Based on my analysis of the album’s lyrics, in particular the track ‘Fitter, Happier’ - which acts as a manifesto of sorts for the album, I found repeated themes of ever-increasing and unrealistic demands of humans in everyday life as well as manufactured apathy to corruption within the world around us.

It has a tone of rejecting the notion of machine-like efficiency and a fear of technological developments and Artificial Intelligence models

I wanted this design to speak to the uniquely experimental nature of the album itself as well as the ‘out there’ personality of the band, all while presenting a contrasting, more optimistic perspective compared to the original cover, which is more bleak.

I found it really interesting how these ideas are still incredibly relevant today, but I wanted to take on a more optimistic tone.

To reference the older nature of the album and my own interest in what was seen as ‘cutting edge’ digital art at the time - I decided to take notes from earlier waves of the new media art movement.

I placed heavy emphasis on particular methods like the ASCII art movement (which I used to represent AI’s role as a scapegoat in the dehumanisation of people across the world in conflict zones), as well as making use of emulators of both older and more recent digital painting softwares like MacPaint and Microsoft Paint.

Drawing from the modern era - I also opted to use AI image generation to allow AI to represent its own ideal human form within the final piece - creating a contrast between human creativity and progression rebelling against the idea of technology replacing them.