One of the major challenges for comix artists in our digital era has been to figure out how best to exploit the intriguing possibilities afforded by the new medium of the internet, browser comics, and so forth. Scott McCloud, author of the essential book Understanding Comics, was among the first to exploit an obvious feature of browser-based comix, namely the vertical bias imposed by the scroll bar.

After 10 or 20 years of experiments and a good number of successes, comix artists today have established a far stronger footing in how to make the most of the browser. Case in point, Stuart Campbell’s recent work “These Memories Won’t Last,” a short web comic about the difficult final years that his grandpa endured due to problems with dementia. 

There may be more to it, but “These Memories Won’t Last” exploits three aspects of online comix that the printing press could never accomplish. The first is a soundtrack, and “These Memories Won’t Last” features a subtle, almost aquatic sound design, executed by Lhasa Mencur, that features some of the aural gestalt of a dial tone mixed with a subtly creepy scene from a David Lynch movie or a flashback sequence from an immersive video game.
 

 
The second is the ability of online images to fade right before your eyes, which printed images can’t do. “These Memories Won’t Last” is about how fragile and evanescent our memories can be, and fittingly, the frames in his comic frequently fade away to the point where they are hard to make out. This ties into the third tool that online comix can use, which is scrolling. “These Memories Won’t Last” uses an ingenious scrolling convention whereby the drawn images (in blue) scroll in one direction while the captions (in red) scroll in the other direction. The two membranes slide past each other in a way that suggests a fleeting connection between the two.

More to the point, the sliding vertical motion the reader instigates by scrolling and the tendency of the images to fade actually addresses one of the most salient qualities of memory, which is that memories that are more frequently accessed tend to fade faster. (In effect, eventually you begin remembering the act of remembering rather than the original event.) So in “These Memories Won’t Last,” after you’ve moved some of the images up and down across the screen a couple of times, it starts to fade, and the more insistently you scroll to find the sweet spot where you can see it, the more it fades. (At least that was my experience with it.)

As Campbell writes, “I also had the idea that as the reader navigated through the story it would deteriorate, just like grandpa’s memories.” It’s an ingenious way to evoke the frustration of not being able to access information that translates directly to memory loss, which is after all what dementia is about.

Click here to start reading Stuart Campbell’s powerful animated narrative.
 
via Kill Screen

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
These photographs absolutely nail depression

 
These moving photographs document one woman’s gradual deterioration into early onset dementia. They were taken by Jake Heath from Sydney, Australia, who photographed his mother Jacquie during the course of her illness.

The first photograph (above) was “taken in 2005 or so. At this point, Jacquie had Pick’s Disease, but it had been misdiagnosed as menopause. She would be about 48 here.”

Pick’s Disease is a type of Frontotemporal Dementia that causes progressive destruction of nerve cells in the brain. It is a rare disease and its symptoms include dementia and loss of language. Sufferers usually die within two to ten years.

Jake and his sister Zoe were living in Australia when they first heard the news about their mother. Their parents were living in Toronto, Canada, when his father Tim told Jake and Zoe the heartbreaking news that their mother Jacquie was going to die—as Jake told the Daily Mirror:

“At the time I didn’t believe it. Zoe cried, but mum reassured her that it was ok and ‘all part of God’s plan’. Since then it’s been entirely surreal.

“The thing with Pick’s disease is that it has some very obvious stages. It’s always the stages that get to me the hardest, whether it’s paranoia, or forgetting names, forgetting how to eat, etc. Her condition is now the worst it’s ever been. Six weeks ago she stopped walking, whereas previously she would spend all day hobbling around the living room. She also stopped being able to eat solid foods and is now on pureed. It’s like she has aged backwards.

“Life for the family now is surprisingly not that bad. Dad is a 24/7 carer for her, but he also has a lot of help from the government.

“I go down to Batemans Bay (where my parents live) to visit every six weeks or so. I think Zoe finds it harder, being a new mother and not having her own to guide her. Dad is a very strong and resilient man. His day-to-day is looking after her, but he has mentioned a few times to me that as long as he keeps his attitude in check he’s OK. And that attitude is one of doing what’s best, being easy on yourself, and just getting on with it.”

Jake’s father Tim explained what it has been like looking after his wife:

“The journey I’m on at the moment, it’s the long goodbye. It’s been happening since 2007, so for seven years she’s been slowly losing function and capability. I haven’t had a conversation with her in years where she’s actually said anything that’s made sense.

“When you’ve been doing it for this long you’d sort of rather it would have been something quick, like a car accident or something. At least it’s quick and you can move on.”

