James Thom

Ibn Khaldun

Asabiyya

Ibn Khaldun watched eight courts collapse in the 14th century, and became the founding father of Sociology. He spoke about how wealth and comfort cuts through the loyalty that binds a group of people together (Asabiyya). I spent a lot of time on this piece, constantly removing, tweaking and refining things. But the end result is something I'm genuinely proud of. This is the third and final part of the 'Beyond the Usual Suspects' series.

2026Beyond the Usual Suspects · III

María Lugones

Gender

Gender is an invention, and when you look at history, it's also been used as a weapon against groups of people who refused to conform to Western standards. Lugones argued gender, as we know it today, is a colonial invention. Stamped onto indigenous cultures that had far more ways of being. This was part two of the 'Beyond the Usual Suspects' series, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

2026Beyond the Usual Suspects · II

Nishitani Keiji

Nihility

The self isn't a container that gets emptied by loss. Emptiness IS the self. This was my first piece in a series called 'Beyond the Usual Suspects', where I explored less western-centric philosophers. The piece is slow and contemplative, animated over thoughtful jazz beats. Nihility was really fun to animate, I sketched out a few different concepts, but the layered jagged edges hopefully capture the depth, as well as the danger, of nothingness.

2026Beyond the Usual Suspects · I

Jean Baudrillard

Hyper Reality

Baudrillard argued that we live inside simulations that no longer refer to anything real, images of images. And who better represents that than 'Mr Beast', a vapid, corporate effigy of entertainment. I built this piece from his own footage, because you don't need to add anything to make the point. What Baudrillard warned us about is now the highest paid job on YouTube.

2025

Svetlana Boym

Nostalgia

Everyone gets nostalgic, but how does it actually work? Svetlana Boym split nostalgia into two kinds. One longs to rebuild the past exactly as it was. The other just wants to sit in the ache of it being gone. I went with a Windows XP style here, since that's an aesthetic and time I'm quite nostalgic for myself. The boot chime, the wallpaper, all of it. Since I can't run the operating system anymore, I might as well animate it.

2025

John Koenig

Sonder

Sonder's an interesting word, not everyone knows its meaning, but we've all experienced it in some form or another. John Koenig coined the term for the sudden realisation that every stranger you walk past has an inner life, just as rich and detailed as your own. I built this piece out of puppets composited onto real street photography. I find that's how we register strangers most of the time, characters we half-invent, until suddenly we become eerily aware of their depth.

2025

Albert Camus

The Absurd

One of the most serious philosophical questions is whether life is worth living at all. Camus' answer was that you have to reject the notion wholesale, including the allure of philosophical suicide. You must sit inside the meaninglessness on purpose, and the Myth of Sisyphus encapsulates this perfectly.

2025

Aristotle

Oligarchy

Aristotle warned that oligarchy is what happens when a small group of the wealthy convince everyone else their interests are shared. Two and a half thousand years later, Bezos and other billionaires control the media meant to inform us. Functioning democracies are built on shared truth, which is clearly quite hard to come by nowadays.

2025

Jeremy Bentham

Panopticon

Foucault picked up Bentham's Panopticon design and argued that we're all trapped in that same prison ourselves. This piece is animated on aged engineering-grid paper, because the panopticon is an architectural argument, and the visual language should feel like it came from the same drawing table.

2025

Dissertation Piece

Can AI Be Creative?

This is part of the dissertation for my UCL BA Media degree, my academic essay in motion. The question was whether AI can actually be creative, or whether it's just imitating the creative process well enough to look like it. I explored Csikszentmihalyi, Dennett, Chalmers, and Searle, plus a few historical case studies. My conclusion was that AI should be treated as an extension of creativity rather than a replacement, and that expanding the definition might finally give human creativity value outside the profit it can turn.

Since I made this in late 2024, the pace has moved harder and faster than I expected, and the ethical concerns read much louder now. General sentiment on the topic has also become less nuanced and more dogmatic, but it's still a topic I'd like to explore further. For clarity: No AI has ever been used in the making of my work, however, I find the topic fascinating. What you're watching is a cut down version of the original, more an animation showcase than the full essay.

2024

James Thom

Hi :) I'm James, a designer who animates theory. I started in poster and graphic work, then moved to motion design, because animation lets ideas breathe in a way static work can't. Colour, shape, motion and form carry the argument instead of decorating it. That tacit connection between media and theory is what I'm after.

Everything on this site, the writing, animation, voice and sound design, is done by me. If you have any ideas you want to see come to life, I'd love to help you land something we can both be proud of!