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Practical Work: Summary

I wanted to do a more new and unique approach to analog horror, bringing it up to the modern day. Reflecting on technology’s evolution and how it has slowly but surely spread like an infection consuming increasingly more of our time and transforming our ways of communication, like Blake and Reyes approach that digital horror conveys anxieties of the technology of the period in which they are created.

Informed by my Junji Ito and body horror research I decided that the best approach to conveying the horrors of the relationship between humans and technology in the modern day would be to depict a transhuman transformation. Throughout all of the genera’s I explored the most disturbing horror came from the corruption of the body and mind so depicting a human becoming more technological was my goal. I feel that I was able to achieve this successfully by following Ito’s process of adding the foreign to the body, in this case technology, and comparing it to our already existing anatomy (like in his work on ‘Slug Girl’): replacing eyes with cameras, veins with wires etc. In order to further enhance the fear within my work I also used inspiration from my research on the uncanny valley and the ways uncanny faces have been used in analog horror, such as the distorted features of Gabriel.

As well as the above, I also used the normal, to disturbing, to normal format of analog horror to make my animation jarring, with glitches interspersed making the animation constantly put the viewer on edge. Moreover, I included the common troupe of cryptic messages as this enabled me to more successfully convey my message to the viewer by breaking the fourth wall, using the text to further contextualise the otherwise jumbled disturbing imagery.

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Artist Research: Junji Ito

One of the most prolific cosmic horror and body horror artists is the award-winning mangaka Junji Ito. His work is both a visual feat with intricately crafted ink details, and at the same time uncanny and deeply disturbing. Like Cronenberg and Straub, Ito was inspired to create horror from encounters with it in his childhood, stating that the first manga he ever read was ‘Mummy Teacher’ a horror manga that inspired him to create his own horror works. Another encounter with horror in his early childhood was how he recounted having to walk through a dark underground hallway to reach the toilet in his home, both these examples are reminiscent of the analog horror idea of playing with repressed childhood memories to enhance horror, as it can be seen in Ito’s works. He used the imagery of dark underground hallways in ‘Twin Series’ in which he modelled the environment in the story after his own childhood home. He layers his pen strokes to build up darkness saying ‘in horror, how scary the dark is, is a common theme and having things dark so its hard to see makes it seem like something could be lurking in that darkness. It stirs up fears that make you worry. “what could that be?” This, once more, links back to Kressbach’s investigatory mode of spectatorship, which manifested in analog horror as low fidelity footage and in Ito’s work as layered darkness of his brushwork.

(Kyoufu no Juusou/Layers of Fear, (2017), Junji Ito)

Most of his works have doomed characters, locked into an unescapable fate or transformation and he comments that ‘unless you’re in a hopeless situation, you won’t feel afraid.’ Like body horror it is the complete absence of hope that creates the horror, the monster is within you so there is no escaping it as you slowly lose your autonomy and your body becomes foreign to you. However, Ito was not purposefully following body horror themes, he comments ‘I wasn’t aiming for body horror but I believe the human mind is the scariest part of oneself. When the body manifests those fears, the body becomes the scariest part, so I drew a lot of transformations.’ These transformations can be partial such as in ‘Uzumaki’ the protagonist's hair becomes cursed by spirals, or wholly consuming such as another transformation in Uzumaki in which a character cursed by the spiral has contorted his body beyond the realm of possibility into a spiral shape. Ito described the creation of ideas for his work as the foreign meeting the familiar, for example, ‘attaching foreign objects to the human body’ seen in his work on ‘slug girl’. Ito said how he observed how his tongue moved in the mirror and likened it to that of a slug, wondering what horrific imagery he could create.

(Uzumaki/Spiral, (1998), Junji Ito

Up till this point, my practical work was lacking in horror. I was unsure of how to depict transhumanist horrifying transformations of the body with the foreign but Ito’s approach of transformations that still relate back to reality has guided me. Despite the outlandish nature of his transformations Ito closely studies anatomical charts and books on human anatomy to retain a semblance of reality within fiction, the transformation I portray must then still be recognisable as human, because the true horror is the horror of ones own body.

A Talk with Junji Ito | Creator Interview | VIZ, (2020), Vizmedia, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7qCN8qN31A

Junji Ito, (2017), Urasawa Naoki no Manben, S4.E2, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yJaZI597zI

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Practical work: Midway progress report:

For the practical aspect of the project I decided to create a transhumanism and analog horror inspired animation. I decided to make the story and visuals of the animation inspired by second generation analog horror, more experimental, using both found footage esc elements and 2d art (similar to that of other analog projects that used both such as ‘The Walten Files’ and ‘The Mandela Catalogue’). I used my phone camera in a dark room so that the image quality was somewhat grainy and Kressbach’s investigatory mode of spectatorship will be triggered.

After some research, I decided that the most appropriate music to set the animation to would be the 1961 IBM 704 rendition of ‘Daisy Bell’. This is because an IBM 704 at Bell Labs was the first demonstration of computer speech synthesis and was also referenced in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) with HAL singing the tune as it slowly shuts down, ‘he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you... It’s called ‘Daisy’’. The song is also appropriate for analog horror as the song daisy bell is quite recognisable and comforting, however, the computerised lyrics and melody create an uneasiness, corrupting something the viewer is familiar with and the corruption of the familiar is a theme prevalent in both body horror and analog horror.

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Analog Horror and Found Footage: technology as a Vehicle for enhancing horror: Part 3: Analog Horror

Local 58 (2015-2022):

Created by Kris Straub, Local 58 became the first widely successful piece of analog horror and is the work attributed with the popularisation of the genera as well as creating the formula that most projects would imitate till 2021. It is a horror anthology web series and takes the form of broadcast horror with episodes imitating a local analog tv station with broadcast interruption, Public Service Announcements (PSA’s), children’s shows and more. The live TV broadcasts and all of these formats tie in with Kressbach’s ‘evidentiary effect’ as they present themselves as visually convincingly real archived footage of a now defunct TV channel. At first these broadcasts appear seemingly normal before becoming horrific and then returning to normalcy, this vacillation in tone sets the viewer on edge and highlights the theme of the dangers and unpredictability of technology. The first three episodes were the catalyst for the analog horror movement so they will be pertinent in analysing the conventions of the genera.

In the first episode ‘weather service’ the story follows the moon being a Lovecraftian entity. At first, the PSA interruptions warn people not to look at the moon, then return to the original broadcast saying that everything is fine, then being interrupted again but in a more horrific way with loud alarms blaring and a glitched red background urging those watching to stay inside and face away from all windows. This back and forth continues to escalate with cryptic messages till finally a grainy recording of the moon is shown with petrified screams. This episode draws on connections with body horror, in particular, losing autonomy to a greater power that cannot be fought, in this instance, cosmic horror.

(The Local 58 Channel before(left) and during(right) the cryptic emergency alert intrusions, (2015), Straub Kris)

The second episode ‘Contingency’ takes the form of a disturbing and corrupted government PSA. The TV Channel ‘Local 58’ is interrupted, the same way episode 1 was interrupted, this time with a message from the United States government informing the nation that they have ‘been forced to surrender to her (the countries) enemy’ and that everyone in the country must now kill themselves, their neighbours and their children, ‘join your neighbours, your family, your god’.

