tempera illustration 10"x15" in size, with enough detail to not only satisfy Ridley Scott but also allow the art department staff to build that object.

"Ridley has his own particular vision for the cars," Mead said. "He'd wanted somebody who could visualize believable mechanical objects, to complement his own ideas. But at no time did he want these vehicles – or any piece of machinery in the film, for that matter – to dominate the proceedings. Scott would always say we weren't making a 'hardware' movie, like 2001. What he wanted were backgrounds that reflected an everyday, workaday level of technology, yet backgrounds that would stil be sufficiently impressive to interest an audience."

Part of these mead-induced backgrounds included Blade Runner's "star car" – the sleek blue spinner – a word coined by Hampton Fancher – first seen as that streamlined land/air police vehicle used

by Gaff to fly Deckard from the Noodle Bar. The Spinner was actually the first design concept discussed at Mead's initial meetings with Ridley Scott. "The starting-off principle for my work on the film was that this futuristic society could produce a car that could fly," Mead pointed out. "Therefore, not only is the interior instrumentation unique, but the configuration of the

35

Spinner is totally different from any other vehicle in the film, simply because it can fly."

Scott had originally conceived of the Spinner as a fairly compact coupe. However, Mead himself subsequently designed a larger, "Chevrolet scale" model, which would lend itself to visually impressive full-scale takeoffs. The artist further decided against the helicopterlike blades and folding wings, which had become the stereotyped clichĂŠ of other flying film automobiles. "Instead of unwieldy folding propellers or H. G. Wells-like appendages," Mead said, "I suggested designing the Spinner as an aerodyne, which is heavierthan-air craft with an internal enclosed lifting system built into it, like the British Harrier jumpjet. The Spinner would also look like a car all the time, whether it was flying or just rolling down a street. Although it would be equipped with bigger windshield wipers and glass cleaning systems, because the air of Blade Runner's time is supposed to be so heavy with pollutants.

"One further aspect of my police Spinner design was the fact that I conceived of it as a restricted vehicle. It can only be used by authorized personnel; in this case, the LAPD. Again, because it could fly at faster speeds than other Spinners, and therefore would be involved with a whole new set of complicated travel patterns."

In addition to incorporating hydraulic sections which allowed the police Spinner's front wheels to fold up inside the craft (for its conversion into a flying car) and collapsible headrests installed with self-contained speaker systems (which can be glimpsed behind Harrison Ford's head during his flight to Tyrell's pyramid), Mead's most unusual Spinner detail was a hydraulic, "twist-wrist" steering device. "The traditional automotive steering wheel was replaced with two indash holes into which operators placed each hand. By grabbing a handle recessed within each hole and turning their wrists, drivers could effectively guide both the left and right sides of the vehicle.

"I set up the design format for each vehicle type and then let the draftsmen and builders make changes as they were along, as they had or wanted to," Mead continues. "I liked that sense of collaboration.

What we ended up with was a curious accumulation of detail, a heuristic growth of odds and ends that the original concepts didn't include. Which, I think, made the cars look that much more believable."

Despite mead's capabilities and qualifications, however, it soon became evident to the Blade Runner accounting department that the artist didn't come cheap. Since he was not a part of the Hollywood union system, Mead was able to ask for – and receive – his then usual rate of 1'500$ per day. "I hadn't been a professional illustrator for twenty years just to bump down my price because I was working in my first major capacity on a big production," Mead explained. "I felt I had no choice but to exact my going fee. I would have done that whether my client were NASA or Volvo or a motion picture company."

36

Lawrence G. Paull, David Snyder, and the Art Department Of course, Syd Mead was only conceptual artist. Hired to staff BR's Art Department were: Lawrence G.Paull (Production Designer) and David Snyder (Art Director). These men would hold two most crucial positions in regards to creating a three-dimensional Los Angeles circa 2019, a job constantly helped by numerous 11/2" by 3" illustrational sketches (dubbed "Ridleygrams") drawn by Ridley Scott, which showed exactly what the director was looking for in a scene. Other important Art Department contributors included Sherman Labby (Storyboards), Mentor Huebner (Production Illustrator), Linda DeScenna (Chief Set Decorator), and Tom Southwell (who designed many of the film's futuristic graphics and neon signs).

According to Michael Deeley, however, "it was really Ridley who was the overall Production Designer/Art Director on Blade Runner. It wouldn't be fair to say otherwise."

M. Sammon, P. (2007). Designing Blade Runner. In Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner (pp. 71-81). HarperCollinsPublisher.

37

TYSON VS SAGAN

Meet the host: Neil DeGrasse Tyson As host of the new TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson is following in the footsteps of the late Carl Sagan, the renowned scientist who starred in Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, the classic 1980 program that powerfully influenced many people's view of science and the universe. Oddly, Tyson, who was in graduate school at the time, recalls that he only had time to catch a few episodes of the original Cosmos when it originally aired. All the same, Sagan still managed to exert a profound personal influence upon his future Cosmos successor, thanks to a meeting between the two that occurred when Tyson was a teenager.

It happened back in December 1975, when Tyson, a senior from the Bronx High School of Science who dreamed of becoming an astrophysicist, applied to Cornell University, and his application was forwarded to Sagan, a faculty member. To Tyson's surprise, he soon received a personal reply. "It was completely surreal," recalls Tyson. "I'm just a 17-year-old kid, and here's the most famous scientist in the world – he'd been on Johnny Carson – inviting me to come visit him at his lab." When Tyson took a bus from New York City to the Cornell campus in Ithaca, N.Y., and walked to the building where Sagan worked, he was even more startled to find the scientist waiting outside for him. After giving Tyson a tour of the lab, autographing one of his books and discussing the Viking Mars lander with him, Sagan gave Tyson a ride back to the bus station. "It had started snowing," Tyson recalls. "He wrote his home phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to me, saying, 'If the bus can’t get through, call me, and we’ll put you up for the night.'"

Though Sagan didn’t succeed in convincing Tyson to attend Cornell – he eventually chose Harvard in-

40

stead – the elder scientist's altruism and willingness to reach out to others left a lasting mark. "Here we had a scientist who had a fireside chat manner, who was successful at communicating his passion and his knowledge of the universe to others," Tyson explains.

"I thought to myself, if I'm ever in a position to communicate with the public, that’s a fertile way to approach the challenge."

After earning his doctorate in astrophysics at Columbia University, Tyson went on to become Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, and has investigated areas ranging from star formation and exploding stars, to dwarf galaxies and the structure of the Milky Way. He served on two Presidential commissions to study the future of the aerospace industry and space exploration. But in emulation of his mentor Sagan, Tyson also has seized the opportunity to reach out to ordinary people, authoring or co-authoring 10 popular books on subjects such ranging from black holes to whether or not Pluto should be considered a planet. He hosts a weekly radio show, and has appeared on programs such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Tyson’s efforts to encourage public interest in the universe inspired the International Astronomical Union to name an asteroid, 13123 Tyson, in his honor. The scientist humbly points out that the name means that 13,122 such objects were named after other people before they got around to him, and that the club to which he belongs is "not that exclusive." Even so, he admits, "I didn't think I would be singularly enthusiastic about it. But when it came in, I was like, 'whaaa-hoo!'"

Tyson, who co-signed a letter to Congress back in 2003 about the necessity of finding measures to pro-

tect the Earth against asteroid collisions, remains particularly strident about that subject. Despite warnings from him and other scientists, he says, government officials "haven't gone anywhere. They've made small advances. They should have made big advances." He cites the February 2013 explosion of an asteroid over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk as yet another wakeup call. "You don’t want to be the one who said, I told you so, but I told you so," Tyson explains. "This is real, and it happens. Be thankful, that this only resulted in Band-Aids having to be administered because of broken glass. Had this asteroid been larger, or had it exploded deeper in the atmosphere, it would have leveled every single building in the city. And you would have had fatalities approaching the total population.

Yes, it's the survival of the species."

But even though he devotes much of his time to teaching the public about the universe, Tyson retains his own curiosity about the cosmos. He wants to see an explanation of the still-mysterious nature of dark matter and dark energy, and he is eager to know how organic molecules actually led to self-replicating life forms. "That's just an awesome transition," he explains.

