Post by Melifeather on Jun 4, 2018 22:13:37 GMT
An écorché is a figure drawn, painted, or sculpted showing the muscles of the body without skin, normally as a figure study for another work or as an exercise for a student artist. Towards the end of episode 7 we saw most of Dolores's "ecorche" during one of her exchanges with Bernard. Westworld uses visual nods to Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and in season two a vitruvian woman, to visually communicate Ford's, Arnold's (now Bernard), and William's attempts to create human immortality.
I remember reading a biographical novel about Michelangelo called The Agony and the Ecstasy which described how Michelangelo dissected the dead in order to study how the muscles and ligaments connected to the skeleton in order to create highly realistic human sculptures. Funny how Da Vinci is only given the nod in Westworld when what Delos Corp was doing was more like Michelangelo's studies.
Back in season one during the episode The Well-Tempered Clavier we learned about Ford's second in command, Arnold. Arnold was one of the park's founders. He pioneered most of the technology, was passionate that his creations could achieve consciousness, but was killed by Dolores. Despite all this, Arnold remains a "prolific programmer for a dead guy," according to Elsie Hughes. Even after his death, Arnold's codes and wisdom remain ever-present, guiding hosts like Dolores and Maeve through their awakenings. More importantly we learned that this ghost of a man has been under our noses all along as "Bernard", and tonight's episode revealed that there are many Bernards. What we haven't learned yet about Arnold is why he was killed? Ford tells Bernard that he is too soft to survive in the murderous world of humans, and he declares that he is rescinding Bernard’s free will. He copies himself into Bernard’s brain. The Westworld pantheon of unusual forms of consciousness gains another entry: a host and a human co-occupying a single mind.
The whole park is a large-scale laboratory where the hosts and their storylines are the "control" and the guests are the "variables". When a known response is expected, and in this case it's the known storylines, it’s considered a positive control. When no response is expected, it’s considered a negative control. Let me rephrase that last sentence. When there's an unexpected response, it's considered a negative control. Not knowing what your control group will do is not a control group at all. It's chaos, but Ford believes (or is it believed, because his physical body is dead?) that an unexpected response in the control is the key to creating the desired outcome.
A proper experiment has only one variable (like say, perhaps, William?) and multiple controls to ensure that any changes seen in the results are due specifically to the variable that was changed. Think of how many times William came to Dolores in her storyline, or how many times he showed up in Lawrence's storyline? It's not that William loves being the man in black murdering good and bad male hosts and raping female hosts. He's conducting experiments by being the variable. To test different variables you will need to perform multiple experiments. This is also why there were very few guests in the same area of the park at the same time. While it's possible to test different guests (variables) at the same time, it would be a hassle to monitor and keep the control group (hosts) relatively static. The storylines would have to maintain a certain level of continuity.
The reason why William isolated Mr Delos was to "control" his environment, because Mr Delos himself was the only "variable". William was trying to keep the experiment "pure" without the interference of too many variables (guests). The outcome of William's experiment on Mr Delos didn't lead to the desired results, so he kept the last version of Mr Delos "alive" in order to study him and perhaps find ways to improve upon the experiment. So when William refers to Ford's experiments as "a game", he's acknowledging that he knows its an experiment, and he's a willing participant, because his own experiments haven't lead to the desired outcome.
Robert Ford is the master architect of Delos Inc. He designed the hosts that populate the various worlds. He's the artist, an inventor, and he's calculating, but is he also a sociopathic scientist? It would appear that he's willing to sacrifice the lives of many humans, and allow the hosts - his control group - to act unexpectedly, all just to prove his hypothesis.
Ford notes that human minds start to degrade after a few days in their replacement bodies, so it would appear that Ford's answer to immortal life is to exist as code in a virtual reality. Or is it? Is there more to come? Ford indicated that his work isn't done. The multiple Bernards that were found, along with what Ford revealed, is evidence that Bernard's job was to study the variable hosts and decode the human brain. However, it was hinted at that Bernard himself is aware enough that he might be trying to fight against Ford by attempting to hack his own programming.
