Being interested in words all my life I always notice a new one.
This week I saw one, gomi. It was in a No Film School article.
I'd never heard of gomi. It sounds like an acronym but for what? It appeared in an online article from 2017 about the genesis of the lightsabre.
Apparantly the use of the Graflex flash unit was an example of gomi. It also mentions it as being an example of 'junk sci-fi;, which is a loose term I can more easily understand.
But gomi meant nothing so, I looked it up.
I found a company based in Brighton UK. GOMI.
Gomi make bespoke things from recycled plastic. https://www.gomi.design/
Now I'm not disputing the positive ethics of this company's recycling niche but it can't be right to call the origin of the lightsabre as being similar. Can it? It's not gomi in the way this company does things [NB. Gomi never say it is. Its in the No Film School article].
But maybe there's an older version of the word gomi? Maybe Gomi the company is not its origin as they clearly can't be the first or most popular in upcycling plastic junk, unlike say, Hoover, who were clearly the most popular dust gatherers and hence we all use Hoover as a verb. That's how language develops. Google is a similar case. But Gomi?
Well, it turns out the word Gomi, originally Japanese, was first used westernised slang for junk style by one William Gibson, who also gave us 'cyberspace'. So it does have cool urban junk roots as you can read here https://gomistyle.wordpress.com/about/
Well, it turns out the word Gomi, originally Japanese, was first used westernised slang for junk style by one William Gibson, who also gave us 'cyberspace'. So it does have cool urban junk roots as you can read here https://gomistyle.wordpress.com/about/
So is gomi a well-known term? So many terms could apply to the re-use of the Graflex flash unit and turning it into the lightsabre: recycling, upcycling, cyberpunking, steampunking, scratchbiulding, prop-making or even retro-fitting. Some of these words may not have been around in 1977 so its worth watching the documentary to hear it from the horses mouth. And its not gomi!
What would you call it readers?
Gomi is japanese slang for outdated tech. As the japanese tend to be very technologically focussed, the latest version of any hardware is always desirable, so older or dated tech is quickly discarded, even though it may be perfectly functional. William Gibson has a character in his cyber-future series called 'gomi boy' for his habit of collecting and upcycling old tech.
ReplyDelete