Cyriak Harris, known mononymously as Cyriak () and his

B3ta B3ta (stylised as b3ta) is a popular British website, described as a "puerile digital arts community" by ''The Guardian''. It was founded in 2001 by Rob Manuel, Denise Wilton and Cal Henderson. B3ta's main feature is a newsletter featuring th ...

username Mutated Monty, is an English freelance animator, artist, composer, and author from Brighton. He is known for his surreal and bizarre short web animations with the frequent use of the Droste effect. Cyriak is his real birth name.

Animations

Cyriak has been a regular contributor to the British website B3ta since 2004. His YouTube channel was launched in March 2006. Cyriak's YouTube account features a compilation of his animations, which have been popular throughout the

blogosphere The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...

and noted by ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

's'' Eliot Van Buskirk. Most of his videos are made with

Adobe After Effects Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc., and used in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Among other things, After Eff ...

and FL Studio. Cyriak's animation "MOO" has featured on the front page of ''Wired''. His 2009 video "poo pants" features an animated sample of broadcaster Alan Titchmarsh singing a repeated refrain (a pitch-shifted excerpt from children's music artist Ann Austin's "The Poo Song") from the bowls of a series of toilets, some of which fly through space. As a freelance animator, he has been commissioned by the video sharing website

Sumo TV Sumo TV was a free-to-air television channel owned by Cellcast Group. On 1 July 2006, You TV was relabelled as Sumo TV. Sumo TV was officially launched on 28 November 2006, claiming to be the world's first user-content TV channel. Through thei ...

, and a music video for

Grand Popo Football Club Grand Popo Football Club was a French electronic music group of a DJ television presenter/chat show host and producer/ classically-trained pianist who studied at the National Conservatory in Paris, respectively. The duo apparently adopted thei ...

, among others. Cyriak made the "Spaceology" animation in the third episode of the fourth season of the TV series '' The IT Crowd'' and the "Goth to Boss" animation in the sixth episode. In 2015 he created the opening credits for the

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...

series '' W/ Bob & David''. Cyriak has directed a number of music videos, including videos for Bonobo's "Cirrus" and

Bloc Party Bloc Party are an English rock band, composed of Kele Okereke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, sampler), Russell Lissack (lead guitar, keyboards), Justin Harris (bass guitar, keyboards, saxophones, backing vocals) and Louise Bartle ( ...

's "Ratchet" in 2013, Flying Lotus's "Putty Boy Strut" in 2014, Run the Jewels’s "Meowpurrdy" in 2016, and Sparks' "The Existential Threat" in 2020. His videos "Baaa" and "meow mix" have amassed more than 100 million views. Other popular uploads on his channel include "Welcome to Kitty City," "Cycles," and "7 billion."

Music and other activities

Long before Harris started creating animations, he composed a considerable amount of surreal music. On 19 August 2008, Harris uploaded a music video of the song "My Territory" by

. It features a landscape that has been made entirely out of a woman's body, and is a metaphor for consumerism and the treatment of the female body. On 9 September 2009, British illusionist

Derren Brown Derren Brown (born 27 February 1971) is an English mentalist, illusionist, painter, and author. He began performing in 1992, making his television debut with ''Derren Brown: Mind Control'' in 2000, and has since produced several more shows f ...

, live on UK television, claimed to predict the National Lottery numbers. Cyriak uploaded a possible explanation, to his YouTube channel, which gained half a million views within a week and attention from national press. In September 2010 he appeared at "Flash on the Beach" in Brighton and in September 2014 appeared at "Reasons to be Creative", also in Brighton. On December 2013, he released the mod "Going Down" for the 1994

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the p ...

Doom II ''Doom II'', also known as ''Doom II: Hell on Earth'', is a first-person shooter game by id Software. It was released for MS-DOS computers in 1994 and Macintosh computers in 1995. Unlike the original ''Doom'', which was initially only available ...

.'' In March 2018, he started working on a partly crowd-funded book ''Horse Destroys the Universe''. The book was published in September 2019. It is about scientists who experiment on a horse named Buttercup until they are given superhuman intelligence, until they eventually become an omnipotent being and destroy the universe. On 8 February 2020, Cyriak showcased his music for the first time, as he performed as a

disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile ...

at the Zanzibar Club in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

Awards and recognition

On 3 December 2009, Cyriak was announced as the winner of the 2009 E Stings competition, run by television channel E4, with £5,000 for his video ''Recursive Culture''. In 2006 he also received a special mention in the results of a Photoshop contest run by the technology series '' Click''. In 2012 and 2014 he was awarded with two

Cacowards The Cacowards are an annual online awards ceremony which honors the year's most prominent " ''Doom'' WADs", video game modifications of the 1993 first-person shooter ''Doom''. Such modifications may be single levels, level packs, or " total conve ...

, an annual online awards ceremony which honours the year's most prominent modifications of '' Doom'', being recognized for his outstanding level design and sophisticated technical approach to achieving complex sequences and impressive comedic timing.

McDonald's advertisement feud

In 2016, Cyriak accused fast food chain

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hambur ...

of plagiarizing his animated video "cows & cows & cows". The studio that animated the advertisement,

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

-based Juan Solo, openly admitted that they used Cyriak's work as "reference". After Cyriak's tweets about the theft went viral, the advert was pulled. The original video, featuring dancing cows, had received more than 67 million views.

References

External links