Simon Stalenhag is a Swedish artist and designer. He grew up in a rural environment near Stockholm, this environment is a major inspiration for his works. Stalenhags work presents the view
er with a rural landscape, juxtaposed with sci-fi elements like mechanical walkers and hovering craft. Most pieces are eerie, rural fields and back roads with the focus being on the people or the landscape, with the mechanical elements only happening passively. Many of the mechanical elements seem neither a friend nor a foe, but simply exist in the piece. The human occupants of the pieces rarely seem to be distressed, many of which passing through the pieces, only in a few instances do the humans seem to be in a standoff with the mechanical elements.
Simon has formed a linear story to all of his pieces, which he put in a book called “The Electric State.” Simon depicts the travels of a woman and her robot, where you can see recognizable landscapes with massive run-down mechanical elements scattered throughout them. He claimed the story to be about an underground government facility. There is a common theme of people being plugged into VR headsets, laying around unaware of their real surroundings, some of whom have died in the headsets and going unnoticed. Using photographs of his surroundings as a baseline for his art, Simon creates a “normal” looking town or city with massive towers sprouting from the middle, overshadowing everything around it, but still connecting with a series of visible wires. Many of the mechanical elements emit or reflect light, drawing attention to their otherwise mundane surroundings and forms.
Most of the landscapes are run down and depict almost “post-apocalyptic” scenery, but lack the
chaos and urgency of a recent breakdown of society, with remnants of major technological advancement still intact. Many of the scenes still have electricity, pointing towards a reconstruction of basic civilization, but the main characters are still foraging for supplies in abandoned buildings it would seem.
Simon grew up in a rural area, to which he draws his real world inspiration. His lifelong love of technology and realization of world concepts caused him to create the scenes with the technology you see. Simon once said “The only difference in the world of my art and our world is that ... ever since the early 20th century, attitudes and budgets were much more in favour of science and technology." In parallel to the real-life decline of the Swedish welfare state, the futuristic machinery ultimately fails, and his work is the result of those two worlds colliding.
Stalenhag’s work has been adapted into an Amazon Original Series, “Tales From the Loop” Tales from the Loop follows the interconnected lives of the residents in the fictional town of Mercer, Ohio. Mercer is home to the Mercer Center for Experimental Physics, an underground facility known as the Loop. It is there where researchers attempt to "make the impossible possible". The
show preview has people with special abilities, robots that mimic people’s natural movement inputs, and strange natural occurrences. The technology has been ingrained in people’s existence, many having prosthetic limbs and robots accompanying them. In true cyberpunk fashion, many of the characters still face hardship and do not actually gain easy comfort from the technology. Also, the show seems to hint at sinister undertones of the government facility, also in cyberpunk fashion.
Only through still images, Simon Stalenhag has successfully taken part in worldbuilding. He has created a functional universe filled with high tech and low life. His images somehow both relax the viewer as well as invoke a sense of anxiety as to what will happen next. With the overlap of recognizable scenery with extraordinary technological advancements, you are left wondering how you would live in a world like that. You are left with questions like “how did we get here?” and “where are we to go?” as you view each individual piece with an idea of the connection between each one. Simon tells a story that is ever possible, but is so far outside of the scope of our currently technological position, but only by a bit. What does exponential technological advancement and continuous growth of governmental forces have in store for us? Only time will tell.
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