Feral Kat was created in conjunction with Ghost of Rock 'n' Roll. The root image in both animations was sampled from photographs of female rock singers. Feral Kat uses the image of Kat Bjelland. This represents the fourth time I am incorporating Kat Bjelland's image in a piece of web art. The previous three times were in kinderwhore.com, Learning to Respect Beauty, and Flower of Madness. Am I obsessed with Kat Bjelland? No, I am not obsessed with her personally; rather, I am fascinated by her place as an icon in pop culture. Is it wrong to think of a relatively obscure rocker like Kat Bjelland as an icon? No, because rock 'n' roll is at the heart of pop culture and pop culture is by nature iconic. Pop culture icons possess various degrees of fame. They can be extremely famous (Madonna) or far more obscure (Kat Bjelland). Of course, obscurity does not negate potency, nor does fame guarantee it. Indeed, it can be said that fame negates potency. How so? By obscuring it, burying it in hype. Thus I believe Iggy Pop is a more potent rock icon than Elvis Presley, simply because Elvis carries too much media-spewed baggage, whereas Iggy's iconic image is largely his own invention. Kat Bjelland also invented her own iconic image. Feral Kat plays with that image.
For me web animation breaks down into two extremes. One extreme is embodied by this animated text, the other by Ghost of Rock 'n' Roll. As I indicated, the two animations were created in conjunction. By this I mean that I worked on them at the same time, applying insights gleaned from one to the other. Ghost of Rock 'n' Roll embodies the sophisticated side of web animation, while Feral Kat embodies the primitive side. Primitive? No, not quite. Actually, feral. How can a medium be feral? First, let me define the term. It means animals that escape domestication and run semi-wild; still depended on foraging through the refuse of civilization and upon human tolerance and kindness, but free. Classic example: feral cats. I believe a medium can be feral if it allows for stimuli to be outputted in a manner almost, but not entirely, beyond the control of an artist. The imagery generated from the sampled photographs and scanned paintings on Illumination Gallery is for the most part very much under my control. Yet over the years I have learned to loosen that control. I discovered that gently loosening control and just letting technology subtly take over lends itself to truly magical imagery. Feral Kat is my most conscious experiment in this vein. To an extent it was inspired by Ferals, an installation Laurie Spiegel will present in October 2006, as part of the An Ear to the Earth Festival. Ferals, in turn, was inspired by a local flock of pigeons Spiegel (forgive the bad pun) took under her wing. Laurie Spiegel and I have shared a life in a loft in Tribeca for getting on 15 years now. She is a composer/computer programmer (most recently also a fine photographer), whose artistry and ideas have had a profound influence on me. (The root image in Urban Wildlife Elegy, a previous animated text of mine was sampled from one of Spiegel's pigeon photographs.)
Composed of 381 frames, Feral Kat is a deeply textured web animation, lasting a tad under 3 minutes and 45 seconds, before looping. A high-speed Internet connection is required and I recommend using Firefox as your browser. Even with a high-speed connection, due to its density, the animation may initially run at a jagged rate. What I have learned from posting other deeply textured animations is that such animations often need to play through once before running at their proper rate. I do apologize for this inconvenience, but I feel it is necessary to constantly stretch the boundaries of the web as a medium.