Dolores asserts that by destroying the narratives stored in the Cradle (CR4-DL) she's "freeing" the hosts from their pasts, but is she really doing this of her own accord or was she programmed? How could Ford be sure that Dolores would do exactly the one thing that would guarantee his experiment would continue uninterrupted by keeping the control-hosts unpredictable? Destroying the narratives would prevent anyone from regaining control of the hosts by basically putting them into "safety mode". Returning the hosts to their respective storylines would effectively remove any progression towards full consciousness, and Ford's experiment would be over. I suspect that is why all the hosts end up dead and drowned, because when Dolores blew up CR4-DL, any chance of controlling the hosts and keeping them as robots was gone. The only option left would be to destroy them. Bernard already admitted, "I killed them all", so he must have found a way to hack the virus, and program the hosts to commit mass suicide.
Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo worked as artists during the same time period? Da Vinci was the elder artist and Michelangelo the young upstart. Da Vinci viewed perfection as a continual process. Oil paintings can be reworked and perfected by simply painting over a mistake. This would explain why many of his paintings have layers of paint. He viewed himself as a master without peer, and tried on occasion to embarrass Michelangelo. Michelangelo for his part, mocked Da Vinci by declaring it took more talent to sculpt than paint, since once rock was removed you couldn't just put it back. There was a debate during their time over who was the greater artist. A contest was declared between da Vinci, who painted The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, pitted against Michelangelo, who sculpted David and who later painted the Sistine Chapel. They were each given a wall in the same building to paint. Da Vinci decided to try a new way of painting a fresco using beeswax that required heat to bring out richer and brighter colors. He wanted his mural to look like an oil painting, thereby causing Michelangelo's traditional fresco to look dull and pale by comparison. Unfortunately the heat required for such a large mural melted the beeswax and he was forced to paint over his mistaken-great-idea, and someone else ended up painting over the top. Michelangelo hated to paint, and because he was still busy perfecting his latest sculpture, he didn't even bother to start painting. He did, however, make many beautiful sketches of what he wanted to paint, and many people who lived during this time felt that he really was the greatest artist in Florence. Adding to their conflict (and in competition) during this same time period was another artist called Raphael.
Raphael was an Italian painter and architect, and the son of an accomplished painter with a successful shop. Raphael took note of da Vinci’s and Michelangelo’s work and by studying their works he improved his own talents and surpassed the two masters. I believe the show has actually drawn inspiration, not just from da Vinci, but from the competition of all three masters: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Why not add Donatello and a little turtle power?
The competition between the three master artists seem to be echoed in Ford, Arnold, and William. Ford demonstrates da Vinci’s ability to create new inventions and experimentation with his turning on a "little heat" with the unpredictable hosts, but while William also echoes da Vinci’s tendency to repeat his experiments over and over in the quest for immortality - it's William's creation of the Man in Black that echoes Michelangelo's sculpture of David. His personal experiments while dressed as the Man in Black is arguably dull and pale - or in his case, a dark and black "fresco" compared to Ford's more colorful, "heated" experiment. This competition between Ford and William is da Vinci versus Michelangelo. Meanwhile, Arnold echoes Raphael by studying the masters and the variables (guests), and sculpts the art (hosts). The apprentice becomes Bernard, maybe not by his own free will, but he will outgrow and outperform the masters like Raphael.
The artist parallels are an over-arching theme that I have observed, and I think it helps illuminate what to expect from Ford, William, and Arnold/Bernard as well as explain their motives and what they were trying to accomplish. Are Ford and William truly at odds or are they allies in competition? Was Arnold killed, because he didn't want to continue the experiments, or because Ford was jealous of his talent and wanted to comp it for himself? Will Arnold's consciousness awaken inside Bernard and perfect talents that end up surpassing the mastery of Ford and William, and develop a program to overwrite Ford's code, quite literally "painting over the top" of the master's "great mistake". If Bernard is successful "painting over" Ford's code he could potentially return his own free will and end Ford and Williams experiments. Furthermore, he could become the one to finally achieve the goal of awakening a human consciousness inside a manufactured robot.