(The corrupted Government PSA's, (2016), Straub Kris)

Lastly, the third episode ‘You Are on the Fastest Available Route’ uses the found footage format and the theme of the horrors of corrupted technology. From a first-person perspective through the camera we see a corrupted GPS system guiding the cameraman to an unknown destination and its instructions become increasingly concerning, ‘continue on an unnamed road, then in three hundred feet turn off your headlights’, till the driver is attacked and the camera is left cracked on the floor, a common device in found footage.

(The low-fidelity footage of the driver travelling through the forest (left) and catching a glimpse of the creature that attacks him(right), (2016), Straub Kris)

Like Cronenberg with ‘Videodrome’ Straub’s Local 58 was based loosely on frightening encounters with technology in his childhood. Straub would watch KLCS Channel 58 ‘Inside Out’, the channel would air a series of educational film strips from the 70’s that were made to be shown in a classroom environment depicting a moral quandary and end on a cliff-hanger that would then be explained and contextualised by the teacher. However, Kris Straub would view these videos on the KLCS Channel 58 at home so would see the videos end on ambiguous cliff-hangers with no resolution, much like his own creation ‘Local 58’. This connection with childhood memories and infant fears, particularly those towards technology, is another reason why nostalgia is such a key theme in analog horror.  Straub also commented on another aspect of technology’s unpredictability that inspired his work, not just the media that can be found, but how it is presented. As Alex Kansas (creator of the analog horror work ‘monument mythos’) put it ‘The low resolution conveys just enough information to disconcert the viewer while maintaining enough ambiguity to stimulate the viewers imagination.’

Gemini Home Entertainment (2019):

2019 was a transitional period stylistically for the genera. Before this point most analog horror took the same format: public access tv stations, advertisements, public safety/service announcements, broadcast hijackings and so forth. During 2019 a shift had begun, and the genera was broadening its scope and VHS tapes became a new cornerstone of analog horror with an emphasis on character-driven stories. 2d art visuals (seen in ‘The Walten Files’ and ‘Blue Channel Thalasin’), video games (seen in ‘Gemini Home Entertainment’, ‘The Walten Files’, and ‘Petscop’), and other experimental formats became more and more popular.

(Left: A still from the video game 'Lethal Omen', (2019), Abode Remy)

(Right: A still of the 2d art style seen in 'The Walten Files', (2021) Walls Martin)

One of the foundational works of this second generation of analog horror is ‘Gemini Home Entertainment’. GHE used VHS found footage format and CGI elements in conjunction with a focused story to make one of the most polished and high budget works in the genera to date. To enhance the ‘evidentiary effect’ the creator, Remy Abode, created alternate media such as lore images online and a fully playable videogame, ‘Lethal Omen’, an imitation of a 1990’s low poly fifth generation videogame. The story documents shapeshifting Skinwalker like alien species called wood crawlers as well as a Lovecraftian entity known as the Iris. Blake and Reyes comment on how CGI has changed film making and consumption stating that ‘CGI have precipitated a cinema that is no longer reliant on the indexical representation of reality’. Film making no longer relied upon reality to craft its narratives, so whereas the previous works listed used text, speech, or practical effects to suggest paranormal entities, the technology had now evolved to be able to not just imply a paranormal presence, but depict it.

Episode 3 ‘Artificial Computer Learning’ is especially appropriate for my work as it depicts an artificial intelligence learning to tell children’s stories that slowly become darker with each attempt, as well as breaking the fourth wall and addressing the viewer. The theme of corrupted technology can be seen throughout analog horror, both technically with visual glitching and thematically, but this episode directly tackles technology as the antagonistic entity which I aim to do in my work. I find this reverse-transhumanist approach particularly interesting, rather than humans becoming more machine the machine is becoming more human. Instead of the transhumanist optimism, as the machine becomes more intelligent, more human, it becomes increasingly corrupted and disturbing.

GHE paved the way forward by producing a polished version of the analog horror formula with glitch effects, Lovecraftian elements/entities, the formula/goal of subverting expectations and cryptic messages. Despite changes, generation two of analog horror did carry on some of the key formats from generation one, in particular the subversion of expectations: everything starting seemingly normal, becoming horrifying, and then returning to normalcy. This format popularised by Local 58 is still prevalent in both Gemini Home Entertainment and in the next final work I will cover, ‘The Mandela Catalogue’.

The Mandela Catalogue(2021):

Unlike ‘Gemini Home Entertainment’ ‘The Mandela Catalogue’ has only one malicious entity documented in its story, Skinwalker like creatures similar to that of ‘Gemini Home Entertainment’, called alternates. ‘The Mandela Catalogue’ is one of the most successful analog horror works in the genera created by Alex Kister, and makes heavy use of Sigmund Freud’s uncanny as well as Masahiro Mori’s uncanny valley.

The story of ‘The Mandela Catalogue’ follows the stories of different people who come in contact with creatures known as alternates, that will reveal an unknowable truth to anyone they attack forcing them to kill themselves and then the creature will take on its victims appearance. In episode 1 ‘Overthrone’ old footage from ‘The Beginners Bible’ a children’s animated retelling of the angel Gabriel descending to deliver a message to Mary, is used. However, the movie has been corrupted and distorted and depicts Gabriel not as an angel, but an alternate that incites the conflict for the rest of the narrative, bent on corrupting humanity with his message. The appearance of Gabriel and other alternates in the series is where the uncanny is used, as the alternates attempt to recreate the people they are copying to different degrees of success, some being perfect recreations, some having slight oddities, and others being horrifically contorted monstrosities. A game created based on ‘The Mandela Catalouge’ called ‘Maple County’, created by Thorne Baker, is another example of analog horror perfectly encapsulating another of Kressback’s theories, the ‘investigatory mode of spectatorship’. In the game you play through a fictional police training interactive VHS and must carefully study and compare the faces of two people to discern which is an alternate, with some being clearly monstrosities and others, so close to human that the viewer must take time analysing the appearances in a search for the horrors hidden in their disguise.

Freud’s theory on the uncanny is reminiscent of analog horror and body horrors key theme of corruption of the familiar, stating that ‘The German word unheimlich is obviously the opposite of heimlich, heimisch, meaning “familiar,” “native,” “belonging to the home”; and we are tempted to conclude that what is “uncanny” is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar.’ Freud explores the idea of familiarity and former familiarity by saying that ‘the uncanny is nothing else than a hidden, familiar thing that has undergone repression and then emerged from it’. This reawakening of something formerly familiar calls back to when analog creators discussed the nostalgia and repressed memories surrounding analog media and the mystery it creates.

Within discussions on familiarity being a key part of what creates uncanny Freud proposes the idea of the double also being key. He states ‘the idea of a “double” in every shape and degree, with persons, therefore, who are to be considered identical by reason of looking alike’ he explains how originally the double was an insurance to combat the fear of death, he cites the belief in the immortal soul and the immortalisation of the dead through artistic recreation as examples. This adds another layer of corruption to Kisters doubles (alternates) as one of them uses the likeness of the angel Gabriel as a double. Kister has taken this familiar and safe form of the double and corrupted it, the double has gone from a symbol of protection and preservation to a symbol of death and destruction: ‘The “double” has become a vision of terror, just as after the fall of their religion the gods took on daemonic shapes.’

