FM2030

My first thought was to label this post something along the lines of, "The Iranian roots of Transhumanism", before conceding that this would have been inconsistent with the reasons FM2030 chose to change his name from the more  conventional F.M. Esfandiary. Clearly he is an important historical figure, even if it transpires that some of his more outlandish predictions never eventuate. 

Coming across the clip for the song Risky, I have to confess having no memory whatsoever of this song. Back in 1987 I was a huge fan of Iggy Pop and was watching a lot of music tv, but I experienced no Proustian  reveries seeing and hearing it on youtube. Truth be told, the conceptions behind the song are more interesting than the finished product (i.e. the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts). But anyone else watching it is free of course to make up their own mind. 

Here's the mention of the piece in the Wikipedia entry on Iggy Pop:

"In 1987, Pop appeared (along with Bootsy Collins) on a mostly instrumental album, Neo Geo, by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. The music video for Risky, written and directed by Meiert Avis, won the first ever MTV Breakthrough Video Award. The groundbreaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's ideas of Nostalgia for the Future in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting Puberty, and Roland Barthes Death of the Author. The surrealist black-and-white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for The Last Emperor in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on Risky, chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot".