Pandemic is an interactive film retelling Frankenstein. It follows the story of a new researcher who has to make various ethical decisions when combating a pandemic that causes mass organ failure. The film follows the creation of part human / part pig hybrids raised to create substitute organs for those effected. The audience must make difficult emotional decisions focussed around ideas of suffering, the greater good and the responsibility creators have to their off spring.
The work focusses on the idea of human materiality and physical suffering. The audience is asked how human to make the creatures via their DNA. This raises further questions about how the material can or could define what 'human' is and if there is a percentage line of DNA that could draw a boundary line.
The physicality of the creatures and the sufferers of the pandemic are key to the piece. The audience is asked to spend time with their hybrids and to bear witness to their physical suffering while only being aware of the pandemic sufferers at a distance. The piece asks questions about how proximity to physical suffering can cloud larger moral questions around greater - but unseen - suffering.
The piece aims to confront the audience with ethical decisions through ontological dilemmas in an engaging and public facing design.
Additional Information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzZn5r72MV8 British Film Institute podcast interview on Pandemic. Pandemic was created by John Bradburn in association with the Science Museum.
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