"I would have loved to have witnessed that." Another item on Tyson's list is finding out whether there is life elsewhere in our solar system – such as Mars or Jupiter's moon Europa – that has a different origin from life on Earth.

Tyson's involvement in the revival of Cosmos stem from his appointment in 1997 to the board of the Planetary Society, an organization co-founded by Sagan in 1980 to encourage the public to become more involved in space exploration. Eventually, that led to conversations with people such as Sagan's widow, writer Ann Druyan, producer Seth MacFarlane,

who were interested in creating a sequel to the original Cosmos. When it came to finding a host, Tyson explains, "I offered myself, thinking that I could perform this role uniquely because of my teenage first encounter with Carl, and because of my growing ability as a science educator."

Tyson says the new Cosmos will retain some of the most effective narrative devices from the original program, such as a cosmic calendar that presents the history of the universe as if it occurred in a single year, from January to December. "On that calendar, the cave men drawing on their walls occurred 15 seconds ago," Tyson explains with a laugh. "It's an extraordinarily powerful tool for showing the scale of time."

Tyson adds: "hat the original Cosmos did and what we do, is find stories about science, about scientists, and about culture, that represent the search for truth, no matter what the consequences." But in its efforts to educate, Tyson says the new Cosmos may have a greater sense of urgency, at a time when issues such as climate change and the risk of asteroid collisions with Earth increasingly concern scientists. "Science literacy is the key to our future survival on Earth," he explains. "So Cosmos will show why science matters.”

J. Kiger, P. (2014, February 18). Meet the host: Neil deGrasse Tyson. Retrieved April 22, 2015, from http://channel.nationalgeo graphic.com/cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey/articles/meet-the-hostneil-degrasse-tyson/

41

CARL SAGAN AND THE COSMOS LEGACY In his 62-years on the planet, Carl Sagan amassed enough achievements in diverse fields to fill up several lifetimes.

As an astronomer, he made important discoveries about Venus and Mars, and played an important role with NASA for several decades, helping design the missions of unmanned spacecraft that explored the solar system, and even briefing the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon. As a professor at Harvard and Cornell, he was a respected educator who inspired generations of future space scientists – among them, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson – to follow in his footsteps. As a writer, Sagan was prolific, producing more than 600 scientific articles and pieces for mainstream newspapers and magazines, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, one of his more than a dozen books. As a TV personality, Sagan – whom one critic described as "a scientific Robert Redford" – hosted the Emmy Award-winning 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which became the most-watched science program of all time, attracting a worldwide audience of 500 million viewers in 60 countries.

If that wasn't enough, Sagan was one of the first public voices to call attention to the threat of climate change, and he also campaigned for nuclear disarmament, swaying the public with his warnings of a "nuclear winter" that might ensue after an all-out war.

But if Sagan's life and multiple careers had a single, overriding theme, it was getting ordinary people to understand the importance and value of science, and to share his own wide-ranging, irrepressible curiosity about the universe. As his former department head at Cornell, Yervant Terzian, once said of Sagan, "Carl

42

was the best teacher of science in the world." In the introduction to his companion book to the Cosmos series, Sagan noted that in ancient times, people had felt an intimate connection to the stars, to the extent that they recited incantations in an effort to summon the cosmos' power to cure their toothaches. But he worried that science's discovery of the immense scale and mind-boggling age of the universe had left modern humans feeling unimportant and alienated. He argued, instead, that grasping for an understanding of that "ecstatic grandeur" was a way to reaffirm that "we are, in a very real and profound sense, a part of the Cosmos, born from it, our fate deeply connected to it."

Sagan felt that connection to the universe going back to his childhood in Bensonhurst, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, where he was an avid reader of science fiction and decided by the age of eight that there must be life on planets orbiting other stars, even though they had not yet been discovered. "I didn't make a decision to pursue astronomy," he once explained. "Rather, it just grabbed me, and I had no thought of escaping."

His curiosity eventually led him to the University of Chicago, where he enrolled at age 16 and eventually earned a doctorate in astrophysics at age 26 in 1960. After a fellowship at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley, he became an assistant professor at Harvard University, and moved to Cornell University in 1968, where he became a full professor in 1971.

