Patient Zero by Thea Cheuk

“Patient Zero is an animatic telling the story of a robot using a bioweapon to destroy the oppressive industrial environment in an eco-revolution. The bioweapon would disrupt the highly modern world that had eradicated all connection with nature with an ‘infection’ of plant life and radical change. The final project for a sequential imaging art class, this animatic included writing a script, storyboarding, drawing over 90 frames, then creating the audio with sound effects and dialogue.

I wanted this piece to reference both meanings of the term ‘patient zero’: 1. The person identified as the first carrier of a communicable disease in an outbreak of related cases and 2. The first computer or user to be infected with malware on a network, which then spreads, which led me to a robot visual metaphor. The robots do not have facial expressions, both for the practical reason of being faster to draw, but also to acknowledge the dehumanization of lower class workers.

Ultimately, this is an exploratory analogy for the current stage of capitalism’s exploitation of both the environment and people, who are seen are expendable and are kept in line with the knowledge that if they resist, they will be replaced, and what it might take to break free from such a cycle.”

— Thea Cheuk (Richmond, VA)