Synopsis

A solitary office worker moves through an increasingly frantic urban routine, pushed from one task to the next by advertising, consumer culture, technology, and the demands of modern employment. Around him, images of war, leisure, health, and personal improvement merge into a relentless visual barrage. As the pressure intensifies, his daily actions become part of a vast mechanical system, blurring the line between individual choice and programmed behavior. The video presents contemporary life as a self-perpetuating capitalist machine that gradually numbs the people trapped inside it.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was created as a visual response to the idea that modern capitalist life can produce a numbing effect through constant demands, information, and consumption.

• Max Cooper described the central character as a man being run ragged by the machine of the modern city. The imagery combines advertising, work, technology, war, relaxation, and everyday routines into one connected system.

• The animation was produced as a digital 2D work and runs for just over four minutes.

• Kathrin deBoer's vocal was originally a freestyle performance recorded during a studio session in London. Cooper initially expected to select melodic ideas and have her write and rerecord the lyrics, but kept the first take because it captured the track's mood so effectively.

• The vocal was recorded with an inexpensive test microphone that Cooper had bought for 12 pounds in 2002. Its imperfections, half-formed words, layered voices, reverberation, and widening effects were retained as part of the finished sound.

• "Numb" appeared on Cooper's 2012 release "Conditions Two," alongside an extended version and another collaboration with deBoer.

• Cooper later positioned the video within the "Civilisation" section of his broader "Emergence" audiovisual narrative, where it represents the stage at which human society becomes dominated by resource consumption and the capitalist machine.