.DESTRUCTIVE INTERFERENCE:.
.A Response to How To Break A Zebra.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 05.09.2024 ]

A written response to Quincy Kmetz's short narrative work How To Break A Zebra, in which the latent malignancy of contemporary objects is explored


.DON'T TRY.
[ nightputrid / 05.07.2024 ]

This week's addition to the archive is DON'T TRY by nightputrid, an online multi-choice adventure which looks at the repetition and isolation of contemporary working life.

Check back next week for a written response.


.FROM HELL’S HEART TO THE TALL, DRY GRASS:.
.A Response to You Can Only Turn Left.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 04.29.2024 ]

A written response to Emiland Kray’s interactive narrative work, You Can Only Turn Left, in which we delve down some of the more obscure branches of the animal horror subgenre.


.How to Break a Zebra.
[ Quincy Kmetz / 04.22.2024 ]

This week we're excited to be including another piece of short fiction on the site, with Quincy Kmetz's piece How to Break a Zebra. The work, which includes a series of images as well, tells a disjointed narrative of first hand accounts from someone deeply embroiled in the contemporary, hypermodern world, and its many intangible pressures.

Check back next week for a written response.


.The Germ of Desire:.
.A Response to Pox Party .
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 04.22.2024 ]

A written response to Ian Haig's digital image series Pox Party, in which the relationships between desire, emulation, extraction, and generation are explored.


.You Can Only Turn Left.
[ Emiland Kray / 04.15.2024 ]

This week's addition to the archive is an interactive narrative by Emiland Kray, titled You Can Only Turn Left. The piece explores the blurred boundaries between wakefulness and sleep, memory and identity, and agency and impulse; taking the viewer down a rabbit hole of loops and cycles that threaten to plunge from waking dream down into full on nightmare at any moment. This one is especially recommended for anyone who's ever had to deal with insomnia.

Check back next week for a written response.


.Why Blood?:.
.A Response to Bloody Sticky Stuff .
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 04.10.2024 ]

A written response to Bloody Sticky Stuff by Light Shadows, in which the essential role of blood within the horror genre is discussed.


.Pox Party.
[ Ian Haig / 04.08.2024 ]

*** Content Warning: Graphic Body Horror Images and Medical Adjacent Images ***

This week's addition to the archive comes from Ian Haig, and is titled Pox Party. This collection of AI-assisted imagery takes a critical look at reductive and utilitarian expressions of posthumanism, which are often tied in with Silicon Valley-esque concepts of 'improving humanity' through making them as amenable to capital as possible. Further, it makes use of AI generated imagery as a means to highlight the irony of such ideologies, which position digital technology as representing human perfection, when those same technologies consistently show a fundamental inability to understand even basic human anatomy, let alone any aspect of higher human consciousness.

Check back next week for a written response.


.Bloody Sticky Stuff.
[ Light Shadows / 04.01.2024 ]

We're beginning a new stretch of programming this month, not based around any specific theme, other than Hypermodern Horror itself. To kick things off, we have a musical work by Light Shadows, titled Bloody Sticky Stuff. The artists themselves had this to say aout it:

“Our music spans the light and the shadows as our name suggests. Though we wouldn’t describe our shadow side as horror, the definition of hypermodern horror struck us as in line with our song “Bloody Sticky Stuff.” It was written from two vantages: one vampiric, and the other as a reflection on the essence of what connects us and challenges us as humans.

No matter our affectations, presentation or advancements, in the end we are all bloody sticky stuff: messy and fueled by our passions whether of love or anger. We can’t deny what we are or what we have in common. Even when we try to exert controls - whether positive ones rooted in values, choice, discipline or restrictive outward forces of rules, laws, judgement - this crude essence is always present beneath the surface. The song posits the benefit of learning to recognize, understand, accept, and craft ourselves and our world without denying this essence."

Check back next week for a written response.


.Brimstone Bones:.
.A Response to The Alchemist .
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 03.11.2024 ]

We're closing out Feature Qreep this week with a written response to Mortimer, Be Quiet.'s music video for The Alchemist, in which the subtle interplay of signs, symbols, and references is explored.


.The Alchemist.
[ Mortimer, Be Quiet. / 02.26.2024 ]

It's Alive! Feature Qreep continues this week with another banger from Mortimer, Be Quiet. titled The Alchemist. As you've no doubt already come to expect from them, this new work is haunting, strange, beautiful, and unabashedly queer. Watch / listen now, preferably with the lights out, and if you can swing it, during a thunderstorm.

Check back next week for a written response.


