Blade Runner:
Art Crash Special Edition
Philip K Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” became Ridley Scott’s 1982 film version called the “Blade Runner” that depicted a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019. Los Angeles didn’t turn out that way, but it did show some hope in that there were flying cars. This would conceivably reduce if not eliminate the huge cyclist and pedestrian death toll that is the current 2019 reality of Los Angeles. If you haven’t seen the movie then none of this will make any sense. Make seeing the movie before the ride a homework assignment. Extra credit for reading the book.
In the movie, the Tyrell Corporate motto was “More Human than Human” as a marketing description of the replicants it made. The Tyrell Corporation founder “Eldon Tyrell” said to one of the doomed replicants that “we made you as well as we could” prior to having his head crushed by the replicant who wasn’t satisfied with that statement.
When it comes to the bicycle infrastructure of Los Angeles, the unsatisfying answer we get from the creators of it is “we made it as well as we are going to”. Maybe the time is ripe for doomed cyclists to in turn crush the collective heads of our bicycle infrastructure creators and detractors then make our motto “More Traffic than Traffic”.
We will meet at the LACMA Urban Light on November 23rd, 2019 to celebrate the dystopian Los Angeles of “Blade Runner” and ride off to become “More Traffic than Traffic”. We won’t be crushing heads but at least we’ll live up to the motto. Costumes are encourage. More to come.
Art Crash has always followed a traditional format. This is a one-off Art Crash dedicated to Science-Fiction Fans who don’t want to miss a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience the “Blade Runner Time Slip”. We will propel ourselves from 1982 to the dystopian world of Blade Runner world of November 2019.
We will meet at 4:30pm and begin the time slip at 5:00pm. Our journey will turn us into Blade Runners and Replicants. Since “More Human than Human” is the Tyrell Corporation motto, the Voight-Kampff Test will be the only way to tell who’s who.
Costumes are strongly encouraged.
Thank You
I would like to give a very special thanks to some very special people who put in the energy, time and imagination to get the Blade Runner/Art Crash together. Without them this time-slip would never have happened in the way that it did, if at all. On this night in Los Angeles of November 2019 we experienced the closest thing we could to Philip K.Dick's / Ridley Scott's vision of what was the future in the year of 1982. The final stage took place at Side Show Books which is a hidden gem for Los Angeles. Thanks to the curator of fine literature and proprietor Mr. Tony Jacobs for making his space available to us. Ginny Duncan had a vision of her own. Not only did she create the game of agents hired by Tyrell Corporation to hunt down the missing replicants, she contrived a number of very cool and extremely imaginative props for the final stage. The future noir atmosphere was of her doing. Monica Ramirez was a tremendous help in everything and she came up with a VHS tape of the director's cut version played separately in the front room. Dan Polevoy acquired an extremely rare White Dragon fan version of Blade Runner for our viewing pleasure and also curated the music played during the entire ride. Brian created the special route and Chicken Leather provided the mini BMX bikes for the race of Humans vs Replicants what we had hoped to play but we ran out of time but thanks none the less. Ryan Olson showed up with his pack mounted sound system that expanded the mobile sound theater even more. I hope you had the chance to experience the Augmented reality (AR) game at the Bradbury Building too. Overall it was a magic night with magic people. - Carolin Kewer