Freud also links the uncanny to the uncertainty of the nature of what is being observed ‘a particularly favourable condition for awakening uncanny sensations is created when there is intellectual uncertainty whether an object is alive or not, and when an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one.’ He then uses the example of young children believing that their dolls are alive which leads into Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley as he similarly uses dolls as an example of a litmus for testing the uncanny. Freud and Mori share the view that dolls are firmly not uncanny, their level of separation from attempting to capture human resemblance makes the capacity for affinity high. Mori’s describes his theory of the uncanny valley as ‘climbing toward the goal of making robots appear human, our affinity for them increases until we come to a valley, which I call the uncanny valley.’ Unlike the doll, something that Mori considers to be deep in the uncanny valley is realistic prosthetic limbs. He explains his reasoning ‘when we realize the hand, which at first site looked real, is in fact artificial, we experience an eerie sensation.’ The uncanniness in this instance comes from the subversion of expectations, thinking that something seemingly familiar is what you believe it to be, and then having your perception proven wrong, the familiar is no longer familiar. Mori, therefore, defines the uncanny valley as ‘the appearance… is quite humanlike, but the level of affinity is negative’. Kister utilises this, by having alternates initially appear normal, or familiar, for example in episode one the angel Gabriel looks typically angelic. However, the alternates delve into the uncanny valley when they shed their familiar guise and their anatomy shifts to becoming something foreign. This fear of the familiar becoming foreign yet again harkens back to body horror which is why body horror and transhumanism is perceived as so uncanny and disturbing. Kister makes use of the many facets of the uncanny, doubles, the uncanny valley, subversion of expectations and the corruption of the familiar to create truly unsettling work.

(Mori Masahiro's mapping of the uncanny valley, (1970))

By analysing the origins of the works that inspired analog horror and some of the most influential works of the genera a clear format of the themes and visuals is apparent. Thematically, analog horror and found footage use the vehicle of analog technology, or the appearance thereof, to convey the harmful potential of technology by depicting its corruption and unpredictable nature. This is seen in the visuals through glitches and low-fidelity footage. Cosmic or Lovecraftian elements seen as monster or body horror entities are often present as well as cryptic messages, subversion of expectations, and the uncanny valley. Analog horror is appropriate for my project because it carries the themes of media and technology being harmful or used for harmful means which is the crux of my message. I have been inspired by many aspects of analog horror, in particular, turning something we see as mundane into something Lovecraftian and horrifying from ‘Local 58’ episode 1, the disturbing and cryptic messages from episode 2, and the horror of corrupted technology from episode 3, as well as the use of uncanny faces in ‘The Mandela Catalogue’.

Freud Sigmund, (1919), The Uncanny, https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf

Hera Alex,(2022), THE HISTORY OF ANALOG HORROR, http://alexhera.com/films/

Mori Masahiro, (1970), (Bukimi No Tani) The Uncanny Valley, IEEE Spectrum, https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-uncanny-valley

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Analog Horror and Found Footage: technology as a Vehicle for enhancing horror: Part 2: Pre-History of Analog Horror

War of the worlds(1938):

In New York, October 30 1938, by this point in history a few tv stations had begun appearing in the United States but radio was the dominant form of media. Created by Orson Welles, the broadcast was aired on the Columbia broadcasting system station and was an adaptation of the novel War of the worlds by H.G.Wells. It took on the format of average, everyday analog radio broadcasts that gets periodically interrupted by news bulletins of an alien invasion, slowly becoming more frequent and intense, until the news bulletins permanently interrupt the broadcast to document the alien takeover. War of the Worlds terrified the country and served as an important work for both ‘unfiction’ and analog horror as one of the first documented immersive live broadcast projects and carrying many of the traits that would later become key parts of immersive media. For analog horror specifically it contains the corruption of realistically created live broadcast a very common format of analog horror seen today as well as the format of the media at first being seemingly normal and then subverting expectations when everything goes wrong.

However, most analog horror tends to aim to recreate video content and not radio content and this is due to the 1950’s golden age of (analog) television. From 1950-1959 the number of American households with a television rose from 9% to over 85%, from this point on television dominated media and culture as a whole, which sets the stage for the next influential work, David Cronenberg’s ‘Videodrome’.

Videodrome(1983):

The film tells the story of a TV executive, Max Renn, who becomes involved with a small and mysterious television program called ‘Videodrome’. The program contains video of people being tortured and soft-core pornography and is later revealed to cause brain tumours from viewing it, and causes the protagonist to shoot himself at its order. ‘Videodrome’ and analog horror deal with the harmful effects of media consumption and ‘Videodrome’, like Blake and Reyes believe, is used to embodiy the fears of the harmful effects of technology from the time, that are still relevant today. It plays with the idea that harmful stimuli from analog broadcasts can threaten you, physically harm you and mentally corrupt you by speaking to you directly. The director Cronenberg recounts how as a child his family home had a tv antenna that rotated to pick up signals, ‘when the major channels would go off the air you could rotate it and pick up strange other channels… and you would see strange things that were kind of hard to see, there was a lot of static… and that was really the core, and the crystal at the centre of this movie, was my experience with that. Thinking, well what if the images you pulled up were really quite extreme? Disturbing, possibly illegal.’. To me, this truly reflects technology and the internet of today, where on social media and websites anything can be posted and stumbled across, for instance, a video in which footage of a man who had hung himself had been posted to YouTube and was featured on the trending page, boosted by the algorithms at work for all to see, and was only taken down the next day.  Blake and Reyes compare anxieties around modern surveillance technologies to the panopticon, a creeping feeling of always being watched, which ‘videodrome’ takes to the next level by the technology not just watching, but interacting.

The Max Headroom incident(1987):

In Chicago Illinois on November 22nd 1987 two tv stations, WGN TV and WTTW, were hijacked mid-program. A man imitating the British TV character Max Headroom appeared and in short sub-two minutes intrusions, he made an array of confusing comments before disappearing forever and was never caught. Despite the content not being disturbing in nature it was still undoubtedly unsettling for viewers, and broadcast hijackings would go on to become a key method of telling analog horror stories and add to the general publics view of the unpredictability and uncertainty around technology.

(A still from the Max Headroom Incident, (1987), WGN TV)

Ghostwatch(1992):

In London on October 31st 1992 ‘Ghostwatch’ was an immersive live television program that aired on the BBC. ‘Ghostwatch’ told the story of documentarians investigating a haunted house on Halloween night, with some crew members staying in the studio to monitor progress and answer calls from supposed viewers. However, things begin to go horribly wrong, paranormal events terrify the documentarians in the house and the call-in viewers begin to report increased paranormal activity. Eventually leading to even the broadcast room succumbing to paranormal events and the broadcast ends abruptly.