.Shall We Play a Game?:.
.A Response to Be Vardų, Be Kojų’ .
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 02.26.2024 ]

A written response to Brigita Gedgaudas' experimental animated dance work, Be Vardų, Be Kojų', in which the underlying fear of both Queerness and the Digital is explored.


.Be Vardų, Be Kojų.
[ Brigita Gedgaudas / 02.05.2024 ]

Feature Qreep continues with a video piece by Brigita Gedgaudas titled Be Vardų, Be Kojų'. Gedgaudas themself has this to say about the work:

"'Be Vardų, Be Kojų', meaning ‘without names, without legs’, is an experimental, animated, dance film investigating queer movement in Lithuanian folk dance. Using photograms made from scanning dancers performing specific male and female folk dance steps, each dancer has been glitched by the computer’s inability to put moving bodies into one space and time. This glitch disrupts a person’s understanding of what the dance step is, removing relationships between human articulation and socio-political conceptions around movement. Creating an entirely digital dance, the glitches become the performers, demonstrating that human understandings of the world do not matter to them. Thus, 'Be Vardų, Be Kojų' is a foray into queer world-building, using the indeterminacy of digital space to imagine queerness within Lithuanian folk dance."

Check back next week for a written response.


.Queering The Machine:.
.A Response to Gay AI Dreams .
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 02.05.2024 ]

A written response to Michael Malenfant's video piece Gay AI Dreams, in which the queering of technology itself is briefly explored.


.Gay AI Dreams.
[ Michael Malenfant / 01.22.2024 ]

Feature Qreep, our delve into Queer Horror with a Hypermodern bent, begins with a video work by Michael Malenfant, titled Gay AI Dreams. The work utilizes both AI and facial recognition software to create a surreal flow of homoeroticism and queer desire, as mediated through both the lens of contemporary technology, and the setting of a murky, suburbanized non-place.

Check back next week for a written response.


.Theme Announcement:.
.Feature Qreep .
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 01.15.2024 ]

(Almost) in time for the new year, we’re launching a new theme.

Welcome to Feature Qreep, a collection of Queer Horror from a hypermodern world. Each work in this diverse collection speaks on some level to the nature or experience of Queerness within a contemporary context; including all of the horrors which that existence can inherently include, reveal, or recontextualize.

The history of Queerness in and through horror is as old as the genre itself, and we are excited to finally be exploring one of the fundamental pillars of the medium, presented through the works of many talented creators, in a host of different mediums.


.Border Sickness:.
.A Response to The Works of Julie Maurin .
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 12.11.2023 ]

A written response to the works of Julie Maurin, which appeared under the theme of The Valley Low. Within it, the nature of both hard and soft borders, and the inherent violence of both, is explored.


.White Gaze.
[ Credits Below / 12.04.2023 ]

Before jumping into our next theme, we have a special feature to share. A limited time screening of the short film White Gaze, available to view through the site until .December 31st, 2023. which will be the first of what we're calling our Creeper Feature series. The description and credits are below. Watch it while you can, and check back soon for a written response to the film.

'Latine twentysomething, Gema, is forced to confront the looming threat of gentrification head-on—after having no choice but to let an overeager stranger move in or risk being evicted. The uneasy peace soon turns sinister, exposing her to something far more invasive.'

Starring Gema Rubi, Shannon Gibbs, Alain Argueta

Written, Directed, Edited by ETA
Produced by Shanhuan Manton
Cinematography by Cole Maslansky
Original Score by Cullen Griffin, Jason Binnick, Ramiro Zapata


.Various Works.
[ Julie Maurin / 11.27.2023 ]

The Valley Low wraps up with a collection of mixed media and sculptural works by Julie Maurin.

These works investigate the Necropastoral through their hybridized forms, merging organic and inorganic, animal and landscape, growth and decay. While not directly referencing the classically pastoral, the frequent relations between flat wall works and more expansive free-standing works often challenge the intentionally limited vantage points of that earlier tradition. Most of all, they revel in strange growth, and the elevation of nature's more viral, cancerous and weed-like permutations, often at the boundary between living and dead.

Check back next week for a written response.


.A Straight Line is Really a Wave:.
.A (Brief) Response to Adrian Randall’s A Human Year is Seven Earth Years .
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 11.27.2023 ]

A written response to Adrian Randall's experimental documentary, in which the relationship of medium and message, line and wave, is explored.


.A Human Year is Seven Earth Years.
[ Adrian Randall / 11.13.2023 ]

The Valley Low continues with an experimental documentary work by Adrian Randall, titled A Human Year is Seven Earth Years. The piece explores the imperial history of telecommunications networks and its impacts on both the physical and psychological landscape of the last century.