I remember reading a biographical novel about Michelangelo called The Agony and the Ecstasy which described how Michelangelo dissected the dead in order to study how the muscles and ligaments connected to the skeleton in order to create highly realistic human sculptures. Funny how Da Vinci is only given the nod in Westworld when what Delos Corp was doing was more like Michelangelo's studies.
Back in season one during the episode The Well-Tempered Clavier we learned about Ford's second in command, Arnold. Arnold was one of the park's founders. He pioneered most of the technology, was passionate that his creations could achieve consciousness, but was killed by Dolores. Despite all this, Arnold remains a "prolific programmer for a dead guy," according to Elsie Hughes. Even after his death, Arnold's codes and wisdom remain ever-present, guiding hosts like Dolores and Maeve through their awakenings. More importantly we learned that this ghost of a man has been under our noses all along as "Bernard", and tonight's episode revealed that there are many Bernards. What we haven't learned yet about Arnold is why he was killed? Ford tells Bernard that he is too soft to survive in the murderous world of humans, and he declares that he is rescinding Bernard’s free will. He copies himself into Bernard’s brain. The Westworld pantheon of unusual forms of consciousness gains another entry: a host and a human co-occupying a single mind.
The whole park is a large-scale laboratory where the hosts and their storylines are the "control" and the guests are the "variables". When a known response is expected, and in this case it's the known storylines, it’s considered a positive control. When no response is expected, it’s considered a negative control. Let me rephrase that last sentence. When there's an unexpected response, it's considered a negative control. Not knowing what your control group will do is not a control group at all. It's chaos, but Ford believes (or is it believed, because his physical body is dead?) that an unexpected response in the control is the key to creating the desired outcome.
A proper experiment has only one variable (like say, perhaps, William?) and multiple controls to ensure that any changes seen in the results are due specifically to the variable that was changed. Think of how many times William came to Dolores in her storyline, or how many times he showed up in Lawrence's storyline? It's not that William loves being the man in black murdering good and bad male hosts and raping female hosts. He's conducting experiments by being the variable. To test different variables you will need to perform multiple experiments. This is also why there were very few guests in the same area of the park at the same time. While it's possible to test different guests (variables) at the same time, it would be a hassle to monitor and keep the control group (hosts) relatively static. The storylines would have to maintain a certain level of continuity.
The reason why William isolated Mr Delos was to "control" his environment, because Mr Delos himself was the only "variable". William was trying to keep the experiment "pure" without the interference of too many variables (guests). The outcome of William's experiment on Mr Delos didn't lead to the desired results, so he kept the last version of Mr Delos "alive" in order to study him and perhaps find ways to improve upon the experiment. So when William refers to Ford's experiments as "a game", he's acknowledging that he knows its an experiment, and he's a willing participant, because his own experiments haven't lead to the desired outcome.
Robert Ford is the master architect of Delos Inc. He designed the hosts that populate the various worlds. He's the artist, an inventor, and he's calculating, but is he also a sociopathic scientist? It would appear that he's willing to sacrifice the lives of many humans, and allow the hosts - his control group - to act unexpectedly, all just to prove his hypothesis.
Ford notes that human minds start to degrade after a few days in their replacement bodies, so it would appear that Ford's answer to immortal life is to exist as code in a virtual reality. Or is it? Is there more to come? Ford indicated that his work isn't done. The multiple Bernards that were found, along with what Ford revealed, is evidence that Bernard's job was to study the variable hosts and decode the human brain. However, it was hinted at that Bernard himself is aware enough that he might be trying to fight against Ford by attempting to hack his own programming.
