This motion piece interprets Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est through abstract shapes, using form, rhythm and movement instead of type to reflect the poem’s stark emotional weight.

Created as a stop-motion experiment using a scanner, cut-out circles were physically moved across the scanning light beam in varied ways, producing an emotive abstract response to the poem’s themes of war. The resulting imagery forms subtle, unexpected distortions of the original shapes, revealing fragmented and unstable visual outcomes.

The visual process and sound design are integral to the piece. Layering and repetition in both imagery and voice work together to mirror the disrupted perspectives of war, past and present. Through shifting rhythm and abstraction, the work reflects the poem’s intensity, trauma and haunting aftermath.