Giftychon

May/June 2012

For my bachelor thesis in communication design I created a gif-animated triptych - a so called Giftychon. This digital update of a medievil winged altar illustrates the effects of procrastinating behaviour. Procrastination means the urge to postpone necessary but unpleasant tasks instead of accomplishing them. As a reference to classic triptychs, especially to the famous triptychs "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and "The Haywain" of the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, the image is divided into the following three parts: heaven, earth and hell.

The left wing shows the heavenly joys of procrastination: idleness, pleasure, various temptations, etc. But these joys are no pure pleasures, they are clouded by the over all hovering, guilty conscience which brings the procrastinating person down to earth. The sunbather gets a sunburn, the party in the "Strawberry Club" ends in a wild excess etc. The center part of the image shows this guilty conscience – a thought bubble filled with "duty monsters" who are trying to break out of their world. An arm wielding a ruler, through which a nail was driven, swings out of an abandoned laptop. A Freddy Kruger shaped figure snaps out of the bubble with his pencil fingers. In the right half of the middle section there are already signs of the descent into hell. Blind activism is illustrated. The procrastinating person attempts to compensate for the lost time by mere quantity. The result of this thoughtless action is producing for the Trash. The right wing finally shows the agony of procrastination: fainting, mental overload, etc. To which extent these torments are self inflicted ones, can be most easily seen on the yellow rabbit which happily exercises in heaven. It has no clue that it triggers the trap door to his own gallows in hell and breaks it's own neck. Muhahah...