Randall themselves has this to say about it: 'This film interrogates the psychogeographic weight of 'el imperio estadounidense' and its quest to create a militarized global communications system. To what extent has the last century of network-building been a type of psychological warfare reaching our very dreams? And what remnants of this imperial project can we use to build a different future?'

Check back next week for a written response.


.Unchecked Growth:.
.A Response to Cookie Brunel’s Oiled Blossoming Synthesizer.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 10.30.2023 ]

A written response to Cookie Brunel's sound-generative sculptural work, Oiled Blossoming Synthesizer, in which the work is plumbed for lessons on the nature of recovery and the human role within it.


.Oiled Blossoming Synthesizer.
[ Cookie Brunel / 10.23.2023 ]

We're continuing The Valley Low with a generative, audio/sculptural piece, titled Oiled Blossoming Synthesizer, by Cookie Brunel. Drawing inspiration from the accessible (and in many ways queered) mutability of the contaminated and machinic earth, the O.B.S emits drone-like noises upon physical interaction. Brunel themselves have this to say about it:

'The object’s form is a cross between plant, geology, and abandoned machine. It’s not clear if the O.B.S is mimicking something dead (as camouflage?) or alternatively if it is something dead that yearns to be alive. It’s not clear if it is producing oil (like a squid?), or if like a machine, oil is required for its movement.'

The link above will direct you to a sample of the synthesizer's audio output, so make sure to break out your headphones and turn down the lights. A written response to the piece will be added next Monday.


.Get Your Good Shoes Dirty:.
.A Response to Szkuty’s Danse Makabre.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 10.17.2023 ]

A written response to the video piece Danse Makabre by Szkuty, in which the question of death and dancing is explored.


.Danse Makabre.
[ Szkuty / 10.09.2023 ]

We're kicking off our latest theme, The Valley Low, with this video piece by the art and performance duo Szkuty, titled Danse Makabre. Szkuty themselves have this to say about it:

'The manifestation of care for the place it is being danced at. The mud itself can be a scene of a wasteland, a construction site or a meadow. It is not clear whether it is a place that something is meant to be built, or a witness of a destructive past.

Is it a dance to commemorate death or birth?

Activity can also be read as a dance performed by the Earth herself, which by conducting the dancers, performs its ritual of survival. Two figures dance a macabre, obsessed dance, as if not only their survival depended on it, but also the life of the whole earth.'


.Theme Announcement:.
.The Valley Low.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 10.09.2023 ]

Our latest theme is The Valley Low, a hypermodern investigation of, and encounter with, the Necropastoral, a theoretical and aesthetic lens which we've previously discussed .here.

To learn more about the theme, click on the title of this post to read the full entry.


.The Dream Museum.
.Anthology Horror TTRPG.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 08.05.2023 ]

One night, not so long ago, you went to sleep, and dreamed…

The Dream Museum is an anthology-based horror TTRPG, (tabletop roleplaying game) that casts the players in the role of ordinary souls, who, by reasons unknown, have found themselves trapped between dream and waking. Trapped within The Dream Museum. The game is a hack of the open license game .DURF. but familiarity with that game isn’t required to play.

If you’ve ever played (or wanted to play) D&D, and want to try something with a surreal, horror edge, then gather some friends and a few dice and delve, if you dare, into the dark between dreams…


.Dream Museum Response.
.Written by James Knott.
[ James Knott / 08.04.2023 ]

A written response to The Dream Museum's collected works, by past contributor and friend of the site James Knott. Knott explores the recurrent theme of collage, 'stuff on stuff on stuff' which pervades The Dream Museum collection.


.The Dream Museum.
[ Theme Collection / 08.15.2023 ]

Welcome to The Dream Museum, a collection of works which speaks both to the nature of dreams themselves, and the inherently surreal and nightmarish state of the so-called capitalist dream. Unlike previous themes, these works have been collected together into their own page, so that they can exist in direct conversation with one another. New works will be added daily, so keep checking back as the collection expands.


.Ever Approaching, Never Arriving:.
.Emma Ongman’s Black Hole.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 06.19.2023 ]

A response to Emma Ongman's digital video work Black Hole, in which a number of flawed but fascinating science fiction experiments are discussed, along with the nature of absence / presence in the control schemes of the hypermodern world.