Early in his career, Sagan made a discovery that made his name in the world of astronomy, by ingeniously using data from tables designed for steam boiler engineering to prove that Venus was heated by the greenhouse effect, in which its atmosphere trapped heat and elevated the planet's surface temperature.

Sagan did make one mistake, by inferring that in addition to carbon dioxide, water vapor played a role; later researchers determined that there was little water in Venus' atmosphere, and that sulfur actually was the culprit. Nevertheless, Sagan's work provided another piece to the puzzle that eventually enabled climate scientists to develop a model explaining how and why the Earth was warming. Sagan also contributed an important explanation of color variations on the surface of Mars, arguing that they were caused by shifts in dust from wind storms, rather than by vegetation, as some scientists speculated. Observations by NASA's Mariner spacecraft in the 70s eventually confirmed that Sagan and his colleague James Pollack had been right.

Sagan's expertise led him to become a key participant in NASA's 1970s missions to explore Mars and other planets with robotic probes. He was a member of the team that managed the imaging by Mariner 9, which became the first satellite to orbit another planet and transmitted more than 7,000 photos of the Martian surface. He also helped to select the landing sites for Viking 1 and 2, which were the first space probes to land successfully on Mars, and worked with NASA on the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions, which were the first Earth spacecraft to reach the outer planets such as Jupiter and Saturn.

Sagan, who had a lifelong fascination with the possibility of extraterrestrial life, also conceived one of NASA's most attention-getting gambits. When he worked on the effort to send the Voyager 1 and 2 probes on a tour of the solar system and beyond, he convinced NASA to put a message inside the spacecraft – a 12 inch copper disc encoded with greetings in various Earth languages, natural sounds, music and photographs. Sagan hoped that if extraterrestrials

someday found the spacecraft, it would help alert them to the existence of our civilization. He called it "a bottle cast into the cosmic ocean."

But thanks to his best-selling books and TV appearances, most people probably remember Sagan as a lucid, witty explainer of scientific concepts. Though he sometimes turned down lecture requests, he appeared on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson 26 times, and was unfazed by the challenge of being interviewed by a comedian who sometimes impersonated him. "The show has an audience of 10 million people," he told a New York Times interviewer in 1977. "Those aren't people who subscribe to Scientific American."

All the same, Sagan generally wasn't thrilled with the portrayal of science on TV – a discontent that he got to remedy when he signed on in 1979 to develop and host Cosmos for PBS. Instead of a dull science lecture, Sagan envisioned a program that would make the fullest use of television's visual possibilities, including special effects and computer animation, and send viewers hurtling on a spaceship between cosmic destinations, when they weren't contemplating a "cosmic calendar" that compressed the history of the universe into the equivalent of a single Earth year. As he said at the time, his goal was to make it so that "people could turn the sound off and still enjoy the series." The production cost a then-hefty $8 million, making it the most expensive program ever created for public television.

But in the end, Sagan's flamboyance and willingness to take risks paid off handsomely, as Cosmos became both a critical success and a massive international hit. That success demonstrated that audiences would watch science, if it was presented in an enter-

43

taining fashion, and helped pave the way for generations of other science programming.

Sagan's passion for science and desire for knowledge continued to burn brightly, even when he was ill with the cancer that ultimately would cut his life short in 1996. Just two weeks before his death, he went to Washington one afternoon to see then NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin, to describe his visions for the future of space exploration.

As Goldin later recalled in a New York Times interview, the conversation grew so animated and intense that the two men continued it over dinner at a Georgetown restaurant. Despite Sagan's physical frailty, Goldin recalled, "he was talking with intensity," like a man with worlds still left to explore. "This is the Carl Sagan I love, a man so full of hope and optimism that he never gave up."

J. Kiger, P. (2014, February 20). Carl Sagan and the Cosmos Legacy.

Retrieved April 22, 2015, from http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/ cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey/articles/carl-sagan-and-the-cosmoslegacy/

44

Yeah! Postcards!

45

"there is no greater education than one that is self-driven."

Neil DeGRASSE TYSON

Postcard from the SPACE FUCK magazine n#1. Illustrations by MLFC.

"somewhere, something incredible is wanting to be known."