In BBC Radio 3's, Free Thinking, Matthew Sweet describes 'Ghostwatch' as a 'new title but the format is familiar. 'Foxwatch' trained live infrared cameras on urban nature, 'Hospitalwatch' gave us a live relay from A&E, so 'Ghostwatch' looks like it's going to do the same for ghosts.' The viewers were not only familiar with the format of the previous shows but also the host, 'It comes from a studio presided over by a familiar and reliable broadcaster, in this case, Michael Parkinson.' This combination of seemingly familiar formatting, naming, and host worked in conjunction to lul the viewer into a false sense of safety, priming them perfectly for the subversion of expectations, and enhancing the horror of the show.

This unfiction work blurred the lines of reality and fiction and used the idea of viewer interaction and manipulation of a live broadcast to immerse the viewers into the story. Many analog horror works that were to come would be influenced to use supposed live broadcasts gone wrong to evoke the same feeling of terror felt by the viewers of ‘Ghostwatch’ (evident in the BBC switchboard receiving an estimated 1,000,000 phone calls on the night of the broadcast).

(Paranormal incidents occurring in the haunted home, (1992), Ghostwatch, BBC)

The Blair Witch Project(1999):

Blair witch project popularised found footage film genera and became a key founding piece of unfiction. It became a template that creators would use to tell immersive stories of unfiction. The film was presented as a true story about three students who became lost in the woods with nothing but a camera in an attempt to make a film about the legend of the Blair Witch. To make the unfiction even more convincing the creators made a fake documentary called ‘Curse of the Blair Witch’ that aired on tv before the release of the movie, a website which included a fake police report and photographic ‘evidence’, and missing persons posters for the cast. The Blair Witch was a transmedia story that used a vast campaign to truly convince the audience that it was real. However, a distinction between ‘The Blair Witch’ and analog horror is that analog horror is not analog, it is a recreation of analog media, the first true piece of analog horror would come almost a decade later.

(Images from the Blair Witch Website of the fake police evidence, (1999), https://web.archive.org/web/20160919152423fw_/http://www.blairwitch.com/project/aftermath.html)

The Wyoming incident(2006):

Said to be the first analog horror, it was a creepypasta, at the time creepypasta were the apex of internet horror, immersive horror, and most people’s introduction to internet horror.

The video was released alongside a text post that told the story of a ‘Max Headroom’ esc broadcast hijacking that contained harmful frequencies that caused negative side effects like that of ‘Videodrome’ including headaches, vomiting, and hallucinations. The video, unlike the Max Headroom incident, uses unnerving imagery with VHS effects alongside uncanny valley faces. Broadcast hijacking, unsettling text, and the uncanny valley exist as a basis for the horror of the Wyoming incident and these elements become key foundations for future analog horror.

(Uncanny faces used in The Wyoming Incident, (2006), Unknown creator)

Hera Alex,(2022), THE HISTORY OF ANALOG HORROR, http://alexhera.com/films/

Sweet Mattew, (2022), Free Thinking-Ghostwatch, BBC Radio 3

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Analog Horror and Found Footage: technology as a Vehicle for enhancing horror: Part 1: Found Footage

Analog horror is an emerging subgenera of horror fiction and inspired heavily by found footage. Analog horror is described by two of the most prolific creators within the genera: Alex Kister(creator of ‘Mandela Catalogue’) as ‘a form of found footage’ and Kris Straub(creator of ‘Local 58’) as ‘found footage but it takes the aesthetic of VHS and VCR staticky analog era of television to deliver the required instability that a lot of horror needs to function. Where you don’t trust the medium because there are problems, there are glitches.’

Found footage uses analog technologies such as home video cameras or surveillance cameras, not just to record the narrative, but to add to the appearance of realism and in turn the horror. Mikki Kressbach, an assistant Professor of Film, Television, and Media Studies, states this by saying ‘The use of handheld cinematography, direct address, long takes, and jump cuts collectively signify the genre’s narrative conceit: what you see really happened’, these visual conventions for the purpose of enhancing the spectators narrative investment make analog horror and found footage ‘unfiction’ media.

Both of the genera’s do not just share visual conventions, but the narrative convention of ‘unfiction’ as well. ‘Unfiction’ is described as ‘an umbrella term that refers to a large range of artistic works that all share a common theme: they exist in their own fictional worlds as if they belong in reality. In other words, unfiction pretends to be telling a real story, even though it is fictional.’

Found footage:

First, we must dissect why analog technology is used for found footage and how it is used to elicit fear from an audience. The aesthetic of found footage purposefully draws attention to the camera, contributing to the guise that what is being viewed is raw untouched footage. This documentary style of footage makes found footage comparable to cinema verité (‘truthful cinema’), both documentary film and cinema verité are genera’s that capture truth so by mimicking this style found footage is able to bolster its appearance that what it is portraying is based on truth. This attempts to make the viewer feel that what is being shown could potentially pose a real world threat. However, Kressbach argues that even though the viewer may not be fooled into believing the unfiction, the medium creates an ‘investigatory mode of spectatorship’ which is exploited to terrify viewers nonetheless.

Kressbach attributes this investigatory mode of spectatorship to the ‘evidentiary effect’, when a viewer encounters images that are coded as visual evidence/truth it can trigger a desire to know more, causing the viewer to thoroughly scan the frame and discern audio in an attempt to seek more information. Kressbach suggests that ‘This mode of spectatorship leaves viewers vulnerable to violations of the frame(jump scares) or can be mobilized to heighten the suspense as they inspect the dark corners of the image. In other words, found footage exploits the instrumental camera and mobilizes the phenomenology of visual evidence to support the shocks and scares of horror’.

Kressbach also argues that the genera’s use of a false realism is indicative of the erosion of truth in images and  ‘is an allegory for the dangers of emerging media’, this directly links with a core theme of analog horror and my visual project, the dangers of technology. Blake and Reyes in their book ‘Digital Horror’ agree with Kressbach’s view, saying ‘digital horror often exploits its own framing and stylistic devices to offer reflections on contemporary fears, especially those regarding digital technologies themselves.’ Both believe that digital found footage horror utalise the technology not just as an aesthetic but also a narrative device to feed into the fear the audience feels about ‘the danger of digital technology’.

We have established that the use of handheld analog footage adds to the truth and therefore the fear of the genera, the diegetic camera that exists within the reality of the fiction becomes our view of the story, the viewer is not a third party, but an object that exists within the narratives reality. However, this does not explain fully why analog horror uses analog technologies, found footage uses the technology of the era it is created in, Blake and Reyes solidify this point by saying that one of the purposes of digital horror is to ‘articulate generically our period’s core anxieties’.  However, many analog horror works attempt to recreate the visual aesthetic of analog era technologies, but why? To determine this we must examine the analog age and some of the key events and media that inspired the creation of the analog horror genera.

Kressbach Mikki, (2022), Found Footage Horror and the Evidentiary Effect, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, volume: 16 issue: 1, pg 1-21, https://mdx.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_crossref_primary_10_1080_10509208_2022_2150509&context=PC&vid=44MUN_INST:hendon&lang=en&search_scope=Hendon_CI&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=default&query=any,contains,found%20footage&offset=0  

Reyes Aldana X. and Blake, L., (2015), Digital Horror : Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon, London: I.B. Tauris.

