To date (1/7/05), Courtney Love: Paean to a Lady Monster is easily my most ambitious experiment in web animation. Yet I was baffled as to what drew me to Courtney Love as a subject matter. It's not like I was a fan of her music. Indeed, I never heard it. Her work as a film actress only vaguely intrigued me. Still, something about her image fascinated me. But exactly what? I googled her name on the Internet to see if anyone out there had an answer. The answer lay in a set of Courtney Love webpages posted by a 16-year-old girl. Of course, it's only natural a 16-year-old would best capture what made Courtney Love resonate in public consciousness. 16-year-olds, at that perfect cusp point between naïveté and experience, are most attuned to a society where electronic media spawn a vast vortex siphoning people's imaginations. 16-year-olds are both most impacted and most aware as they struggle to form identities. Inevitably, a blur develops between their self-images and images of lives made public electronically. The Courtney Love webpages I refer to offer a unique perspective on this phenomenon by taking a cynically tinged but respectful stance regarding a woman who has chosen to live out her darkest fantasies publicly.
I created kinderwhore.com, the animation running above, in response. It hints at the love/hate, vampirical relationship between Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland. The animation lasts a shade over 4 minutes, then loops. A high-speed Internet connection is required.
© 2005 Peter Schmideg