Carl Sagan

Postcard from SPACE FUCK magazine n#1. Illustrations by MLFC.

Mesure de L'univers : les supernovae font de la résistance

Considérées comme uniformes, les supernovae de type Ia servent de balises cosmiques aux astronomes afin d'estimer la distance des galaxies lointaines. L'expansion accélérée de L'Univers repose même sur leur observation. Mais une équipe internationale vient de montrer que ses explosions d'étoiles sont loin de toutes se ressembler...

Si l'on vous affirmait que la Terre ne tourne plus tout à fait autour du Soleil, vous vous sentiriez forcés de revoir l'une de vos plus fermes certitudes en astronomie. C'est ce que vivent actuellement les cosmologistes à propos d'un phénomène capital dans la connaissance de l'Univers: les supernovae de type Ia. Ces explosions stellaires sont dues à l'effondrement d'une petite étoile dense, une naine blanche, ayant atteint une masse critique en volant de la matière d'un astre voisin. Jusqu'ici, leur luminosité absolue était considérée comme identique – une propriété qui a permis aux astronomes de les utiliser pour estimer la distance des galaxies lointaines.

Or, en une série de trois articles, une équipe internationale vient de bousculer cette certitude, affirmant que ces explosions stellaires sont loin d'avoir une luminosité standard… Ironie de l'histoire, l'un des auteurs, Richard Scalzo, fait partie du groupe de Brian Schmidt – celui-là même qui, avec Saul Perlmutter et Adam Reiss, s'était appuyé dès 1998 sur l'étude des supernovae Ia pour affirmer que l'expansion de l'Univers allait en s'accélérant. Une découverte couronnée du prix Nobel de physique en 2011!

La réputation des supernovae pour arpenter l'Univers date de presque un siècle. "Dès 1938, l'astronome Walter Baade a souligné leur potentiel comme indicateurs de distance," rappelle Greg Aldering, astrophysicien de l'université de Californie et membre de l'étude récente. Il faut attendre les années 1960 pour que Charles Kowal note que certaines supernovae, dites de type Ia (lire encadré de la page suivante), présentent un comportement uniforme. Mais à l'époque, elles ne permettaient de mesurer les distances qu'avec une précision de 30%. Une incertitude réduite à 10% para la suite, grâce au développement de la spectrométrie et des modèles théoriques.

"Ce ne sont pas les débris éjectés lors de l'explosion que nous observons, mais la lumière émise par leur désintégration en d'autres éléments chimiques," explique Sébastien Bongard, du LPNHE* à Paris, ayant participé à l'étude. Une manière indirecte de remonter à la composition et la masse de l'astre progéniteur qui à explosé. Ainsi, dans le cas d'une naine blanche, le

*Laboratoire de physique nucléaire et des hautes énergies.

47

carbone et l'oxygène qui la composent se transforment en nickel, cobalt, fer, silicium, soufre et calcium – autant d'atomes que les astronomes identifient dans le ciel. "Reste à savoir pourquoi une naine blanche explose," souligne Greg Aldering. Selon la théorie, un tel catalysme n'est possible que si l'étoile dépasse une masse critique, appelée masse de Chandrasekhar,** égale à 1,4 fois la masse du Soleil. L'hypothèse d'une naine blanche dévorant l'enveloppe d'une autre étoile (une géante rouge, par exemple) afin d'atteindre cette masse critique a longtemps prévalu pour expliquer l'uniformité des supernovae Ia. "Les étoiles sont souvent en couples dans l'Univers," précise Sébastien Bongard. "D'ailleurs, si Jupiter avait été un peu plus massive, elle aurait pu s'allumer, et nous aurions eux deux étoiles dans notre Système solaire!"

Trop brillantes, trop bleues Seulement voilà. Les astronomes dénichent de plus en plus de supernovae Ia s'écartant de cette théorie.

Et ils ont commencé à se demander si une naine blanche pouvait exploser en deçà de la masse de Chandrasekhar. À l'inverse, plusieurs supernovae extrêmement brillantes, très bleues et aux évolutions atypiques ont été observées, semblant indiquer un progéniteur supérieur à 1,4 masse solaire! "Nous

**Du nom de l'astrophysicien d'origine indienne Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), prix Nobel de physique en 1983.

