In a wonderfully weird commercial for Little Baby’s Ice Cream, an androgynous being of white, melty ice cream slowly consumes itself, its spoon going back and forth from head best online generic levitra to its mouth, digging out more and more ice cream to eat. This viral video by California-based video artist/creative director Doug Garth Williams manages to visualize and combine I have found that this product has made me regular, stopped my IBS, and actually improved my vision. Will definitely purchase again cialis headaches. Generic drugs are copies of brand-name drugs that have exactly the same dosage. lovely ideas such as existentialism and cannibalism. Although many have described the video as “creepy” or “unsettling”, the Little Baby’s commercial – as well as his commercial for Montreal tattoo shop Two Horses – blend together ideas to create discomfort and humour.

Speaking with Spectacular Optical, Williams discusses his extensive video work, the challenge of changing the popular perception of frozen desserts, and the importance of artistic control.

Esinam Beckley: The visuals for your recent commercials seem so particular. What kind of ideas were you working with or wanting to express when you were crafting the Little Baby’s Ice Cream commercial/Two Horses?

Doug Garth Williams: The idea for Little Baby’s was to create this macabre existential dilemma where this ice cream person was so delicious they were literally willing to give up their own existence for the sake of experiencing the deliciousness of their ice cream body. In the companion video there is a scenario where rather than self cannibalizing, they are cannibalizing buy levitra online viagra each other in an infinite cycle, each apparently blissfully unaware of the larger power behind them with the same twisted idea. With the Two Horses video I wanted to tell this ambiguously unsettling story of half horse-half human making first contact with a human.

EB: The internet is full of wonders and yet you’ve managed to create something that evokes a kind of unsettling fascination. Something that captures. Did you set out create something memorable? Was this something you’ve always wanted to explore?

DGW: Yes! That’s exactly what I wanted to do! That’s been my goal in a lot of projects I’ve done on my own for years. I’ve tried to create situations that will knock people momentarily out of the autopilot setting that I think we all turn on during most of our waking hours. I’ve used different strategies to try to do this but that has often been one of my primary goals. The reason is that I think that during that moment where your expectations are disrupted, however long it lasts, you leave yourself open and truly engaged with what you are experiencing. I think that is when you can really give someone an experience that might stick with them and really form a connection of some kind.

Little Baby’s gave me an incredible opportunity to create that sort of moment. Ice cream has this built-in branding: We think of childhood, summer time innocent fun, and all of the associated imagery. So it was a perfect opportunity to turn that all on its head and get people to sit up and pay attention to a much different approach to an ice cream story. It really stirred up some powerful reactions from people which was exactly what I hoped. So in the case of the videos we are talking about, a large part of this comes from the contrast between what is expected and what is shown.

Another part of the unsettling fascination you mention is probably from the effects of the “uncanny valley” that I enjoy wandering around in. It’s usually talked about in reference to creating robots that become too human like without of course actually being human. Basically the more human like something gets the more we empathize with it and get comfortable with it, but at a certain point that trend shifts- when it gets really close to looking human but is clearly not – it creates a very strange jarring effect for the person observing it. It is affecting in a very specific impactful way where it is not even necessarily clear to the viewers exactly why they are so affected by it. It’s a very specific kind of unsettling. It’s a natural byproduct of these stories that I already wanted to tell anyway, but I’m also very aware of the effect it can have.

EB: How did the companies you have worked with reach out to you/find you?

DGW: They’ve contacted me directly through my site having seen my other videos.

EB: Is having artistic control something that is important to you? When companies approach you and show an interest, do they give you complete artistic control right away?

DGW: Oh yes! It’s been great. I’ve loved working with Little Baby’s Ice Cream, Two Horses, and Ooh La La Records because of their willingness to trust me with artistic control. And yes, in those cases they immediately had faith in my ideas which was really wonderful.

EB: What/Who are some of your own areas of interests and inspirations, artists, objects, themes, subjects, etc…?

DGW: Kurt Vonnegut, Peter Campus, Len Lye, Jill Magid, Goerge Saunders, Duke and Battersby, Jan svankmajer, Brothers Quay, Nagi Noda, Michel Gondry, Trader Joe’s Havarti cheese, the future of humanity, the longest nipple hair in the world, human brains, cyborgs, maps, dimmable lights, pacing around in circles and driverless cars.

Williams’ new video for Carrier Pigeon’s “Where Do Babies Come From?”:

For more info about Doug Garth Williams, please see his websites www.dougisfamous.com  and www.bitesizehumans.com, the latter of which specifically features his favorite commercial work.

About the author:

Esinam Beckley

Esinam Beckley is a student at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies.