Scrambled Evolution - Digital Studio 1: Final Assessment

Описание: Final Assessment Term 1 2025

My work “Scrambled Evolution” is an exploration into the parallels of humanity and nature, using the contrast figures of the urban man with the common pigeon to demonstrate the connection we all share as living things, as well as the power dynamics humans seem to wield against their feathered underlings, despite their behavioural similarities. Through a hybrid mixed media video work, I juxtaposed the city with nature, using both 2D animation and live footage to further demonstrate how the fragile relationship between man and beast is both distant yet strongly interlinked.

In my research I found other artists who used central themes and specific animals to carryout their messages to the world. One such artist William Wegman is a photo and video artist who is nicknamed “the dog photographer”, after his use of the canine to comment on the power dynamics and intricate relationships within society. He, like my own work, makes the impactful link between humans and their animal counterparts, in this case the dog, to present his audience with questions of humanity’s supposed power over the natural world, why we feel the need to control and tame what is greater than us. His work “Dog Walker” (2020) remarks on these human tendencies, using hyperbolic images of a dog is a large, fur coat who is holding the leash of another dog, creating a comedic and
thought-provoking image that interrogates the bond between a dog and their owner, a man and their pet. This “clash between species-specific cultures” (McHugh, 2001, p.236) is present throughout all his works and is
heightened in the short film “Spelling Lesson” (1978), where he similarly uses a wave of humour and satire to establish the levels of difference and connection the differing species of human and dog share. “Their sharp
demarcation of the limit of cross-species understanding reveals a distinct, if limited, exchange of ideas between dog and man and across overlapping systems of thought” (McHugh, 2001, p.236) is presented through the onesided discussion between Wegman and his dog, having an absurdly serious persona as he quizzes the dog on different words. Here he demonstrates that despite the dog’s lack of understanding of what his owner is saying, he still reacts to it, questioning the words when he is spoken to and sensing the disappointment of Wegman when the dog “spells the word wrong”. My own work took similar concepts to Wegman, with the mirroring of human and pigeon behaviour throughout the first black and white section of my work, first displaying modern human life in the city then comparing it to the similarly styled life of the pigeon. The black and white creates conformity, which represents the literal conformity of pigeons as unremarkable animals with little variation and the metaphorical conformity of many establishments within urban living. The back and forth between the two creatures blur the lines between them, capturing similar manners of busyness and monotony.

I also took inspiration from the psychedelic experimentation of Tame Impala’s “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” music video, which captures a neon mindscape that plays and repeats throughout the song, reflecting the dreamlike composition of the audio itself. I similarly distilled a close
relationship with the audio of my own animation, with an original score I was able to shape both video and audio to align in rhythm and atmosphere, with its hallucinogenic middle section being complimented by the grand, voluminous middle section of the song. Tame Impala’s use of shape and colour was also very inspiring, and I aimed to create the same flowing transition of figures within the middle section of my video, with each creature contorting into the next smoothly, mimicking the course of evolution and showing the interconnectedness of all living things. I too used a vibrant palette of colours to convey life and energy that also represented different paths of evolution, of birds, plants, reptiles and humans.

The final section of my video combined my two inspirations together, both the surrealism of Tame Impala and the insightful world commentary of Wegman as I display the destruction of the natural world at the hands of man through the simple metaphor of cooking an egg, only to reveal that the man has the head of a pigeon and is in fact damaging himself, much like how human society corrupts the environment that will end up being their own detriment. The combination of live and animated elements brings the film together as it comes to an end in an almost cyclical nature as the (pigeon) man gets ready for work.