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Transhumanism in horror media: Part 2- Monster Horror

Monster horror is less about the self and more about the other. Monster horror is used as a representation of the ‘foreign’ expressed by Jeffery Cohen in his book Monster Theory. In the section 'cultural uses of monster allegory' he states  ‘escapist delight gives way to horror only when the monster threatens to overstep these boundaries, to destroy or deconstruct the thin walls of category and culture.’ Much like transhumanism threatening the boundaries between the human and the machine, monster horror threatens our social boundaries. In his section on 'otherness' he continues by saying ‘the monster stands at the threshold of becoming – these monsters ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have misrepresented what we have attempted to place. They ask us to re-evaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, our tolerance towards its expression. They ask us why we have created them.’ Like body horror, monster horror represents aspects of humans that are typically avoided, body horror focuses on aspects of the body whereas monster horror tackles aspects of the mind. When related to the relationship between humans and technology, the question is not just why we have created technology, but why we fear technology and why we have created a horrific ’other’ representation of human technology transhuman monsters. Cronenberg acknowledges this representation of technology and gives his own perspective that ‘the body for me is the essence of human existence, it is what we are. Everything comes from that including technology. In the 1950’s technology was inhuman stuff from outer space that threatened us…but for me technology has always been ultra human and a complete extension of what we are… so technology also becomes what we are, for the good and the bad.’ So what happens when ultra human technology is represented in horror, and the line between what is human and what is technology is blurred, we can see this through the character of Hal 9000 in the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968).

(The camera that Hal 9000 uses to watch the crew, Stanley Kubrick, 1968, '2001: A Space Odyssey')

Hal is a sentient ai that controls the Discovery One, the spacecraft in which the movie is set, and interacts with the ship's astronaut crew, eventually becoming the antagonist of the story. After murdering most of the crew Hal is shut down by the remaining crew member Dave and begs for his ‘life’ saying ‘I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid.’ It is argued whether Hal did so because he was an intelligent computer that understood the human psyche and was purely logically trying to appeal to Dave’s sympathy or whether he was truly a sentient being that fear his ‘death’. Hal makes the viewer question what a human is, whether are we defined by our body or our capacity for sentience, and where do we draw the line between something technological and something human.

Another cinematic transhuman monster is the Xenomorph from the ‘Alien’ (1972) movie series. The creature was designed by the artist H.R.Giger who experimented with horrific depictions of the human body in tandem with technology often drawing from and corrupting preconceived views on gender. The creature is anthropomorphic and its overall form mirrors that of humans with two legs and arms, but it is its exaggerated distortion of the familiar human form that enhances its fear. The Xenomorph has a phallic-shaped head but it is a general consensus that the species is neither male nor female, they are agender, breaking the binary similarly to how Cohen described. Their most disturbing body and monster horror does not come from their design, however, but instead from the way they act upon their sexuality and reproduction that transforms the human body. This is exemplified by the character Kane who after being attacked by a ‘face hugger’ and an appendage is forced down his throat. He is rushed back to the ship, the Nostromo, where he is sedate for some time, till the face hugger detaches of its own accord leaving a perceived healthy Kane to eat with the crew. However, he starts to seize and blood leaks from his abdomen, when suddenly a small creature bursts through his chest, erect and slimy, it scurries away, leaving Kane dead. As Jessica Lempit puts it in her essay on transhumanism in Alien, ‘This parasitic lifeform transformed Kane from a functional human being into an incubator or ‘womb’ for a more advanced species…Kane’s male body is un-gendered by the alien, who penetrates him in a quasi-sexual manner, impregnates him with its young, which later is ‘birthed,” bloody and violent, out of his body.’ Director Ridley Scott perverts the traditional human reproduction by mimicking insemination, gestation, and birth in an alien way. Scott takes the speculative stance that in the future humans will be outpaced and their weak bodies will only serve as incubators for higher life forms and creation of higher technologies, stated by Lempit ‘Ridley Scott positions the human body as a site of transformation and vulnerability in the future, simultaneously making our familiar anatomy foreign, and suggesting that our technological feats may soon outpace our physical capacity. The motifs of evolution, reproduction and violent transformation are leylines in these three films, presenting visions of the future in which human biology is no longer the pinnacle of nature’s innovations but a fecund ground for more advanced life—either as hosts for alien forms, or as the creators of artificial intelligences (AI) and synthetic life.’ This reflects the transhumanist view that in order to evolve we must use technology, as our human bodies alone are no longer enough to truly thrive and grow, and the body horror theme of highlighting the body's vulnerability being used to enhance the fear of the work.

(Left: the Xenomorph, Right: Kane during the 'chestburster' scene, Ridley Scott, 1979, 'Alien')

Both body horror and monster horror use transhumanism to enhance the relatability and reality of their works, making the fear all the more real. They deal with evolution, sometimes technology, the body and the mind being corrupted and things that once were so familiar and aided us turning against us. Both tackle how we treat things we see as ‘other’ or ‘foreign’, even ourselves and our own bodies as they can become foreign and uncomfortable to us. This relatability enhancing the reality of fiction and corruption of the familiar as themes that are also present in my next topic: found footage and analog horror.

Cohen Jeffery, (1996), Monster Theory: Reading Culture, University of Minnesota Press

Lempit Jessica, (2015), Man Meets God, Then Becomes Him: Human Transformation, and Transhuman Aspirations, in Ridley Scott’s Alien, Prometheus, and Blade Runner, Columbia Academic Commons, Man Meets God, Then Becomes Him: Human Transformation, and Transhuman Aspirations, in Ridley Scott’s Alien, Prometheus, and Blade Runner | Academic Commons (columbia.edu)

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Transhumanism in horror media: Part 1- Body Horror

Following the previous post I will be outlining how transhumanism is depicted in horror media. Transhumanism has become a prolific aspect within horror seen manifested in monster horror and body horror.

Body horror and monster horror are similar with many overlaps but their key distinction is that body horror is an inescapable change, a metamorphosis of the body that cannot be reverted or controlled that comes from within, whereas monster horror is an external threat, a separate being or entity.

Body Horror:

In Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror is Biological Horror, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Body horror, Ronald Cruz describes the genera as a ‘trope that showcases often graphic violations of the human body, is also justifiably called biological horror’ that tackles evolution, mutation, hybrids and metamorphoses. Filmmaker David Cronenberg, considered a principal originator of body horror through his works ‘Shivers’(1975) and ‘Rabid’(1977) described the body horror in his work: ‘It's a fascination with the human body. But it's also a willingness to look at what's there without flinching, and to say: 'This is what we're made of, as disgusting as it might seem at times.' Because I'm really saying that the inside of the human body must have a completely different aesthetic. I could conceive of a beauty contest where people would unzip themselves and show you the best spleen and the best-looking viscera.’ Cronenberg holds a mirror to the audience, displaying the disturbing facets of the body, highlighting its flaws and weaknesses as it is unable to fight its transformations. When interviewed he was asked how his fascination with the human body has changed over his time working in film and he responded that ‘its probably changed with my body changing… I have hearing aids, I’ve just had cataract eye surgery so I’m now looking at you through plastic lenses instead of the original lenses in my eyes which I used to make all my films up to now... I am bionically enhanced… and it produces a different reality’ Cronenberg is acutely aware of the transhuman changes present within himself as well as his works, but unlike most body horror he takes a compellingly optimistic stance on bodily transformations, similar to the optimism of the transhumanists, saying ‘It’s like a diamond that has many facets. You’re looking into the same interior, but from different facets of the diamond, and you’re saying, what if we stopped fighting this? What if in fact, what’s happening is a good thing? It’s easy to see that it could be bad, but what if it’s actually good? Let’s just imagine that and spin a narrative where that’s actually the case. Let’s see where that leads us.’

