Ballardian

+ Previously, students from Digital Media Design, St East Lancs, Institute of Higher Education at Blackburn College, gave us the title sequence created for a fictional movie based on JG Ballard’s ‘A Guide To Virtual Death’.

Now they’ve come up with this, ‘a title sequence created for a fictional movie based on a short story by JG Ballard, ‘The Illuminated Man’.’ I like this. Its dark-ambient sound design appeals (Aphex Twin, apparently), as do the disorientating images of cellular division and the snatches of voices over the airwaves (’The Illuminated Man’ was the seed of what later became The Crystal World; the cell stuff is therefore appropriate). Conversely, the use of Creedence’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’ in the ‘Virtual Death’ sequence did me no good; I like my Ballardian musical cues to be dark, glacier-slow and artificial — *as well as* completely fucked up (which ‘Bad Moon’ undoubtedly is).