When the world begins to burn, and we are forced to abandon organized society as we know it now, when a new global consciousness takes a foothold and we become forever connected to a new world order that brings our own survival or demise, Plastik Factory will be there to say, “Well, we warned you.” The music and visual art duo are making waves in Denver and northern Colorado with their new take on the noise genre, challenging their audience to look beyond the current actions of our ever growing population by giving them a glimpse of the not so far away future.
The team is a close knit artistic duo with Warren Jones providing the musical aspect and Jeremy Vanley, the visuals. They have been previously seen and are best known for their noise and performance art show: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror which debuted at the Mile High Horror Film Festival in 2012, for a sold out show. Together they work towards a cohesive style which cooperates to form a larger vision.
More recently, their team effort has created a compelling character named GASMAN, a post-apocalyptic time traveler, who comes back to us from a ruined world. His mission is to preach a warning sermon of impending doom from a dismal future if the human race does not accomplish singularity, the theme driving GASMAN’s purpose. Singularity as Jones puts it is, “Just on the horizon” and will be the biological fusion of humans and computers. This will hopefully foster the global cooperation of our species and others as a whole, to find an ecological balance eliminating war, irresponsible uses of resources, and finding a solution to deal with a world population that is growing exponentially. The singularity, and the social waves it is creating, is the basis of all of the work done by Plastik Factory. As Jones commented, “I can’t tell you how many “techie people” are so pumped about putting a chip in their brain. They think it’s the key to immortality because they want to upload their consciousness to the web.”
What makes this character so gripping is that in a logical observation of the current state of the world, GASMAN could very well be seen as almost nonfictional, making his political and social statements very real. Jones explained, “Because the pace of technology is speeding up so fast, and they have so many people working on this, ‘they’ say by 2040 we will have human computer interfacing that is able to connect the brain wirelessly to the internet and we will be able to download thoughts and vice versa, have the ability to upload information into our brains.‘They’ (whoever that may be) will make it happen.” His message of singularity requires his audience to realize that future functional civilizations will require the sacrifice of individualistic centered survival tactics and life style, meaningless conflict that comes from an isolated ego, to participate in a global interconnected body of life, promoting its own survival or destruction. GASMAN’s character was originally developed as a response to the geological harm humans are causing the Earth from fracking, and has expanded into an even larger idea based on the world changes associated with the millennial generation, those people born in the time frame of 1982 to current.
The visual art by Warren Jones parallels the themes of GASMAN in his layered and collage based pieces which are titled as a whole: Circuit Cities. Each successive piece is meant to symbolize the shift of each generation to current starting from the baby boomers to the most recent, technology driven generation we see today. The basis for this concentration on the social shifts comes from Jones and Vanley’s fascination with the research done by sociologists Neil Howe and William Strauss in their books, Generations and the Fourth Turning. Jones has also explored the ideas of ‘the Singularity in his 2013 album Cinematheque, a noise album done with the fusion of using prerecorded, naturalistic instrumentals and sounds to a digitally based composition. This album fits the vision and entirety of the Plastik Factory’s project well, with the eerily ambient and foreboding mood it gives its audience. Warren Jones and Jeremy Vanley’s work is paving the way for the ethnomusicology of the future, and there is no doubt that they are far ahead of their time. You can check out Plastik Factory and their work at their website, www.plastikfactory.com
