What the hell did we just watch? And can we watch it again?
“Escape Pod (excerpt)” by American artist and animator Jonathan Monaghan.
You can see more of Monaghan’s work on his Vimeo channel, or at his website. What wonderful work this is.
Below, “Alien Fanfare,” described by Monaghan:
Alien Fanfare chronicles a majestic invasion of a fantastical spacecraft, part flesh, part baroque architecture. The invasion ends with a riff of Albrecht Durer’s 15th century woodcut The Triumphal Arch, re-imagined as a boutique hotel. The film plays with our desires and anxieties to create a surreal vision of a possible future.
“The Pavillion”:
Conflating Baroque architecture, Faberge eggs, human orifices, and a luxurious walk-in closet, The Pavilion is an unreal meditation on wealth and power. In the work, a meticulously crafted virtual structure continually spawns strange egg-shaped pods. With ominous imagery and sharp, seductive visuals, Monaghan postulates a world permeated by over-powering technology and luxury.
And below, “The Mothership”:
Dali meets SciFi in a fantastical vision from an alternate reality. Cows, superheros, video games, luxury hotels, and operating rooms seamlessly meld in a surreal exploration of value and power in the digital era. Trapped in an endless loop of seductive but ultimately vacuous simulation where meanings don’t quite materialize.
[via the world’s greatest curator of weird shit, Robert Popper.]