Associations from tutorial discussion and reflection

Affection and personhood

Associations with the humanoid becoming human, being seen as human, experiences of affection between non-human and human.

Comments were sparked about my hot water bottle ‘long boi’ as I’ve started calling him/it revolving around a slight playfulness and comical aspect, partially linked to the bright colour and size and floppiness. These moved into personification and affection of this artifact which resulted in associations with personifications found in media.

Dolores – The Umbrella Academy, 2019 – Stranded in an apocalyptic future alone, Five finds a shop mannequin for company and in the sanity-endangering loneliness that follows, he names it Dolores, talking to ‘her’ and becoming attached to her as he would a spouse.

Marvin the Paranoid Android – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams – An android burdened with a huge intelligence that manifests a deep depressive outlook, with dry humoured remarks that are comically depressive.

Frankenstein’s Monster – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley – The childlike naivety of the Monster has intrigued me since I originally studied Frankenstein. In my high school, we had to write a script of Frankenstein’s trial, with a classmate portraying the Monster as an abandoned and lost child. This still is from the 1931 film, in which the Monster sits with an equally naive child, plying with flowers. This scene does end in the Monster tossing the child in the lake, which I think is unrepresentative of the book’s character, but I feel the innocence is still resonant.

Also worth a mention: The Freestone Drone, George Barber – The sniper drone in this found footage film has an endearing but eerie voice that reminds me of Thomas the Tank Engine, and cheerily narrates both its sniper assignments and its deviations from its orders.

To what extent to objects need to be human-like for us to bond with them? At what point does this become uncanny?

Alien invasion

The tutorial discussion involved identifying the distinction between my ‘long boi’ and the series of scans that I enlarged to create a larger image. The latter was associated with creepy invasive reaching arms, no longer endearing and warmth-providing, but instead intimidating and switching the power dynamic.

Frankenstein is perhaps the best place to  begin with this train of thought. What fascinates me is not only the rejection of the scientist of his former pride and joy, now monstrosity, but how the Monster transforms from a childlike, clumsy, scared and ‘parent’-needing creation into a powerful, intelligent, pained and rage-filled ‘antagonist’. This transformation is seen when Frankenstein is confronted by his creation who is now painfully aware of his monstrous nature, and kills with purpose instead of out of panic.

What makes the almost-human a threat? Scale and colour are key elements that impact this in my work, but so does context, with my wardrobe exhibition creating confinement and a sense of invasion.

Black Medicine Coffee Company postcard, Candice Purwin – a comical visual representation of warmth-turned-invasive.

Not To Be Known, Aideen Barry – animation of household objects to represent the confined feeling of the home, as well as her mental state.

Fibrebots, Neri Oxman – tubular structures created by ‘silk’-spinning robot swarms that react to the environment ‘to rapidly create architectural structures’, reminiscent of tentacles.

Feather Starfish – the movement of this is beautiful but alien, too many limbs, too finger-like -a movement I may study if I animate my work.

Beyond the Aquila, Love, Death & Robots – stills from a sci-fi animated short where a spider-like cosmic horror weaves and binds and invades lost spaceships (also reminds me of Stranger Things contagion associations)

also worth mentioning: ‘The Subharmonic Murmur of Black Tentacular Voids’ poem, referenced by Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of this Planet – a poem used to explore the non-human, the ‘world-without-us’

What next?

Animation perhaps, some shorts of both of these ‘stages’ before considering the metamorphosis of one into the other. Perhaps give it a voice, and breath, using sloshing sounds of hot water bottles and an air pump.

Affection and Personhood to Alien Invasion / Claire Bath / Intermedia by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0