Massive Dynamics

Fringe Viral: GlowingMonkeys.com

by Roco on September 10, 2008 · 8 comments

In yesterday’s Fringe premiere there was an easteregg (or ‘clue’) outside of the Massive Dynamic building. As you can see from the screencap above, there is a website address www.glowingmonkeys.com plastered across a lamp post.

The website is packed with commentary on real-world science news stories. The tone seems to be cautionary, almost cynical, with their tag-line being: “What’s new… What’s next… And how it’s transforming our world.”Compare this to Massive Dynamic’s “What do we do?..What Don’t we do?”, and you understand that Glowing Monkey’s might be the voice of concern about how corporations such as Massive Dynamic are changing the direction of our world.

GlowingMonkeys.com seems to be another viral site and part of the Fringe ARG that started in the summer and has continued into the show itself. An interesting point might be that the website appeared opposite the Massive Dynamics headquarters, perhaps signifying their diametric opposition to the scientific and technological advancements that Dr. William Bell’s corporation are spearheading. Or perhaps we’re being unkind to Massive Dynamic by assuming that they have hidden agendas? Perhaps they will turn out to be the ‘good guys’ in all of this?

Thanks to Fringe-Forum.comfor the screencap.

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MASSIVEDYNAMIC.COM SITE – OPEN!!

by Roco on September 9, 2008 · 7 comments

The Massive Dynamic website has fully launched! Whilst this might not mean much to some of you just yet..to those of you who have been following the Fringe ARG/Viral, this fairly big news! Show/ARG premise spoilers may follow:

Just a quick recap – Massive Dynamic (MD) is the company owned by William Bell – former colleague of Walter Bishop. MD is a cutting edge company at the forefront of scientific and technological advancement. It is believed that the company produce or own many of the things that we will see in “Fringe”, from the mundane, to the extraordinary. The first issue of the comic book, “Like Minds”/”The Prisoner“, hinted that William Bell amassed his wealth through the synaptic transfer of Walter Bishop’s genius, however this is pure speculation on my part, and I suggest reading the comics if you fancy digging deeper into the fringeverse. 

Massive Dymanic have often been compared to Microsoft by media reporters hungry to glean some real-world comparison between the show and today’s corporate giants. Please don’t sue us Microsoft, but your web is pretty large.

So what does the opening of the Massive Dynamic website mean? Well, it appears to confirm what many fans have been speculating – that the Fringe ARG will continue into the show itself, unlike the “LOST” ARG’s, for example, which only run during hiatus periods. Speaking of LOST, many fans have already likened MD to the Dharma Initiative, another forward thinking, seeming;y alturistic, corportation who want to better the world through science (but it’s never that simple, is it). That’s the thing, we don’t really know MD’s aims, but we do know what their website tells us, and if it’s to be believed, they are particularly interested in the following scientific and technological fields: aerospace & transportation, biological and medical, computing and communications, energy and environment and life & leisure. The words “HOPE”, PROGRESS”, “GROWTH” and “HAPPINESS” can also be seen floating around on the front page of the website.

So we have an idea of their vested interests, but are these their real goals, or is this a PR stunt? Eitherway, what genuinely made me gasp as I looked through the site, were some of the descriptions for their achievements or goals. For instance, this is taken from their aerospace & transportation page:

Time spent in transit is time wasted. Time you could have spent with family, friends, and co-workers. Because Massive Dynamic values your time, our mandate is to get you where you’re going — safer and faster than ever before. The acclaimed PEARL aerocontrol system, developed by MD’s Fleming-Monroe division, promises to reduce flight delays by as much as 30% in the next few years. Meanwhile, our zero-friction light rails and flex-hull container ships promise to revolutionize commercial transport.

What’s next? Travel time follows a power law, decreasing by a given factor year by year. MD’s Zeno-Transit Initiative aims to take that process to the limit, making near-instantaneous travel a reality in your lifetime.

So we’re talking about time-travel or teleportation, right? That’s what they’re working on making a reality ‘in our lifetime’. Whilst I am well aware that the premise involves “Fringe Science”, reading through the MD website makes it somewhat more real. It’s really happening, we’re finally going to get a show that deals with exciting aspects of our world that are improbable, yet very possible. Other than LOST, there is no other show that excites me to these levels, and the show hasn’t even started yet. *OK, breathe* I know we shouldn’t place too much expectation on the shoulders of JJ and his team, but already I’m liking the effort and meticulous research that the creative team, FOX and the runners of this ARG have put into this show. Well done guys, the lines are blurring, now the challenge is to keep it up!