Des explosions pour mesurer le cosmos Les supernovae constituent une aubaine pour mesurer les longues distances dans l'Univers. Du fait de leur luminosité exceptionnelle, elles sont visibles même lorsqu'elles survienent dans des galaxies très éloignées. De fait, avant leur explosion, ces mêmes galaxies qui les abritent sont à peine perceptibles, voire invisibles. Il est donc impossible de mesurer leur éloignement.

Si l'on considère que toutes les supernovae de type Ia atteignent la même luminosité, cela signifie qu'observées à une même distance, toutes vont briller de même éclat. C'est ce qu'on appelle la luminosité absolue. Il suffit donc de comparer cette luminosité à celle observée (la luminosité relative) pour arriver, par le calcul, à déduire leur distance.

48

1. Les supernovae de type Ia sont supposées avoir le même éclat absolu, puisqu'elles découleraient toutes d'un même processus: l'explosion d'une petite étoile très dense, appelée naine blanche, quand le vol de matière à une étoile voisine lui fait atteindre la masse critique de 1,4 masse solaire.

nous sommes dit: ce n'est pas possible!" se souvient Sébastien Bongard.

L'équipe menée par Robert Scalzo décide alors de fouiller dans les données de plus de 200 supernovae et d'élaborer une nouvelle méthode afin de déterminer la masse de la naine blanche défunte. "Dans les années 1980, le théoricien David Arnett a montré que le pic de luminosité associé à une supernovae de type Ia est un bon indicateur de la quantité de nickel radioactif produit par l'explosion," explique Greg Aldering.

Et donc, de la quantité de matière avant le cataclysme.

Pour en savoir davantage, les astronomes ont étudié l'évolution des débris six à huit semaines après ce fort épisode lumineux. "La vitesse avec laquelle la supernovae s'atténue est définie para la décroissance du cobalt radioactif, lui-même issu de la décroissance du nickel," poursuit l'astronome.

Or, les rayons gamma émis par le cobalt peuvent s'échapper directement dans l'espace, sans contribuer à la luminosité totale de la supernova. L'importance de ces fuites dépend de la masse des couches externes de la supernova, où des éléments plus légers tels que le fer, le silicium et le soufre absorbent les radiations. Si cette masse est faible, les rayonnements du cobalt s'échappent dans l'espace, et l'éclat de la supernova s'atténue rapidement. Si elle est importante, les radiations sont absorbées et converties en lumière visible.

En analysant pour la première fois toutes ces étapes, les astronomes ont obtenu des résultats qui viennent confirmer leur soupçons: jusqu'à 50% des nai-

nes blanches auraient explosé alors qu'elles se trouvaient encore en deçà de la masse de Chandrasekhar (entre 0,9 et 1,4 fois la masse du Soleil), et environ 5% alors qu'elles l'avaient dépassée! Une dispersion en masse qui témoigne de la grande variété des mécanismes à l'origine de ces Cocottes-minute stellaires.

"Les résultats obtenus sur les progéniteurs les plus massifs concordent avec un scénario toujours resté en marge: celui d'une collision entre deux naines blanches," explique Sébastien Bongard. "Ce type d'accident pourrait expliquer le dépassement de la masse de Chandrasekhar, un phénomène que la théorie considère en générale impossible pour une naine blanche grignotant peu à peu la matière d'une autre étoile.

Pour les explosions survenues avant la masse critique de Chandrasekhar, bien plus nombreuses, les astronomes imaginent une naine blanche accumulant l'hélium d'une compagne stellaire, un cocktail plus explosif qu'avec du carbone, ou encore la fusion lente de deux naines blanches.

Nous sommes donc loin d'un mécanisme unique régissant ces événements cataclysmiques. Les supernovae de type Ia perdent-elles pour autant leur rôle de balises cosmiques? Faut-il encore faire confiance aux estimations des distances des galaxies lointaines et, plus globalement, de la théorie de l'accélération de l'expansion de l'Univers? "Les cas dépassant la masse de Chandrasekhar présentent des spécificités observationnelles tellement marquées qu'il est facile de les exclure de nos échantillons pour sonder les distances," précise Sébastien Bongard.

