Pure-Chaste-Productive Loop

During my research into sci-fi texts such as 1984 and the Kurt Wimmer film Equilibrium I discovered a coherent theme of propaganda being used to force abstinence and celibacy. In 1984 the youth of Oceania are encouraged to join the Junior Anti-Sex League. The ASL preaches promises of Purity through Chastity and encourage the adoption of Artsem (Artificial Insemination in Newspeak) as a way of reproducing.

In Equilibrium, citizens are often convicted of 'Sense Offences' including lust and passion towards the opposite sex. These offences are usually punished by incineration. Both texts employ chastity as a way of extinguishing the sex drive and destroying the traditional family unit - as this is seen to be deviations to the ideological causes of both institutions in Equilibrium and 1984.

I too decided to adopt this sense of forced chastity in one of my loops. I wanted to portray the dictatorship that technology has over our lives and by using similar propaganda I could draw similarities to the forces in Equilibrium and in 1984. I wanted to further this intertextual referencing by bringing in other recognisable imagery of oppressive regimes in modern society. I selected the Soviet Russian Union and East German Communists. I decide to incorporate Communist typefaces, namely the Kremlin font. I chose the bold and stark colour palettes of strong reds and crisp whites, to resemble the colours of the Russian flag. The character design was inspired by West German graffiti on the Berlin Wall opposing the East German regime. I liked the simplicity of the design of the male, I emulated this using the pen tool and duplicated it to create a 'female' by adding a gradual fade of hair and slightly lighter hue.  Using simple animation techniques, such as position keyframing and scaling, I created a scene with objects that I had created in Photoshop.

The message behind my animation was twofold, I wanted to highlight how human interaction with social networking through ever accessible mediums such as smartphones and tablet devices is creating data. Big data that can be commodified and in this way we are producing for a regime of Intelligence, advertising and security services use these data packages to commodify us also. The secondary message of my loop was to highlight the role of technology in a oppressive regime against us as citizens. I feel I have achieved this through the inter textual references that I previously mentioned.