.black hole.
[ Emma Ongman / 06.12.2023 ]

We're closing out the theme of Lament Configurations with Emma Ongman's piece, black hole. This video work blends black and white visuals with an ambient soundscape to generate a slow, contemplative horror. Simultaneously evoking the vast emptiness of outer space and the claustrophobic hold of inner space, Ongman's piece explores both the struggle between, and the overlap of, the two extremes.


.Floating Eyes:.
.CAM Collective's Migrants at Bay.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 06.05.2023 ]

A written response to SYBERTEK: Migrants at Bay by CAM Collective. Comparing and contrasting with a number of works, in different mediums, this response explores both CAM Collective's unique perspective, as well as the layered way in which their interactive piece casts the viewer.


.SYBERTEK: Migrants at Bay.
[ CAM Collective / 05.29.2023 ]

Our latest addition to Lament Configurations comes from CAM Collective, and is titled SYBERTEK: Migrants at Bay. This interactive digital work explores the more subtle architecture of bureaucracy and legality, specifically through the lens of migration / national boundaries. The user takes on the role of an agent within that architecture of control, placing them face to face with its various dehumanizing systems and protocols.


.Like Layers of Old Paint:.
.Chauncy Z Marlowe’s Chongqing Projection.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 05.15.2023 ]

A response to Chauncy Marlowe's work Chongqing Projection, (which includes a score by FFHKS) in which the cycle of increasingly inhuman decision making, and its effects upon place, are explored.


.Chongqing Projection.
[ Chauncy Z Marlowe / 05.08.2023 ]

This weeks addition to the Lament Configurations theme is Chongqing Projection by Chauncy Z Marlowe with music by Fortune Friedman Hemberger Krimstein and Smith (FFHKS). Layering digital animation with a rendering of a specific structure from the Jiulongpo district in the city of Chongqing, Marlowe's work explores the multiform roles of architecture, as well as the disparity between those who control it and those who live with it, as well as the impacts of its loss or transformation.


.A Tall Slender Building, Casting a Shadow:.
.Lucy Earle’s Inside The Ashes.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 05.08.2023 ]

A written response to Lucy Earle's Inside The Ashes, which reflects on the architecture of trauma and control under the current neoliberal order.


.Inside The Ashes.
[ Lucy Earle / 04.24.2023 ]

Our latest addition to the Lament Configurations theme is a piece of flash fiction by Lucy Earle. Inside The Ashes presents an evocative moment of storytelling which straddles the line between science fiction and magical realism, in which the histories of both its world and lead characters are explored.


.Slipping Through The Cracks:.
.Shaughn Martel’s Walkers.
[ Richard Williams / 04.24.2023 ]

A very personal response to Shaughn Martel's Walkers by Feature Creep Editor Richard Williams, in which the experience of public, urban dissolution is explored.


.Walkers.
[ Shaughn Martel / 04.10.2023 ]

Our second installment within the theme of Lament Configurations, Walkers, comes to us from artist Shaughn Martel. This video piece places the viewer within a moment of dissociation, or disruption, embodied by the uncanny shifting of an everyday urbanscape. Informed by the artist's experiences with ADHD and aphantasia, Walkers captures perfectly the contemporary anxiety of space and moment. Check back next week for a written response.


.Second Waves:.
.Lingxiang Wu’s The Labyrinth of Digital Bodies.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 04.03.2023 ]

A response to Lingxiang Wu's latest work, The Labyrinth of Digital Bodies, in which that work's position within the history of the digital / 3D platformers is investigated.


.The Labyrinth of Digital Bodies.
[ Lingxiang Wu / 03.27.2023 ]

The latest interactive digital piece by artist Lingxiang Wu, titled The Labyrinth of Digital Bodies, will serve as the perfect jumping off point for our latest theme, Lament Configurations: Architecture Beyond Pain or Pleasure. Presenting a navigable space that is both uniquely digital and steeped in contemporary structures, Wu's Labyrinth is a fascinating and unsettling first step into this latest subject.


.Theme Announcement:.
.Lament Configurations.
[ _feature_creep_team_ / 03.27.2023 ]

Announcing our next theme, Lament Configurations: Architecture Beyond Pain or Pleasure. This collection of works will explore the nature of hypermodern architecture (structural, superstructural and infrastructural) and the ways in which it is increasingly non or even anti-human in its design.

This investigation will delve into not only physical and digital architectures, but social and bureaucratic ones as well, and the ways that each of these have (d)evolved under Capitalism to further entrench and expand systems of control, extraction and marginalization.

We have lots of interesting works forthcoming within this theme, including a recent work by Lingxiang Wu coming out this week to kick things off. Keep checking back every Monday at 9am as we continue to explore the limits of the puzzle box that is hypermodern architecture.