2. Cette propriété permet de déterminer leur distance d'après leur éclat apparent. les supernovae Ia sont ainsi un outil précieux pour connaître la distance de galaxies très lointaines.

3. Le décalage vers le rouge (vers les grandes longueurs d'onde) de la lumière des galaxies lointaines montre que l'Univers est en expansion. Mais les mesures de distance issues des supernovae nous ont appris que cette expansion s'accélérait.

49

Accélération confirmée Pour les autres, les variations de masse sont plus faibles que les incertitudes de mesure sur les supernovae lointaines. "Ces incertitudes sont bien comprises: quand on affirme que l'Univers est en expansion accélérée, cela veut dire que, malgré le flou de mesure, la courbe que nous obtenons est nettement distincte de celle que produirait un Univers en expansion constante ou ralentie." Pas de quoi, donc, remettre en question l'expansion accélérée dans laquelle l'Univers s'est engagé depuis quelques milliards d'années. Ni de faire perdre son Nobel à Brian Schmidt, pour qui "cette étude aide à comprendre pourquoi les supernovae de type Ia ne sont pas toutes les mêmes, et pourquoi nous avons besoin de les standardiser."

Ainsi, ces variations très fines de luminosité, pour l'heure difficiles à déceler, deviendront plus apparentes à mesure que l'on multipliera les observations.

Avec l'entrée en service de Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (8,4m de diamètre) au nord du Chili, qui promet l'observation de millions de nouvelles supernovae, la prochaine génération de projets visant à les utiliser comme des sondes cosmologiques n'aura d'autre choix que de comprendre et contrôler ces différences de masse.

Chevrier, R. (2014, June). Mesure de L'univers : les supernovae font de la résistance. Ciel & Espace, 38-41.

Différentes supernovae Il existe plusieurs types de supernovae qui ont été établis en fonction de leur caractéristiques lumineuses (spectre et évolution de leur éclat dans le temps). Ainsi, le type I regroupe les supernovae dont le spectre ne contient pas d'hydrogène, et le type II, celles ou cet élément est présent.

Chacun de ces types se divise en sous-catégories, de sorte qu'il y a en tout sept variétés de supernovae.

Principalement, celles de type Ia son issues d'une naine blanche volant la matière d'une étoile voisine, et celle de type II correspondent à une étoile massive arrivant en fin de vie.

50

Memória Descritiva E pronto, como último sacrifício, realmente dizer algo que valha a pena ser lido e sabido em relação a este projecto final de Estudos do Design.

Verdade seja dita, não me quebrei o coco à procura de um tema, limitei-me ao reconforto das minhas obsessões principalmente para me dar alento durante a produção, evintando assim potenciais momentos de loucura e negação.

Como inspiração base devo referir a revista americana OMNI de ficção científica que por vezes leio, por muito que o que tenha produzido não se aproxime senão no tema.

Quanto à estrutura procurei criar algo de igualmente sólido e mutável. Comecei por definir uma pequena paleta de fontes tipográficas: uma que espelha a força do título da revista, True lies; uma de recurso que remete para a tecnologia, Retro Computer; uma especialmente para o artigo sobre o universo Star Wars, Star Jedi; e a principal, Univers LT Std, que serviu como base para a criação da grelha e que confere a verdadeira firmeza e hieraquia textual.

Quanto às ilustrações, estas são todas da minha autoria subentendo-se, portanto, a minha decisão de não usar quaisquer das imagens e/ou dos gráficos dos textos originais. Limitei também a paleta cromática para conferir identidade e facilitar a coloração e produção de constrastes nas ilustrações/textos.

Por fim, decidi também criar uma série de goodies para os potenciais compradores/leitores poderem envolverem-se mais com o universo da revista. Nesse seguimenti, cada edição teria postais, autocolantes e um mini póster.

53

Stick them up people! 1/2

Stick them up people! 2/2

59

Mini poster! You better run Rick...

Mini poster from the first issue of the SPACE FUCK magazine. Illustration made by MissLazyFatCat.

62

63

I T ' S

N O T

O V E R

Y E T .

# 1