Killer Entertainments
By Jennifer Terry
Design by Raegan Kelly

Designer's Statement

I feel somewhat loathe to talk about the design of Killer Entertainments given the heft of its content, both video and text. Jenny put an astounding quantity of time in researching the materials and writing the texts of this piece, and the result is in my opinion a true gift to the reader.

The videos we included are ephemeral in nature, difficult to pinpoint in terms of source, location, time, and degree from original, and rarely subjected to any form of cultural, critical or formal analysis (though widely viewed and discussed in mainstream media venues and more 'private' collective networks). Hence the three frame horizontal format, an attempt to provide you with an opportunity to make your own critical observations, to begin to apprehend affectively, visually, and intellectually some of the motivations and decisions driving both the production and the dissemination of these pieces. Many of them are difficult to watch, and both Jenny and I suffered at times from a sort of post-traumatic malaise, triggered for me by the horror of the scenes unfolding before me, and more so by a kind of fractured empathy in relation to subject position”"I feel so totally for the rarely seen but heard 'shooter' and (generally his) company while experiencing sometimes total repulsion at their actions and, especially, reactions. It is difficult, no matter how many times I watch these, to imagine the complete alteration of body chemistry and perceptual framework being physically *at war* must produce.

It was a great pleasure to work with Jenny and I encourage you to spend time with this piece. As you watch, keyframes trigger access to ideas, formal analysis, and contextual information. A sidenote, some of the keyframes that have been carefully programmed to trigger don't, and occasionally videos 'stick' midstream. We have tried to flag this when it happens, as you can generally drag the seek bar a tiny bit to the right and see more. These video data streams have been copied by many people many times over, and compressed in this case for this format, and at times the stream becomes so thin the player can no longer detect it.