According to the World Health Organization, 47.7 million people globally are affected by dementia—there are 7.7 million new cases every year with just over half (58%) living in low to middle income households.  Around 10% of people develop the disease at some point in their lives. The estimated proportion of the general population aged 60 and over with dementia at a given time is between five to eight per 100 people.

The total number of people with dementia is projected to be 75.6 million in 2030. It is believed this figure will almost triple by 2050 to 135.5 million.

My father, who died last month, suffered Alzheimer’s and dementia. It is believed he had suffered from the disease for several years before diagnosis. During his last year—from February 2013 onwards—his deterioration became very rapid and his behavior and mood swings increasingly erratic, unpredictable and violent. During his last months, he was admitted to a care home as we were no longer able to give him the attention he required. Most of the time he slept at the care home, when awake he was often irate and confused. He eventually fell into a coma and died from pneumonia.

Jake posted his photographs on Imgur under the heading “This is what Early Onset Dementia looks like.” This is what dementia looks like—the slow, horrendous eating away of a loved one until just the husk is left.

Though heartbreaking, Jake believes there is one good thing to have come out of this terrible disease:

“The silver-lining of this illness is that it has brought us closer together as a family, and it has given us a chance to love Jacquie the way she loved us.”

On the beach, around 2010. Lots of Jacquie around. She can’t remember too much though.

2010 again. Riding on the back of dad’s motorbike was one of her favourite things to do. She got quite terrified when the helmets were on, but once moving had a blast. This had to stop in 2011, when an on-bike paranoia attack nearly caused an accident.

Beach-time walks. Weight is falling off. Conversation is non-existent.

 
More of Jake’s photos and his film ‘This is not Jacquie anymore,’ after the jump…

 
It’s the biting and the kicking and the hitting that comes as a surprise, especially in one so old. The shouting and swearing were always present, but the biting, that’s probably the most unexpected. My father has Alzheimer’s and dementia. It’s not quite the happy sing-a-long of “getting by with a little help with your friends” as the current ad on British TV suggests. It’s is well-intentioned of course, but the reality for most carers, most families when dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s is nothing like a rousing chorus of a Lennon and McCartney number. It is stressful, constant, endless, unrelenting, with little to no respite. Indeed, my father seems no longer capable of sleep. It’s called “sundowning,” when twilight begins and night closes in, the sufferer becomes anxious, fretful, often aggressive. My father knows he has something to do, but he does not know what.

Last year, when I had four rounds of surgery for cancer and post-operative infection, there was the inevitable thoughts of mortality before the anaesthetic sent me off to temporary oblivion. In the same way, I think nightfall (darkness) brings some subconscious response to the end of life, the rush of panic, the rage against the dying of the light—so much still to do, but what, but what? There’s not much else one can do but try and soothe, listen and help.

All this has made me a cheery little fellow, and of late I have reading Iris Murdoch and sadly thinking how Alzheimer’s eroded her once great mind. Here was an author who was described by her husband John Bayley as “the most intelligent woman in England,” who was said to have composed the novels in her head first before putting first mark on paper—which is some remarkable feat. Together Murdoch and Bayley lived an intensely cerebral and sheltered life at their home, Cedar Lodge, in Steeple Aston, Oxford. They had their own language, held tight in their own world—once removed from the fickle fashions of modern culture. It was a hothouse where Murdoch returned again and again to her favored classics, rarely reading any modern literature, drawing much of her inspiration from the works of William Shakespeare.

Everything comes out of Shakespeare: pure romance, melodrama, marvellous characters, poetry, and wisdom about life. I read the plays again and again hoping something will rub off.

Things did indeed rub off—most obviously in her novels A Fairly Honorable Defeat (based on Much Ado About Nothing), The Black Prince (a reworking of Hamlet), The Sea, The Sea (elements of The Tempest) and The Good Apprentice. Writing fiction allowed Murdoch to revel in the complex ambiguities, the magic and mystery of life. She created self-contained worlds, like perfect snow globes that may to some now seem dated now but are ultimately still immediate and relevant because of Murdoch’s ability to tell a story. Spinning a yarn, as she once pointed out, is “a fundamental human form of thought.” Which made her loss to Alzheimer’s all the more tragic.

Murdoch did not give many television interviews, those that are available on YouTube are of a rather dry discussion on philosophy and literature, which is all fine and dandy but don’t reveal much of her giggly enthusiastic personality as this interview between Murdoch and James Atlas for the 92Y and The Paris Review does, capturing the author at her brightest and best as she discusses her life and career.