It crawled out from some dark corner of my computer

August 15, 2014 8:26 AM

I've no idea what this video is. It crawled out from some dark corner of my computer after evolving from the virtual maggots that feast on rotting film footage. The new thing by Cyriak Harris.
posted by louche mustachio (43 comments total)

Is it going to make me throw up in my mouth a little? or a lot?
posted by theora55 at 8:30 AM on August 15, 2014

It was peculiar, but not at all barf-inducing.
posted by theora55 at 8:31 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

It depends, how much have you eaten in the past 24 hours?



Also, Cyriak just tweeted a birthday song at me. This pleases me greatly.
posted by louche mustachio at 8:32 AM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

F O O D T A I N T
posted by koeselitz at 8:35 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

The cat doesn't seem to be enjoying that.

My cat, that is.

I liked it though.
posted by carsonb at 8:35 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, I suppose this is as good a day as any to go mad.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:41 AM on August 15, 2014

Creeeeeeepy. Would not upvote.
posted by wittgenstein at 8:50 AM on August 15, 2014

That was strangely horrifying for reasons I really can't explain. Makes me wish I had something around to ward off the evil eye with, it's that instinctive a NOPE.
posted by harujion at 8:51 AM on August 15, 2014

I got maybe 3 seconds in. Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope
posted by Mogur at 8:53 AM on August 15, 2014

I love these cyriak videos. He really only seems to have a few tricks, but they're really good, quite distinctive ones and there's not a lot like it out there.
posted by Hoopo at 8:57 AM on August 15, 2014

Finally, someone showing things how they really are.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:57 AM on August 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

For my money cyriak's Baaa remains the perfect distillation of parasite-based body horror.

He is also clearly in the running for nicest human being in the world.
posted by Ryvar at 8:58 AM on August 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

I enjoyed how each iteration layers in a few more weirdnesses on top of the previous iteration until the whole thing dissolves into a strange middle class kaleidoscope. Soothing in the way those kaleidoscope videos can be soothing.

Like white noise for your eyes and identity.
posted by notyou at 9:01 AM on August 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh good, the Internet's hell-mouth has ruptured open again.
*shudder*

My respect for the talent of this animator stands on equal footing with the magnitude of NOPE this in me evokes.
posted by The Legit Republic of Blanketsburg at 9:02 AM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I cannot get enough of this.

When one has a hungry eye for the surreal, the palate soon becomes jaded. It's not about lobsters.

Cyriak speaks to my condition.
posted by Devonian at 9:06 AM on August 15, 2014 [11 favorites]

> He is also clearly in the running for nicest human being in the world

I saw Cyriak do a Q&A at one of Adam Buxton's BUG events at the BFI a few years ago and he seemed like an absolute sweetheart.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 9:09 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

This gave me a complete flashback to Mother, Please! (which weirdly does not appear to be on the youtubes, but the WFMU archive link still works, bless 'em).
posted by phooky at 9:15 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Excellent!
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:20 AM on August 15, 2014

High Anxiety: LSD in the Cold War

Researchers at Edgewood began by conducting basic studies. Joseph Bertino, who served as a Medical Corps officer at Edgewood from 1956 to 1958, joined three other researchers to explore LSD’s effect at incrementally higher doses. Measuring the drug in micrograms per kilogram, or mcg/kg, they worked their way up to 16 mcg/kg—a huge amount, at which subjects could not even repeat a short sentence, exhibited signs of hypertension, and occasionally vomited or hyperventilated. One man saw “horrible green-eyed monsters” everywhere; another felt “a constant flow of electricity throughout his body.” Bertino told me that careful psychological screening of subjects before these kinds of tests prevented serious reactions, but that there were instances at the arsenal of “subjects who were kind of slightly paranoid to start with who became psychotic.”

posted by ennui.bz at 9:32 AM on August 15, 2014

I love cyriak.

