The Biomechanoids of H.R. Giger

My relationship with H.R. Giger’s art has always been dominated by a tension between what I should feel and what I do feel. These phallic forms should render themselves crude, but instead, they reveal an unexpected grace and humility. This palette of anthracite tones, this creeping ivory mist—should it not evoke pessimism, despair? Why then am I soothed by these frothy walls, rusty pipes, and organs stuffed into metal crevices?

I keep returning to Giger’s visionary landscape, searching for resolution—a search that is made all the more difficult by his biomechanoids. How is it that they maintain repose, even as their bodies face dissolution? When they find the strength to stand, they do so with a dignity that contradicts (and even discredits) their dystopian backdrop. ‘What is your secret medicine?’, I try to ask them, but already they’ve drifted back into mechanical slumber.

Beneath the perversion, shock and horror of Giger’s art is a hidden layer of secrets that I have been trying to scrape out. I will document here the few bits I’ve managed to get a hold of. As with all great works of art, the deeper layers take time to reach—for now, I hope one or two steps into the abyss will suffice.

# Conflicting Stories

My journey with Giger first began when I came across ‘Nubian Queen’ (2002), whose elongated and geometric head provided me with a solution for the head shapes I was trying to explore in my own figures at the time, but which I couldn’t get quite right like Giger had. Over the years, and through a process of aesthetic osmosis, further elements of his work made their way into mine: the hazy, polluted atmospheres; the quiet spectrum of grays; a decorative use of grime, rust and biofluids. Every re-exploration into his oeuvre thereafter would bring me something new to fascinate over.

In those early years, I readily accepted the interpretations that others brought to Giger’s work, even when they conflicted with my own experience: that his paintings expressed a techno-pessimism, that his visual nightmares communicated “a warning regarding the pain that losing humanity to mechanical forces can have” (Morris, 2018). If these paintings were pessimistic, why did I find hope in them? Why did these nightmares comfort me? My own experience with the biomechanoids has yielded a different story. The story I share is one which is not wholly pessimistic, nor optimistic, but grounded in a reality close to home.

“Some people say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do. But I paint from reality, I put several things and ideas together and perhaps, when I have finished, it could show the future — who knows? If people want to interpret my work as warnings about too much over population, disease and mechanization in the future, then that is up to them!” — H.R. Giger (Fantastic Films, 1979, pg. 30)

# The Cyborg vs The Biomechanoid

In 1960, when Giger was 20 years old, Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline had coined the term ‘cyborg’ to refer to a cybernetically extended organism (Kline, 2009). A few years later, in 1969 and onward, terms like ‘biomechanoid’ and 'biomechanical' appeared in Giger’s work to refer to a harmonic fusion of technique, mechanics and creatures. (Falk, 1991, pg. 48).

I believe the 1960’s contained what Leo Marx would describe as a semantic void: a gap between language and changes in culture or society (Marx, 1997). These changes were the coming together of organisms and machines. For cyberneticians, the gap was filled by the term cyborg. Giger, however, chose a different path, and in doing so created what I call a semantic fork: a separate, semantic timeline.

I do not know whether Giger was simply unaware of the term ‘cyborg’ at the time, or if he had reasons not to use it. Either way, I take care not to project the term cyborg back onto his works, as I have seen others casually do. To perceive his figures as ‘cyborgs’ is to filter them through a word with a different history and set of connotations. Instead, I have tried to understand these figures through the word that Giger understood them—to see the biomechanoids as ‘biomechanoids’.

What then is a biomechanoid? A morphemic analysis tells us it is a living organism (bio-) that has the likeness (-oid) of machines (mechan-). The notion of ‘biomechanical’ apparently came to Giger while his mother was sick. This information was revealed by Leslie Barany, a dear friend of the artist, during an interview with Michael Doyle (2014):

I don’t know of any use of the term "biomechanical" in the art world prior to Giger. He was revolutionary in focusing on the interdependency between technology and biology, and was able to extrapolate where we were heading. He told me the notion came to him after seeing his mother in the hospital hooked up to machines. (pg. 19)

In the documentary 'Alien Evolution', Giger provides further details about the biomechanoid's origins:

I wanted to make something that would be somehow human and yet would also be robot-like, that is to say a kind of human being that is protected by bone, and I mixed these together, this world of bones, I mixed it with technical things, that's how these 'biomechanoids' came about, that is from the biological and the mechanical, an interplay of the two. (Russell Leven & Andrew Abbott, 2001)

It is this focus on protection, I think, that truly distinguishes the biomechanoid. While the cyborg has largely been premised on enhancement, liberation, extraterrestrial exploration, and so on; the biomechanoid finds its humble beginnings in a space of sickness, vulnerability, and mundane survival.

The biomechanoid speaks to those for whom a relationship with machines is not voluntarily entered or heroically aspired toward, but is meekly accepted in exchange for survival. It is not a fusion of humans and machines, but a necessary penetration. Others may view the biomechanoid’s meek acceptance with disgust, or fear—but I am empathetic. How can I not be? When I am reminded so much of my own body and the medical devices I use to manage disease—these bone-like devices that penetrate my skin and offer me protection from accelerated decay.

# Breath-Breathing

When looking at the biomechanoid in 'Unter der Erde' (1968), it becomes unclear to me at times whether she is breathing through the machine, or if the machine is breathing through her. Does it matter who does the breathing, as long as the desired output is achieved? Look as she becomes just one of many components in this complex mechanical lung, her fleshy body placed into the same category as nuts, bolts and pipes. Watch as she drifts in and out of slumber, inflating rhythmically to the logic of the machine, that breath-breathing human being reduced to simply: breath-breathing. Is this not that biomechanical harmony which Giger set as his target? And if this disturbs you—why?

Perhaps it is because a true harmony with machines involves both dignity and humility, protection and dependency, life and lifelessness. This tension in Giger’s art reflects a reality that does not settle into one extreme or the other. Maintanence and dissolution are forced to hold hands on Giger’s canvases. The biomechanoid, surrounded by her conflicting environment, discredits any interpretations of despair by dozing off into a state of mechanical meditation. She has found her own answers—I will continue to look for mine.

“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.” — Rumi

References:

Fantastic Films. (1979, October 1). 2(5). http://archive.org/details/Fantastic_Films_011_October_1979_vol2_no5_c2c-Tranzor-HQS

Kline, R. (2009). Where are the Cyborgs in Cybernetics? Social Studies of Science, 39(3), 331–362.

Marx, L. (1997). “Technology”: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept. Social Research, 64(3), 965–988

Michael Doyle. (2014). Master of Biomechanical Nightmares. Rue Morgue, 149. http://archive.org/details/Rue_Morgue_149

Morris, P. (2018, February 5). The Influence of H.R. Giger. HeadStuff. https://headstuff.org/visual/influence-h-r-giger/

Russell Leven & Andrew Abbott (Directors). (2001). Alien Evolution [Film]. Nobles Gate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foYPPbc8mWU&t=2179s

> Posted: March 28 2023