(The different stages of Seth Brundle's gradual transformation, David Cronenberg, 1986, 'The Fly')

Body horror can range in its ruinous effects on the body, this can range from recognition of the horror of the body, to partial transformation, and finally to complete destruction of the original and familiar body. For instance in the movie ‘Teeth’(2007) the protagonist has no great transformation where her body becomes wholly unrecognisable, the ruin is the unearthing of knowledge about her body. In comparison the movie ‘An American Werewolf in London’(1981) has a transformation of the protagonist David that may be painful, however, it does not require his human form to be completely destroyed, he can exist between two worlds and two bodies. In some cases the destruction of the body is imperative to the transformation of the body and is necessary for something stronger to be created like in David Cronenberg’s film ‘The Fly’(1986), or ‘Tusk’(2014). In the movie ‘Tusk’ the protagonist is kidnapped by a mad mammal-obsessed scientist and his body cut and reshaped to be a walrus. By the film's end, the protagonist still exists but will forever be a human man-made walrus. Body horror, no matter where it sits on the spectrum of transformation, is ultimately about rebirth, whether for better or for worse, the subject is forced to exist in a new way, losing the body and often the self that they were so familiar with.

(Davids transformation into a werewolf, John Landis, 1981, 'An American Werewolf in London')

This perspective is captured by Nadine Smith in her essay talking about body horror and M. Night Shyamalan’s film ‘Old’(2021): ‘in ‘Old’, bones shatter and re-heal in record time, only to break again; tumours grow at a massive rate; and infections eat the human body in fast-motion. By condensing all the physical changes we undergo over the course of a lifetime into a few hours, Shyamalan shows how disturbing it is to feel your body becoming foreign to you… ‘Old’ is ultimately a film about an accelerated loss of autonomy’. Body horror makes the viewer acutely aware of their body and the changes it is constantly experiencing, though these may not be transformations like those depicted in the movies, they are still ‘flaws’ or challenges that people face because of existing in a human body, whether that be ageing, body dysphoria, pregnancy, menstruation, or disability. Body horror  encompasses the horror of living in a body that will be faulty and someday expire expressed by award winning horror fiction writer Caitlin Starling, ‘Body horror is in some ways the easy option. It hurts. It disgusts, by definition. we all have bodies, and the entry fee of being embodied is the certainty- not the risk, the certainty- that eventually, something will go wrong with it. We will lose control of it, we will suffer indignities large and small, we will at some point (at multiple points) have to redefine what it is to be ourselves as our bodies change in ways we can’t predict. And even when our bodies are working “normally”, there are still little horrors that we’ve all learned to welcome: pregnancies, painful growth spurts, aging. That familiarity is what makes body horror such a visceral, overwhelming, powerful tool in storytelling.’  Both Smith and Starling highlight two key factors that create the fear in body horror, the loss of control and the familiar becoming foreign.

We all have bodies, so will all be able to relate to the characters depicted within body horror; Smith relates her views on body horror to her gender dysphoria and transitioning, saying that ‘Old’ ‘mirrors, however unintentionally, the experience many trans people have with their bodies.’, Starling relates body horror to her miscarriages ‘The pain was probably the easiest part to deal with. It was cathartic, and followed a narrative, and had an end point. The hardest part, by far, was the loss of control…You have, somewhere in you, a very personal understanding of what it’s like to be inside a body that both is and isn’t you. That is what you need to reach for, whether your body horror is mundane or magical, prosaic or operatic. You may have never experienced having your intestines rerouted into an impossible object, but you know what it is to be afraid, to not understand what’s happening to your body.’. And, finally, Cronenberg relates his experiences with body horror to his aging and transhuman enhancements as seen above. When related to transhuman changes related to technology he states ‘It’s sort of saying, okay, let’s say that this transformation of the human body that I believe, in fact, is happening because of technology, because of the internet, because of digital media and all of that—I think our nervous systems are adapting to that and are actually changing,” he explains “Therefore we are literally physically quite different from human beings 100 years ago, not to mention 2,000 years ago.” Body horror is scary because it is real, we are all transforming, in different ways, every day, and even though change may be an inherent human fear, it is inevitable.

Cruz Ronald Allan Lopez, (2012), Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror is Biological Horror, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 40:4, 160-168, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01956051.2012.654521

Smith Nadine, (2021) How Body horror movies helped me process my gender dysphoria,  Them, https://www.them.us/story/body-horror-gender-dysphoria-essay

Starling Caitlin,(2021), Why Body Horror is such an evocative tool in storytelling, Body Horror is powerful because it is personal, Crime Reads, https://crimereads.com/on-body-horror-ableism-and-miscarriage/

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Transhumanism

Before exploring transhumanism with relation to horror media it is important to first define transhumanism. Max More states in his essay in ‘The Philosophy of Transhumanism’ that ‘Transhumanists want to apply technology to overcome limits imposed by our biological and genetic heritage. Transhumanists regard human nature not as an end in itself, not as perfect, and not as having any claim on our allegiance. Rather, it is just one point along an evolutionary pathway and we can learn to reshape our nature in ways we deem desirable and valuable. By thoughtfully, carefully, and yet bodily applying technology to ourselves, we can become something no longer accurately described at human- we can become posthuman.’. Through More’s statement we can see that he believes transhumanism is a belief that human evolution has not reached its end and that our combining with technology to enhance ourselves is the next step. Similarly, Anders Sandberg, states in his essay ‘Morphological Freedom’ ‘I would view it as an extension of one’s right to one’s body, not just self-ownership but also the right to modify oneself according to one’s desires.’ Implying that the idea of ‘the self’ is not a fixed existence, it is malleable and can be modified through technological modification.

The word transhumanism was popularised in the 1950’s by British biologist Julian Huxley, ‘It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution’. All of the above sources show transhumanism’s belief that we are now in charge of our own evolution, and that technology and science is the next step. Transhumanists believe that problems caused by the limitations of our biological bodies can be solved through integration of technology to the body. Today this can be seen taking many shapes such as hearing aids, prosthetics, artificial organs made from stem cells and even pharmaceuticals, all of these are man made and help people break out of the biological limitations of their human body.

Angelo Maravita  and Atsushi Iriki conducted a neurophysiological experiment in which they monitored the neural networks of monkeys when they were given a tool to reach food, in the experiment they observed that the monkeys neural network changed to include the tool in its ‘Body Schema’. Bruno Latour comments that when this happens, when the technology becomes transparent enough to get incorporated into our sense of self and our experience of the world, a new compound entity is formed. He first comments on how technology has been inextricable part in human evolution, ‘take account of the work by paleontologists and historians of antiquity to recognize that, according to them, the question of the emergence of technologies and that of humanity have been mixed up for about two and a half million years (Latour and Lemonnier, 1994)’ then states how humans relationship with technology predates even speech and verbal communication, ‘In the wake of pioneering work on chimpanzeean ‘industry’, we now begin to discover long periods in pre-history when technical ability preceded the emergence of human language by several hundred thousand years.’. From this he surmises ‘If the tool is no more proper to humankind than laughter, it will become more and more difficult to trace the border between the empire of the human and the realm of technologies.’.