This is very very acid-trippy, much more so than his earlier work. The evolution of the iterations is distinctly reminiscent to the build-up toward full-on hallucinatory reality.

Very fun in that oh-so-creepy cyriak way!
posted by hippybear at 9:44 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

> He is also clearly in the running for nicest human being in the world.

[previously]
posted by ardgedee at 10:08 AM on August 15, 2014

Lugonu claims a new guest.
posted by randomination at 10:09 AM on August 15, 2014

So many Corvairs.
posted by humboldt32 at 10:24 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yay, cyriak! I still think my favorite is cows & cows & cows, though. :3

... The idea that I've become slightly jaded to cyriak's work makes me think that I might've been on the internet too long. n.n;
posted by Aleyn at 10:26 AM on August 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

To understand recursive surrealism you have to tounge-legged chimera recursive surrealism.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:45 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

What the fuck did you guys put in that video, man? Shit, I need to come down.
posted by Mister_A at 11:12 AM on August 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

So Cronenberged.
posted by melissam at 12:07 PM on August 15, 2014

My favorite remains Kitty City.
posted by Splunge at 12:23 PM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

What the fuck did you guys put in that video, man? Shit, I need to come down.



Don't worry, it's going to be OK- you're perfectly fine, you're in a safe place, and there totally aren't cops hiding in the bushes in your backyard, recording your thoughts.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:28 PM on August 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

I like the buildings with cat ears in Kitty City. Also, pretty sure I fought something like that on a Sega Genesis game, can't remember which.
posted by Mister_A at 12:29 PM on August 15, 2014

Someone should revive Alive From Off Center.
posted by Gorgik at 12:30 PM on August 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

Is it time to finally pronounce the arrival of the Emissary of the DMT Elves? I mean, he's alluded in his previous works his hyperdimensional capabilities, but this seals the deal for me. ALL HAIL CYRIAK!!!!

I loved how I started to trip out on the 3rd or 5th go round, right about the time the Flange effect started to kick in and the rotational view started happening.
posted by symbioid at 12:49 PM on August 15, 2014

This must be what PCP is like.
posted by Captain Chesapeake at 1:03 PM on August 15, 2014

It's honestly much more what hallucinogens are like, rather than dissociatives.
posted by hippybear at 1:12 PM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Shoggoths on parade.
posted by picea at 1:40 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

If I had the funding, I'd commission him to do a feature film. I bet he could pull off the transition like Terry Gilliam did.
posted by chimaera at 2:56 PM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cyriak gives new meaning to the term "strange loop". Or maybe that was always the meaning.

He reminds me of psychedelics, but also of fever dreams, the way things loop and recurse and add layers and just keep going until it all falls apart.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:58 PM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

If I had the funding, I'd commission him to do a feature film. I bet he could pull off the transition like Terry Gilliam did.

What happens after the 1,000,000th iteration of the recursion in order to make the feature film length... do you really want to find out?
posted by ennui.bz at 3:00 PM on August 15, 2014

If enlightenment were easy everybody would do it.
posted by Ryvar at 6:27 PM on August 15, 2014

It feels like a common theme in a lot of Cyriak video is "infection", for lack of a better word. Some terrible malady or being that appears into a normal world, then spreads or repopulates until there's nothing left that it hasn't touched.

Freaks me the right out, every time.
posted by KChasm at 8:20 PM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

All those legs moving...pedestrian.
posted by telstar at 4:00 AM on August 16, 2014

Chimpnology was a paretty clever sci-fi story idea when you think about it. A bunch of people generate random data which is fed into an artificially intelligent computer that analyzes it for anything of value. Then somebody randomly generates the equivalent of a malicious SQL injection. If every possible thing is being fed into the machine, there must be an infinite number of things that could make it go Wrong.
posted by BiggerJ at 5:08 AM on August 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think I had a fever dream exactly like this once.
posted by ShawnStruck at 6:18 AM on August 16, 2014