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SIMULACRA
TELEVISIONSB-TV-002

Raised by Wolves

Aaron Guzikowski · 2020–2022

OVERVIEW

A 2020 to 2022 series created by Aaron Guzikowski, with Ridley Scott directing the first two episodes. Two androids are sent to raise human children on a barren planet after Earth is destroyed by a war between atheists and a religious order.

The design refuses the usual futures. There are no cities, no screens, no neon. Shelter is dug, clothing is woven, technology is a handful of objects with no interface.

WHY IT MATTERS

Severe futurism stripped of conventional cyberpunk: alien landscape, ritual and utilitarian form.

CONTEXT

Shot largely in South Africa, which supplies the rock, dust and light. The production design leans on brutalist mass and on prehistory at the same time: a future that looks older than the present.

Scott's involvement is visible in the android design and in the interest in creation myths, which runs through his own science fiction.

WHAT TO NOTICE

  1. 01Technology without screensAlmost no displays anywhere. Devices are solid, matte and single-purpose, which makes the world feel post-industrial rather than futuristic.
  2. 02Architecture is subtractiveShelters are carved and dug rather than built. The settlement is a set of voids in rock.
  3. 03The android bodiesSeamless, pale, unbranded. The uncanniness comes from the absence of detail rather than from added detail.
  4. 04Religious costume in a godless settingThe Mithraic armour and vestments are the most ornamented things on screen, deliberately, in a world otherwise stripped bare.

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