DesignMorphine Masters Y22/23
Kongphob Amornpatarasin | Ryan Leung
Contradictory Symbiosis is a psychological thriller set in a dystopian world. We propose an idea of a cybernetic system that acts as a totalitarian overlord, continuing humanity with human husbandry, while humans are deceived, falsely believing that the cyborg dictators are merely another nation of reciprocity.
The Cyborg Republic invites humans to transcend into Cyborgs. However, to embrace the total rationality of Cyborgs, human emotions shall be eliminated. To persuade humans into becoming emotionless, the Republic spreads propaganda in human society, brainwashing those from the lower class into believing they can experience eternal happiness by becoming a cyborg.
In reality, their brains and bodies are stimulated constantly by the prosthesis, and the chemicals produced by the brains will be collected and converted into energy and resources for agricultural use. Their emotional capabilities are abused to the point that they can no longer produce any more chemical substances in their brains. They are now cyborgs working as labour forces to restore nature
until their organic body decay.
With these cyborg labour forces, the Republic produces and exports resources back to human society, just enough to keep them alive but not enough for them to overpopulate. As long as there are humans who live miserable lives out of poverty and hunger, there will be new volunteers to join the Cyborg Republic and keep the System running.
This ironic narrative suggests that a sustainable and peaceful ecosystem could only be done by eliminating the presence tof ‘humans’ from humans themselves.
Creative Director – Pavlina Vardoulaki Pryor
Executive Director – Tsvetelina Georgieva
Masters Mentors – Michael Pryor, Mike Pell, Anouk Wipprecht
Core Leads – Tung Nguen, Eva Hafeez
Technical Lead – Pedro Venegas-Rodríguez
Prosthesis Chapter Leads – Aleksandar Bursać, Nicolas Turchi, Keyur Mistry
Corpuscle Chapter Leads – Alejandro García Gadea, Radul Shishkov
Amalgamation Chapter Leads – Andrei Padure, Kristýna Uhrová
Kinesis Chapter Leads – Zeynep Topal, Pedro Venegas-Rodríguez
Cosmogony Chapter Leads – Mădălin Gheorghe, Kiryl Furmanchuk
Media Lab Leads – Michael Khoo, Yordan Zarev
Prototype Lab Lead – Dustin White
Robotics Lab Lead – Eduardo Chamorro
Virtual Reality Lab Leads – Dimitrie Grigorescu, Alab Adviento