CY8ERPUNKS

Prior art · ART

Art & design

Era 0 · 1948–1974

Ground

cybernetics meets the counterculture

  1. 1968

    2001: A Space Odyssey

    HAL 9000: the first great AI character, and a cautionary one.

  2. c. 1974

    Métal Hurlant

    Launched (Dec 1974 per Wikipedia; Jan 1975 as a Les Humanoïdes Associés title). The visual imagination of the genre is French, not American. US edition: Heavy Metal (1977).

Era 1 · 1975–1982

Proto-cyberpunk

the term exists before the label

  1. 1977

    H.R. Giger, Necronomicon

    (US ed.). Biomechanical aesthetic. Alien (1979) brings it to mass audience.

  2. 1978

    Omni magazine launches

    (Oct 1978; Kathy Keeton and Bob Guccione, Penthouse). Glossy, futurist, science + SF + pseudoscience side by side. Published Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" (1981) and "Burning Chrome" (1982). Also an early H.R. Giger showcase. Omni is what "a forward-facing tech magazine" looked like in 1978 — study it closely.

  3. 1982

    Blade Runner

    (June 1982). — and the one most responsible for the retro re-hash problem. Note that its actual concerns (replicant personhood, memory, what counts as a person) are AI concerns, not chrome concerns.

  4. 1982

    Katsuhiro Otomo, Akira

    (manga begins 1982).

Era 2 · 1983–1986

The term & the wave

  1. 1983

    RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook

    (V. Vale & Andrea Juno). Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Mark Pauline/Survival Research Labs, Monte Cazazza. The body-horror + machine aesthetic. Wildly influential on the visual register.

  2. 1983

    Howard Chaykin, American Flagg!

    (1983). Also Frank Miller's Ronin (1983) and The Dark Knight Returns (1986) — comics turn graphic-design-heavy and dystopian.

  3. 1984

    Emigre

    Magazine launched (Rudy VanderLans, Zuzana Licko; Berkeley, 1984–2005). Licko built fonts on the new Macintosh; the magazine is the visual record of the desktop-publishing revolution. Held in MoMA's collection. Essential for CY8ERPUNKS' type and layout decisions.

  4. 1984

    Apple Macintosh launch

    (Jan 24, 1984). MacPaint, bitmap fonts, the "1984" ad. Desktop publishing → zines get cheap and pretty.

  5. 1984

    Decoder

    (1984, Muscha) — Genesis P-Orridge, William Burroughs, FM Einheit. Industrial film about muzak as control.

  6. 1984

    Nam June Paik, "Good Morning Mr. Orwell"

    (Jan 1, 1984) — satellite video-art broadcast. Also Paik's "electronic superhighway" coinage.

Era 3 · 1987–1991

Cyberculture & cryptography

  1. 1988

    Akira

    (Otomo film, 1988). Japan's contribution to the visual canon and the source of much that is now cliché.

  2. 1989

    Mondo 2000

    Name adopted (from Reality Hackers; ran 1989–1998, Berkeley). Editors R.U. Sirius and (Alison Bailey Kennedy); Jude Milhon (St. Jude) as editor; art director Bart Nagel — a pioneer of Photoshop collage, gave the magazine its surrealist look. The definitive cyberculture magazine and the direct predecessor of Wired. Covered VR, smart drugs, cyberpunk, body modification, nanotech — anarchic, satirical, utopian and paranoid at once. (Sources: Wired retrospective, Wikipedia, anarchivism.org, rip.so.)

  3. 1991

    VNS Matrix, "A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century"

    (Australia, 1991). The feminist rebuttal from inside the movement.

Era 4 · 1992–1996

Cypherpunks, Wired, the Declaration

  1. 1993

    Wired 1.01, January 1993

    Founded by ; early backing from Charlie Jackson and Nicholas Negroponte (MIT Media Lab, who wrote the back-page column for six years). Cover: Bruce Sterling. First issue covered military simulations, Japanese otaku (Karl Taro Greenfeld), and listed contributors' email addresses. Distributed free at CES 1993. (Sources: Wired's own oral history, Wikipedia.)

  2. 1993

    Time cover story on cyberpunk

    Design by Mondo 2000's (per Wired's retrospective). Cyberculture goes mainstream in a single year.

  3. 1995

    Ghost in the Shell

    (Mamoru Oshii). The AI/mind/ network question in its best visual form. Then ** (1995) — the pure-pop version.