Transhumanists see a utopian view of the future in which technology can be used to evolve ourselves and solve all manner of problems, but it is not just future evolution that will be tied to technology, through Latours perspective we can see that tools and technology have always been inseparable from humans throughout our past evolutions. This means that humans have always had their ‘self’ tied with the tools and technology we use, they become extensions of the self, ‘becoming ‘autonomous’ and no longer merely automatic.’. As we continue to evolve alongside technology we are becoming increasingly linked, neurophysiological proof shows that our brain sees the technology we use as an extensions of ourselves, the lines between human and technology are becoming blurred.

Despite transhumanists optimism for the relationship between humans and technology, technological transhumanism is a common troupe within the horror genera used to elicit fear. Transhumanism highlights the flaws of the human body, its limitations and ultimately its weakness and fragility, and poses that the only way to overcome this is to become transhuman. This can give the viewer an encroaching feeling, being bodily taken over by a power that is stronger than they can ever hope to be. Technology challenges humans place at the top of the food chain, and as technology is rapidly evolving, humans are trapped in stasis, left by the wayside.

Latour Bruno, (2002), Morality and Technology: The End of the Means, Theory, Culture & Society, Volume 19, Issue 5-6, pg 247-260, http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/downloads/80-MORAL-TECHNOLOGY-GB.pdf

Maravita Angelo, Iriki Atsushi, (2004), Tools for the body (schema), Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 8, Issue 2, Pages 79-86, https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(03)00345-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1364661303003450%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

More Max, (2013), The Philosophy of Transhumanism, The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, Chapter 1, pg 4, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118555927.ch1

Sandberg Anders, (2015), Morphological Freedom, Why We not just Want it but Need, Morphological freedom as a right, pg1 https://anarchotranshumanzine.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/morph1.pdf

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Introduction

In this research journal I intend to research humans ever-evolving connection to technology in the modern world, the depictions of this relationship in art and media, especially within the genera of horror, and analyse this relationship under the lens of transhumanism. I will do this through exploring ai, robot, cyborg and monster depictions in art and media to explore the idea of the other and how society others transhumanist depictions as they cross boundaries of strict views upon the divides between the normal/human and the foreign/other.

I will also look at how technology has not just been depicted within horror but has been used as a vehicle for creating horror media by analysing found footage and analog horror and how these generas use our nostalgic relationship with technology to enhance the viewers fear.

I chose to research this topic because of my interest in the horror genera in its many forms (video games, movies, etc) and in particular, the subgenera found footage as well as its new evolutions in modern indie media: arg horror and analog horror. I hope to do this by creating an animation inspired by the theme of human technological transhumanism and the aesthetics of analog horror that highlights the fear of technological advancements and our changing relationship with technology with how it becomes increasingly prevalent in all our lives.

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Pug animation

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Pug Research Journal

Pugs have been becoming an increasingly popular breed in recent years, according to the BBC there has been a ‘five-fold increase in Kennel Club registrations of pugs from 2005-2017.’ Which has made them the 28th most popular dog breed out of the 204 AKC-recognized breeds. However this rising popularity comes at a price, their short snouted appearance is called cute but  ‘Brachycephalic’ appearance is linked to an array of potential health problems.

From a study by Dan O’Neill, Associate Professor in Companion Animal Epidemiology at the RVC on a population of 905,544 dogs, of which 4308 were Pugs and 21,835 were non-Pugs it was found that ‘Pugs had significantly increased adjusted odds for (57.5%) common disorders. These included: brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome, stenotic nares and corneal ulceration’. The study also found that pugs were 1.9 times as likely to have one or more disorders recorded in a single year compared to non-pugs, showing the breeds overall health is so poor that there have even been studies and articles dubbing ‘Pug health so poor it 'can't be considered a typical dog'’(Pandey, 2022).

However, the pugs health was not always this way, when comparing imagery of the pug of today with the 1745 self-portrait painting of William Hogarth and his pug, Trump, the differences are undeniable: less excess skill, long legs, longer snout, no bulging eyes, straight tail and a slim build. Pugs have been bred for centuries to achieve a certain look in order to make them more appealing to humans but these changes have had a direct effect of pugs health. Their now curled tails have led to spina bifida and brittle vertebrae, their short snout and small head has led to breathing problems, inflammation of the brain also known as pug dog encephalitis (PDE), cranial arthritis, corneal ulceration, brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome, and progressive retinal atrophy, and their smaller size has lead to the excess skin which causes skin fold dermatitis.

This shows how anthropocentric disregard for the health of pugs prioritising their appearance over all else when breeding has lead to their health degrading so heavily. In a study on the ethics and health consequences of pedigree dog breeding Bernice Bovenkerk quotes the ‘Fair Breeding Plan’ drafted by the Dutch Kennel club in 2014 stating that the ‘Two main causes of health problems in pedigree dogs that are identified are selective breeding for extreme looks and the narrow genepool of many breeds.’ In 2008, an investigative documentary by the BBC found that there was significant inbreeding between pedigree dogs ‘with a study by Imperial College, London, showing that the 10,000 pugs in the UK were so inbred that their gene pool was the equivalent of only 50 individuals’.

And it is not only breeders that are wilfully disregarding the suffering of pugs, it is also the people who buy them, in spite of news articles trying to warn potential owners away from buying pugs such as the bbc article titled ‘Why experts are warning the public not to buy pugs’ and others like it, people are still buying purebred pugs and contributing their continued health problems. This shows that anthropocentrism is not a rarity but instead the status quo for societies treatment of animals, even those that we consider closest or ‘mans best friend’ are only seen as having value by being inbred to the point of severe health problems which is why I decided to focus my practical project on displaying the horror of anthropocentrism towards pugs.

Animal practical work statement:

I was allocated the pug and decided to depict the way that humans anthropocentrism has blinded them to their callous treatment of pugs that happens in plain sight. I transformed a pin-up girl illustration, a symbol of beauty that is objectified and commodified by their appearance, into a pug to parallel how humans have bred pugs prioritising their appearance above all else, turning a blind eye to the detrimental health effects. I also used the imagery of a human skull, a dog skull, and a pug skull to emphasise how mutated and horrific pugs have become as a result of breeders anthropocentric approach to breeding.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-61494094 Manish Pandey, 2022, Pug health so poor it 'can't be considered a typical dog' – study, BBC News

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/61490321 ,2022, Why experts are warning the public not to buy pugs, BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7569064.stm  , 2008, Pedigree dogs plagued by disease, BBC News

https://cgejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40575-022-00117-6 , Dan G O’neill et al, 2022, Health of Pug dogs in the UK: disorder predispositions and protections, Bio med central (BMC): Canine Medicine and Genetics

