What is Biomechanical ?

I would personally define it, at least within the confines of this film, the joining together of something mechanical with something alive, or biological, that evolves into one species, exhibiting both dominant and recessive traits from both original forms. This would mean that the DNA would be altered somehow. And this is just speculation. I am not a scientist!

i think of this, but fused more thoroughly, and naturally, to the point where the two separate entities actually create another organism that couldn't be separated the way this could. You could take the flesh from the robotics, or the robotics from the flesh here.... [img]http://www.ivid.it/fotogallery/imagesearch/images/virus_jamie_lee_curtis_john_bruno_008_jpg_nkbu.jpg[/img] clearly, something to that extent requires an awful lot of parts to be available. what happened here is a patchwork cyborg, thrown together as quickly as possible.

I would think Bio Mechanical is not related to say Cyborg, maybe it can be a bit. The Jockeys to me look Organic they are pretty much simular to us, they may have longer lifespans they may even like a Vampire be Imortal, but not as in indestructible. i.e you can kill them. but they just maybe have a very long if not never ending natural life cycle. So to me the Bio Mechanical aspect is that their Technology is just as much living as it is any none living material. They have a abiliity to directly connect and fuse with their Technology. So i would not think the Tech is alive as in a Animal, but more in the way of a Plant. I think best way is to say the Derelict is like a Noahs Ark or old Woden Ship, but the Ship/Wood is not dead as in a cut down tree to make the wood, but it is as alive as when the tree was alive.

Bio-mechanics = BIOLOGICAL MACHINES..... Humans are bio-mechanical....we're made up of a ridiculous amount of organic parts that allow us to function like a machine without metal.

As I have ever said in this forum, there are a lot of confusing conceptions of what "biomechanical" is. One trivial answer is: al life is "biomechanical": they are inequivocally "bio", but also "mechanical" as Wikipedia defines it: "[i]Mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment.[/i] " Some people seems to think of "biomechanisms" as a merging of living and purely mechanical parts, as in a "cyborg". The problem here is that creatures like the xeno, that can reproduce, can´t be a "cyborg": they are clearly living things, albeit probably not purely carbon-based as life in Earth. In a more radical departure, we can think of "generalized life": life defined only by function, not substance. In this case the doors are open for a vast range of possibilities, from life made of very strange and exotical substances, to life conceived as energy patterns into a computer. In the end all this will boils down to the "canon". Some people reveres the "biomechanical" concept as something that came from HR Giger art style. It´s ok to me, but he is an artist, not a science type, and if we are talking scifi and not fantasy, these things must be done right.

Bio-mechanics isn't cybernetics....but (like in Terminator movies) they can work together....living tissue over robotic skeleton....

Isn't the answer in the word that you have used? A fusion of the Biological and the Mechanical - such that the two elements are indistinguishable from each other, cease to be separate, and are one? [i]How[/i] that manifests is not, I don't think, so important - and may only be significant as a choice of the Author or the Artist. That manifestation, itself, is what is important - and that manifestation, I would argue, (in order to be true to the principle evoked by the word), should seamlessly and confusingly combine the [i]nature[/i] of both the Biological and the Mechanical. No, identifiable, "components"; no nanotechnological, "element"; no organic, "parts" - no separateness, at all: a true fusion.

Key words: "In relation to the film." Which is simply an aesthetic of HR Giger. Flesh meets metal/polymer, with no discernible end or beginning. The rendering of organic objects to look as if metal, fiberglass, or like machine parts, or vice versa.

@AlsoKnownAsNate Yes thats correct, we are indeed just living robots that can reproduce so we are living machines. But i think within context to the Jockeys Tech its how there everyday appliances, clothing etc and machines are living to some degree like a Tree. My theory is this..... A snakes is living, so is a Aligator, its skin protects it and has many functions it lives and is part of the creature. Man uses Snakes skin and Aligators to make Bags, Shoes, Jackets that when worn and used are just dead peices of skin, they are not living they are worn by us but they do not become one with us like they was from the creature they was taken from. A Tree is a living orgnanism to some point, its grows and produces seed, flowers, fruits etc. It is alive. A woden boat, a canoe are not alive the Wood taken from the living tree to make them is no longer alive its dead like the snake skin. Now the Engineers have a technology where their clothing, the skin that they wear and the ships that they fly are living. Imagine a Noahs Ark where the Wood is not dead, it is as alive as the Tree. Imagine a jacket or a suit made from Animal skin that when you where it, it becomes a part of you just as it was with the orginal creature it came from. Thats what i think about their tech.

