Promo News - 16th July 2018

'Flesh anxiety: the body at the infrared end of the spectrum.'

Directing team in/out use thermal imaging to explore the human body for The Horrors, and the result is suitably ghostly for their song Ghost. It's also endlessly fascinating.

As JP and Thom (aka in/out) explain below, they are perfectly aware that the thermal image technique has been used before. But why overthink it, when it creates simply beautiful images like these?
 

in/out:

"Thermal imagery helped us represent the body at a crossroads between the familiar and the unknown, where humans appear almost, but not exactly, like their everyday perception.

"Similarly, the images penetrate beneath the skin, serving as a reminder of how the body can be simultaneously familiar and so very alien once we start revealing its inner circuits. It’s in these feelings of uncanniness where we really felt we were tapping into the track.

"From here we stripped everything back and honed in on a primitivistic core. At first, patiently examining from a distance before collapsing in on itself and plunging into chaos.

"It’s difficult to approach thermal photography without a degree of self-awareness - what’s been done before, by artist or filmmaker, and what perhaps there is yet to do. That said, we tried not to get bogged down in the technological fetishism of ‘shooting thermal’, allowing our instincts to guide us in relation to the song - how it made us and, hopefully, the  spectator feel. This informed our process throughout.

"Sometimes, saying this relates to that, that to this doesn’t quite lead you to the aggregate effect. If it looks and feels right when listening to the track then why not?"