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10806-017-9673-8 Bernice Bovenkerk et al, 2017, The Pedigree Dog Breeding Debate in Ethics and Practice: Beyond Welfare Arguments, Springer Link

https://www.rvc.ac.uk/vetcompass/news/new-research-shows-pugs-have-high-health-risks-and-can-no-longer-be-considered-a-typical-dog-from-a-health-perspective#:~:text=Brachycephalic%20obstructive%20airway%20syndrome%20(BOAS,to%20their%20extreme%20flat%20faces. 2022, New research shows Pugs have high health risks and can no longer be considered a ‘typical dog’ from a health perspective, Royal Veterinary College

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137496 , Rowena M. A. Packer et al, 2015, Impact of Facial Conformation on Canine Health: Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome, Plos One

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Animal Liberation: All animals are equal, short analysis

Singer starts the chapter by showing some of the arguments used against the women’s rights movement, in which Thomas Taylor parodies the work of Mary Wollstonecraft to say that women having equal rights would be as absurd as animals or brutes. This opens up the debate of what qualifies a living being, human or otherwise, to have rights and what should these rights entail. Springer argues that the stance that men and women should have the same rights because they are rational whereas animals are not, is correct but can be taken further. This is because men and women do indeed have differences, as he states the women’s rights movement sought for abortions to be available to women, ‘it does not follow that since these same feminists are campaigning for equality between men and women they must support the right of men to have abortions too.’ (pg 2, Singer) Because of this Singer argues that equality is not treating different groups the exact same but instead ‘the basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration’(pg 2, Singer). This relates to later in the extract when Singer debates what this means for animal rights, and quotes Jeremey Bentham who argues ‘the question is not, can they reason? Nor can they talk? But, can they suffer?’. Here it is argued that a beings capacity for suffering is a vital characteristic for receiving equal consideration.

Singers main argument is that our considerations for others should be equal, whether human or inhuman, and that the differences in rights afforded based on consideration cannot be decided by characteristics or qualities such as race, gender, intelligence or capacity for speech but should instead be based on whether the being in question has wants and needs as ‘the capacity for suffering and enjoyment is the prerequisite for having interests at all’ (pg 7, Singer).

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Artist research: Satoshi Kon

For my project on identity I wanted to focus specifically on how my memory loss impacts my identity. Because of this theme of memory, nostalgia and memory loss I decided to research the works of Satoshi kon, an artist known for his reality bending works such as perfect blue and paprika.

The producer of perfect blue, Taro Maki, ‘compared the seamless connection between illusion and reality to a trompe loei. A French expression meaning to trick the eye.’(Osmond, pg 43) which is corroborated by Jenner when he states ‘Paprika depicts what can only be described as a hallucinatory tour de force;’(Jenner) which shows how integral tricks and illusions are throughout Kons body of work which makes him the prefect artist to relate to my practical work on my illusion box. Jenner describes perfect blue as a ‘fragmented plot, with flashbacks, false realities and distorted memories’ and ‘frantic editing and fractured storytelling complementing a tale that is already strewn with misdirection and madness’ which shows that in Kons work that his form follows function. Kon’s works often start quite grounded, establishing setting and character naturally, which is why when reality starts to bend and shift and becomes indistinguishable from dreams and memories it is all the more terrifying to behold, and one of the main ways that Kon communicates his characters descent to madness is to use editing and scene transitions to make the viewer feel the same way. His work is relevant because it is also widely known for its surrealist approach to depicting memory because of the seamless transitions mentioned by Osmond; ‘Famed by his erratic approach to storytelling, his detached fluidity in editing, his filmic fluctuation with reality and the subliminal, revealing transience of memory’ (Jenner).

Magnetic rose is another of Kon's works that deals with the topics of memories and loss and the message behind the movie is summarised perfectly by Jenner; ‘The rose, as memory, is magnetic – a serene image of tactile nostalgia. Yet, the rose can sting and wound and should, after a while, die, like our hold on the past.’. Kon has depicted memory not just as transient and fleeting but as a powerful and potentially damaging entity, when we struggle to hold onto the past we can destroy our present.

Andrew Osmond, 2009, Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist, Stone Bridge Press

Simon Jenner,2020, Satoshi Kon: The Lingering Genius of Anime’s Most Eclectic Visionary, Sabukaru

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Scissors and Glue short analysis

Scissors and glue covers the emergence and evolution of punk fanzines, their production, visual styles and topics covered. The extract opens by establishing the importance of fanzines as being ‘integral to the creation of a thriving communication network of underground culture’ (Triggs,2006,pg70,). The reasons alternative culture used the fanzine as their medium of choice is because this DIY approach  was cheap to produce and thus open for anyone to attempt creating such as Mark Perry the creator of Sniffin' Glue (1976-1977) who printed copies of his zine secretly at his, and his friends workplaces in order to cut costs even further(Triggs, pg 71). The DIY process was also used as a means of ‘critiquing mass production through the very handmade quality it embrace’ (pg 70).

The graphic design aesthetic of the 1970’s punk movement was characterised by ‘cut-n-paste letterforms, photocopied and collaged images, hand-scrawled and typewritten texts’ (pg 70). These visuals were popularised by the first punk fanzine Sniffin’ glue, ‘it’s A4, stapled, photocopied pages and layouts using handwritten and typewritten texts.’ (Triggs, pg 71) these characteristics became the foundations of the visual style of punk fanzines. The use of crossing out grammatical mistakes was also widely implemented because ‘This stressed the immediacy of its production and of the information, but also the transparency of the design and journalistic process itself.’(Triggs, pg 71)

The contents of punk fanzines of the 70’s not only documented gig schedules, interviews, reviews, and personal rants, they were also used to reflect the political landscape as ‘This was a period of substantial cultural, social and political change where punk reacted against the 'modern world' and the absorption of 'hippy culture' into the mainstream.’( Triggs, Pg 70) The reason that such haphazard techniques were used was not only to make fanzines accessible to more people and cut costs but also to reflect the chaos of the movement and its anarchistic spirit, breaking down visual conventions and rebuilding them ‘unencumbered by formal design rules and visual expectations’ (Triggs, pg71)An instance of the visuals and the contents of the fanzines working in tandem to enhance the same message is the violent use of language and shocking imagery worked ‘as part of a general shock tactic strategy meant to offend and draw attention to punk itself. The DIY approach to fanzine production ensured the menacing nature of the words in the use of cut-up ransom note lettering.’(Triggs, pg73)

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Identity practical work statement

For my project on identity I wanted to focus specifically on how my memory loss impacts my identity. My memories exist on a spectrum, some are clear, whilst others are distorted or entirely missing. To play into this theme of illusions and disappearing I decided to create a disappearing rabbit magic trick box. When looking into the box it appears empty because of an illusion created by a mirror, but when opened from another angle the rabbit appears.

I built a white rabbit out of small wooden blocks to make the rabbit appear distorted and pixelated to show how even when I am able to remember my memories they are usually not whole, and are vague distortions of the true events, like a pixelated photograph. I chose to make a white rabbit because a white rabbit is the most common colour used in magic tricks and also has connotations of Alice in wonderland and her following a white rabbit down a rabbit hole to a world of distortions and illusions.

I covered the outside of the box with miniature playing cards to emphasise the magic trick theme and to display how memories are the foundations upon which each person’s identity is built and as I am missing memories I often feel like my identity is a house of cards that could someday cave in and disappear.