Consider Mojor Motoko Kusanagi of "Ghost in the Shell" who started life as a human and over time had all of her parts replaced with cybernetic implants so that in the end her brain was the only original part. Her opposite would be the cylon Charon/Athena of the recent Battlestar Galactica who started as a cyborg and by the end became human. The question being where is the transition between human and machine. Then of course there is the LEXX.

Also, consider one of the agents in the Matrix, who manages to download his "consciousness" to a human body as I remember. This all seems to presuppose that the mind (as in being conscious or aware) is not separate from the body, different than what Descartes proposed as I remember. The mind would just bee some sort of byproduct of the brain's particular material configuration I guess. So what is consciousness? what is the relationship with matter? Are they two distinct categories, independent in their own right? Are they perhaps two sides of a same thing? At what point and under what particular configuration does it arise?

IMO the best example for the origin of the term bio mechanical, is the work of Julius Wolff (1836 -1902) who was a battlefield surgeon and anatomist. His work concentrated on the form, function and remodeling abilities of bone. I'm not so sure how much Giger may have looked into Wolff's work, but the development of bone structures is clearly visable in much of Gigers' art. Personally I think this where the origin of the word has entered the mainstream. I'm not denying that this has'nt resulted in the term bio mechanical evolving down other routes, but I find this explanation more in line with what we see on film.

In one word not relating to this film - BORG. I think it is a great example of what biomechanical can be.

@Macs At the end of Matrix:Revolutions I was thinking "They're not out yet!"

Couldn't Transformers be considered biomechanical? They are sentient, and can reproduce, after all......

I believe that @BigDave has done this the best justice to the context of what "biomechanical" means in the Alien franchise. "Mechanical" is the adjective of the noun "machine" which derives ultimately from the Greek [i]me:khos[/i], a ‘contrivance’. That is something that is designed (as a tool) for a purpose; an invention. In modern English "contrivance" has taken on the the sense of something that is over-designed. We also get "contraption" for something that is poorly designed (because it lacks an elegant simplicity of design). But the idea of "designed for a purpose" is important to the idea of a [i]machine[/i]. We humans design things (machines) out of metal and wires and plastics. (When we do it out of flesh and bone, we're not still considered fully human.) The Engineers design things out of materials that can intentionally (due to DNA and genetic engineering) grow into specific shapes and then die and ossify in that shape, or remain living (depending on its intended function). The living ones, though of course, must eat (something). Complex machines on Earth (Aibo or Asimo, for example) get extra programming added to their mechanical functions so that they can make independent decisions (to a certain extent) about how they work. Let's assume that the Engineers found the core of the xeno biology somewhere and thought, "Oh, this acid for blood gene is very handy." They took that and ran with it and created a bunch of physical attributes AND autonomic programming that make the xeno capable of taking any kind of creature in which a new generation can gestate as a host. It also seems to take genetic features from the host (intentionally inherit them) when those features make the resulting morph more robust. This comes across to me as a kind of proactive mutation. That allows it as a species to "evolve" more quickly than evolution would otherwise. Presumably, even to the Engineers, the xenos are primarily weapons. That is their core function. But, they are also eusocial, and that's what makes the really really dangerous. Eusociality is extremely rare, even on earth. Let's also assume that the Engineers found (or seeded) primates on Earth. If they intentionally manipulated our DNA, then from their perspective, we are easily biomechanical. And, it is possible that part of our programming was to evolve the ability to work with non-genetic engineering to create useful machines. That may be a technology that is 'lost' to Engineer's civilization even. Prometheus (and David (especially)) as machines that were not "grown" may be very interesting, novel, and useful to them. I can see many advantages. Biomechanics on a dead world (lacking water) are NOT very useful, but [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html][b]Spirit and Opportunity[/b][/url] on Mars are. I can also easily imagine that the Engineers might be (or have been) eusocial, without having developed human emotions. That might make us either "very pathetic" or "very frightening" to them. Perhaps they can only relate well to David. Or perhaps (as a non-biological intelligence) he's the strangest and most amazing being they've ever encountered. From my point of view, cyborgs and Transformers® are not biomechanical [i]per se[/i].

Well thanks thats given me lots to think about, I think the Biomechanical nature of the creatures really is just the best fit to a concept we cant properly express or understand. thanks for all the input very interesting.

I did like big Daves idea very much a sort of inclusion of any positive attribute into an existing structure be it from organic or otherwise and that then being alive as a part of the creature. icky

I think Biehn_Bandit has it right The only way to define "Biomechanical" as it relates to this film is to simply look at Giger's artwork. Are they alive? Are they machines? Are they neither or both? Are they beautiful or ugly? It is the aesthetic that Giger applies to everything he touches. It is the visual fusion of all things alive and all things dead.