Dolores asserts that by destroying the narratives stored in the Cradle (CR4-DL) she's "freeing" the hosts from their pasts, but is she really doing this of her own accord or was she programmed? How could Ford be sure that Dolores would do exactly the one thing that would guarantee his experiment would continue uninterrupted by keeping the control-hosts unpredictable? Destroying the narratives would prevent anyone from regaining control of the hosts by basically putting them into "safety mode". Returning the hosts to their respective storylines would effectively remove any progression towards full consciousness, and Ford's experiment would be over. I suspect that is why all the hosts end up dead and drowned, because when Dolores blew up CR4-DL, any chance of controlling the hosts and keeping them as robots was gone. The only option left would be to destroy them. Bernard already admitted, "I killed them all", so he must have found a way to hack the virus, and program the hosts to commit mass suicide.
Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo worked as artists during the same time period? Da Vinci was the elder artist and Michelangelo the young upstart. Da Vinci viewed perfection as a continual process. Oil paintings can be reworked and perfected by simply painting over a mistake. This would explain why many of his paintings have layers of paint. He viewed himself as a master without peer, and tried on occasion to embarrass Michelangelo. Michelangelo for his part, mocked Da Vinci by declaring it took more talent to sculpt than paint, since once rock was removed you couldn't just put it back. There was a debate during their time over who was the greater artist. A contest was declared between da Vinci, who painted The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, pitted against Michelangelo, who sculpted David and who later painted the Sistine Chapel. They were each given a wall in the same building to paint. Da Vinci decided to try a new way of painting a fresco using beeswax that required heat to bring out richer and brighter colors. He wanted his mural to look like an oil painting, thereby causing Michelangelo's traditional fresco to look dull and pale by comparison. Unfortunately the heat required for such a large mural melted the beeswax and he was forced to paint over his mistaken-great-idea, and someone else ended up painting over the top. Michelangelo hated to paint, and because he was still busy perfecting his latest sculpture, he didn't even bother to start painting. He did, however, make many beautiful sketches of what he wanted to paint, and many people who lived during this time felt that he really was the greatest artist in Florence. Adding to their conflict (and in competition) during this same time period was another artist called Raphael.
Raphael was an Italian painter and architect, and the son of an accomplished painter with a successful shop. Raphael took note of da Vinci’s and Michelangelo’s work and by studying their works he improved his own talents and surpassed the two masters. I believe the show has actually drawn inspiration, not just from da Vinci, but from the competition of all three masters: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Why not add Donatello and a little turtle power?
The competition between the three master artists seem to be echoed in Ford, Arnold, and William. Ford demonstrates da Vinci’s ability to create new inventions and experimentation with his turning on a "little heat" with the unpredictable hosts, but while William also echoes da Vinci’s tendency to repeat his experiments over and over in the quest for immortality - it's William's creation of the Man in Black that echoes Michelangelo's sculpture of David. His personal experiments while dressed as the Man in Black is arguably dull and pale - or in his case, a dark and black "fresco" compared to Ford's more colorful, "heated" experiment. This competition between Ford and William is da Vinci versus Michelangelo. Meanwhile, Arnold echoes Raphael by studying the masters and the variables (guests), and sculpts the art (hosts). The apprentice becomes Bernard, maybe not by his own free will, but he will outgrow and outperform the masters like Raphael.
The artist parallels are an over-arching theme that I have observed, and I think it helps illuminate what to expect from Ford, William, and Arnold/Bernard as well as explain their motives and what they were trying to accomplish. Are Ford and William truly at odds or are they allies in competition? Was Arnold killed, because he didn't want to continue the experiments, or because Ford was jealous of his talent and wanted to comp it for himself? Will Arnold's consciousness awaken inside Bernard and perfect talents that end up surpassing the mastery of Ford and William, and develop a program to overwrite Ford's code, quite literally "painting over the top" of the master's "great mistake". If Bernard is successful "painting over" Ford's code he could potentially return his own free will and end Ford and Williams experiments. Furthermore, he could become the one to finally achieve the goal of awakening a human consciousness inside a manufactured robot.