The box/ labyrinth:

Once freed, the puppet travels through box-like spaces that create lots of squares and make it seem as if he is still trapped. There are sometimes repeated bars between him and the viewer suggesting this further. I think it shows how industrialization and capitalism can be a trap.

Circles:

are often present (the pocket watch, the doll’s heads and the light bulb) but they seem to represent the endlessness and repetition of the machine. Lots of things turn around in circles, the reels, the screws, the doll head puppets and the man puppet. The first sound we hear is a clock ticking and the pocket watch is very symbolic of time and repetition. In this case, its mechanisms and cogs are laid out beside it and its insides are refilled with meat. I think it sets the scene of a place where industrialisation has taken over the people. The surreal combination of a watch filled with meat seems to suggest the comparison of human energy with that of industry. There is also a dandelion that reforms itself. To me, this represents time going backwards as you would traditionally count the time as you blow away the seeds, it might symbolise turning against traditions. This is also surreal like the watch with the meat and gives the impression that the story is set in the imagination or dreams. The doll’s heads are round but they have no eyes so seem soulless, again the circles make me think more of endlessness than love and care like circles often do. 

Lines:

The threads form lines, they are thin but white so they stand out against the darkness they move around reels and seem to be controlling things even after the puppet is freed. 

Props:

And puppets are difficult to distinguish from characters in this animation because nearly all of the characters are assemblages of mass-produced objects like doll’s heads and light bulbs . I think this helps to show the negatives of the capitalism and metropolitan life.

“Miss X claims that she no longer has a brain or nerves or chest or stomach or guts. All she has left is the skin and bones of a disorganized body. These are her own words.”2 The para- noid body: the organs are continually under attack by outside forces, but are also restored by outside energies. 

Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-1402-8. Page 150 ” How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?” 

I think this explains the tension in the setting of the story the idea that negative outside forces could remove parts of the body leaving the basic form like the doll’s head puppets and the light bulb head assemblage puppet. (need to think more and read more about this)

Towards the end the dolls head assemblages start to malfunction I think this gives me a feeling of the wonder of technology but also its risks. Like Frankenstein’s monster in Mary Shelly’s novel a scientific marvel became a monster. It resonates with me in the present time with AI and all its wonder but also the threat that it poses to mankind. 

www.english.ox.ac.uk. (n.d.). Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. [online] Available at: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/ten-minute-book-club/shelley-frankenstein.

The screws unscrew themselves, appear to “dance’ around in circles and bore back into random surfaces. This seems to be magical and otherworldly but it is also slightly unnerving to see inanimate objects take on a life of their own. There are a lot of pointed props, like needles and pins these are threatening and alarming as they can cause pain and at one point the pins are in the meat and this seems aggressive.