As an aside, that jingle that you hear as you touch down on the MD website – yup, it’s made up of Fibonacci code, as first spotted by maestrojon. The Pattern, it’s THE PATTERN!

We’ll have a lot more on MD over the coming days, weeks and probably months, so why not head on over to the site and have a look around. Don’t forget to stop back here in the comments, and share any thoughts, observations or theories that you might have. Or, if forums are more your thing, we have a partner forum, fringe-forum.com, where fans are already discussing MD and everything FRINGE!

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FRINGE COMIC SCANS – Like Minds + The Prisoner

by Roco on September 4, 2008 · 4 comments

This post contains Fringe Comic Spoilers.

Here are some more scans for the first issue of the Fringe comic, which contains two prequel stories – “Like Minds” and “The Prisoner”. We posted a preview courtesy of MTV earlier, and now our buddies at Fringe TV have (rather controversially) scanned the entire lot and posted them. I just hope that folks still go out and buy the comics, the writers deserve that much. But we’re not here to get into politics and whats done is done, so if you have any intention of buying the comic (available for $2.99) then please do so by heading down to your local comic store, or better yet buy the comic online. Heck, buy it anyway AND check the scans!

(By the way, we’re not going to post the entire comic, we want Wildstorm/DC/BR to publish more of these things and they wont do that if it doesn’t sell)

With that out of the way, I’ve gotta say, the first two stories certainly whet the appetite and give an indication of what is to come both in the show and in the remaining comic series. In my opinion the first story is far superior however, and without getting too techno-geeky, introduces us to some-kind of shared-mind state, whereby a young William Bell (owner of Massive Dynamics – the Dharma Initiative of the Fringeverse?) is having flashes (heh, LOST, heh) of a young Walter Bishop’s memories, after a failed experiment.

But that’s not the thing that grabs me, what grabs me is what this could all signify within the mythos of the TV show itself: Are Walter Bishop and William Bell technically the same person?!? By that, I mean, has William Bell literally ‘borrowed’ from Walter’s genius by tapping into this shared mind state, and is Walter aware of this? Just who is really responsible for the technological break-throughs that Massive Dynamics have penned? It’s a fascinating concept, I mean, just “IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES”.

There’s more juice in the story, but I’ll let the rest of you tear it to pieces and see what you make of it. Now onto the second story – “The Prisoner”.If this wasn’t a JJ. Abrams production I’d say this was a lame attempt to whore an icon of popular culture. As it goes, JJ’s old show (I say ‘old’ because let’s face it ‘Darlton’ are responsible for that bucket of goodness now) is full of appreciative nods to pop culture, nods that actually help to enhance the story for us rabid fans. So, it’s not too difficult to see the possible parallels drawn from the “The (original) Prisoner” and this comic version.

This story seems to entail some-kind of body-swapping (yeah, I’m sure there’s a technical term for it but let’s pace ourselves), perhaps similar to the shared mind state seen in “Like Minds”, but this aspect of Fringe Science seems to consist of long-term ‘body-swapping’, and not consciousness ‘sharing’.

A common theme for both of these stories is that both experiments ‘failed’. Interesting that they should still produce ground-breaking advancements in science. No such thing as bad science, huh.

Anyway, enough jibber-jabber from me, have a looksie at both stories below:

FRINGE COMIC ISSUE #1 “LIKE MINDS”

FRINGE COMIC ISSUE #1 “THE PRISONER”

Just a quick point on the first story, it seems to me that they obviously made Walter Bishop’s character look NOTHING like John Noble (the actor who will portray him in the show) so that they could have a ready made excuse for making William Bell look nothing like whichever actor lands the role for that character, because obviously he hadn’t been cast at the time this comic was produced. Clever.

I’ve got more thoughts on the two stories in this comic, and I know some other bloggers that do too, but feel free to leave any thoughts that you have in the comments. Perhaps there’s something in there that no-one outside of Bad Robot has considered yet?

Thanks again to MTV and Dennis @ Fringe Television for the scans.

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Fringe ARG: Man-Made Tornadoes?

by Roco on August 30, 2008 · 1 comment

The latest Fringe ARG update gave us a further understanding of the world that Fringe invites us to explore. The real-life tornado that ripped into Parkersburg, Iowa, earlier this year meshes nicely with other viral elements, such as the Sheep circles and the Comic book previews.

This is yet more evidence that we are looking at the idea that mankind has found a way to manipulate nature through science and technology. The Sri-Lankan Tsunami triggered by a high picthed sound emitted from an unidentified aircraft, the Iowa Sheep circles that reveal Golden Spiral and Golden Rectangle structures, the dead cows with human organs, the Parkersburg tornado. Each of these examples, some connected, some seemingly disconnected, tell us that man is experiementing with nature, through the wonder (or evil) of science.

