#simtape

The film opens with a scene showing the SimEx machine surrounded by various cables, blinking lights and other high-tech machinery that seem to operate simultaneously. This introduction sequence provides the audience the only means to understand what actually is a SimTape or SimEx through the operation of tapes and various written text on its screen. We see a number of people lying down and making themselves comfortable in what seems like a SimEx device. Towards the end of the introduction sequence a countdown to “Brain Syncronisation” is displayed on the SimEx machine and the camera moves toward the screen and then completely absorbs it. We are led to believe that this machine has established a connection to the user’s brain.

After this introduction, the first track opens with the ignition of a rocket, flying skywards away from earth. This departure from Earth symbolises a departure from home, the place we feel most familiar and safe. The SimEx machines do not physically transport users to other worlds but in fact make them feel that they are actually doing so with the use of brain altering technologies. This departure scene symbolizes a departure from reality as we know it. The rocket footages are superimposed over the faces of SimEx users where their facial expressions suggest that they are experiencing some form of dream or an altered state of mind.

In the next section we see another person lying down next to the machine and inserting another tape. The purpose of this scene is to make it clear that the section that will follow will be another dream sequence. This next section uses footage from a 1956 documentary about the hydrogen bomb tests. To determine the destructive power of these bombs, a full sized village was constructed complete with its mannequin inhabitants. Some of these mannequins are shaped like kids. The smiling mannequin kids heighten the dramatic effect of the events that unfolds. The concept and the lyrics of the song was influenced by a Philip K. Dick novel "Dr. Bloodmoney, or how we got along after the bomb" where a stranded astronaut orbiting earth has become a DJ, regularly playing records as well as reciting books and poems to the inhabitants of Earth by means of radio transmissions, effectively becoming their only entertainment in a post-apocalyptic and decaying world after a nuclear war.