This is not pseudo science, but this is within the scope of possibility. Take a look at this recent article posted by Tyler Hamilton (thestar.com), which reveals that phenomena such as man-made tornadoes (just like the one hinted at in the Fringe ARG) are very much a possibility, right here, right now:

SARNIA–A curious-looking wood cylinder with a round opening at the top and a small heating element at the bottom sits in Louis Michaud’s garage, bicycles hanging overhead and a workbench pressed against the wall.

The retired refinery engineer picks up a propane torch, lowers it into the opening, and lights a tiny piece of saltpetre. A loud fizzling is heard and a thick smoke begins to rise from the centre.

At first the smoke has no form, but it soon swirls upward into a well-defined vortex – what, on a larger scale, you might call a tornado.

“The air is being drawn in on its own. There’s no fan or anything involved,” says Michaud, explaining the physics of convection and how rising air behaves like a spinning top. “This is what’s going on in the atmosphere. The air is heated in the bottom by the sun and then it rises, cools and comes back down again.”

“I was thinking if we got one of these to produce a tornado 200 metres high, the first people to buy one would be Disneyland.”

If people accept it, the potential is unlimited. He says down the road, hundreds of vortex engines could be located in the ocean along the equator, where the warm tropical water would provide an endless source of energy.

Why would anyone do such a thing?

To cool the planet, Michaud says. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are what prevent the sun’s heat from radiating back into space, he explains. A series of controlled tornados along the equator would carry that heat to the outer edges of the atmosphere, where it could more easily escape.

In other words, Michaud believes man-made tornados could function as exhaust systems for the planet, a massive air conditioner that could help manage global warming.

There’s simply too much at stake to ignore this potential, he says.

So there we have it, imagining the impossible is actually very possible. What I’m wondering at this point, is whether the guys doing the experimenting (Massive Dynamics?) are doing it for the good of humanity, or for their own selfish agendas?

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Fringe Comic Book Details From Comic-Con

by Roco on July 27, 2008 · 0 comments

DC ComicsDetails emerging from the Fringe Panel at Comic-Con reveal more info on the Fringe comic books that are due to hit the shelves in August. Apparently the first in the series (of six) will provide us with some intriguing back-story:

There will be a Fringe comic book about the history of William Bell and Walter Bishop – Buddy TV

We’re all excited about this, especially considering the important part that Massive Dynamics looks set to play in the series.

Fringe will have a comic produced in tandem with the series. Abrams explained, “[The comic will allow us to] tell some stories about characters and create this peripheral world.” Roberto Orci echoed this sentiment, explaining, “I think it’s something we haven’t done before.” Abrams agreed saying, “There are certain things you can’t do in TV that you can do in a comic book.” – Wizard Universe

The Fringe comics will be published by DC/Wildstorm will be available from August 27. Fans of the show are already eagerly anticipating the release.

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Massive Dynamics Goes Live!

by Roco on July 27, 2008 · 0 comments

Massive Dynamics

The in-show Fringe site belonging to the shadowy Massive Dynamics Corporation has gone live, with a gleaming-rotating logo and the slogan – “Updating Our Website. Updating Your Life”. This reminds me very much of the Hanso Foundationfrom JJ’s other show.

Thanks to James for sending us the MD flash logo

UPDATE: MassiveDynamic.com appears to be down at the moment. Perhaps they’re running more updates? Stay tuned!

LATEST: The site is back up. No content other than the spinning logo and jingle yet.

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The Dharma Fringe?

by Roco on July 14, 2008 · 0 comments

Zap2it.com’s Korbi Ghosh notes the potential parallels between Fringe’s Kelvin Genetics Programme and Lost’s Dharma Initiaive (‘leaked pilot’ spoilers ahead):

I will tell you, however, a bit about the “mad scientist” character played by actor John Noble. Prior to his institutionalization almost two decades ago, he worked out of a major university and was part of a classified U.S. Army experimental program called Kelvin Genetics. They gave him the resources to do whatever work he wanted, which was mostly in an area called Fringe Science: mind control, teleportation, invisibility, astral projection (aka “out of body” experiences), genetic mutation and reanimation. Sound familiar? Could Kelvin Genetics possibly have something to do with the Dharma Initiative? I’m going to guess and say no, but it would definitely explain a lot about Lost Island if it did, right?

I think it’s an unlikely long-shot, but I guess it’s worthwhile to consider the early comparisons between Fringe’s Massive Dynamics and the Hanso/Dharma/Widmore Corporations from the Lostverse. I know that I love my fix of shadowy organisations!

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