Meet サイレンヘッド, Sairenheddo (Sirenhead). On Long Island there’s an insane number of partially-filled strip malls, the result of decades of overdevelopment and a zoning/planning ethos of “build it and they will come.” The problem is that “build it and they will come really only applies to the ghosts of baseball players. There were an abundance of never completely-filled malls before the rise of internet shopping let alone the pandemic! And now we have virgin forests being cleared for extremely dubious reasons all while the decaying strip malls are allowed to crumble.
But I figured out what is happening in those malls – it’s where Sairenheddo comes to life. A close relative of the rural monster Sirenhead, Sairenheddo is its urban manifestation. Those lights and sound systems that are no longer needed to illuminate empty parking lots or to draw the attention of shoppers slowly absorb the either of concrete and tarmac and neglect, morphing into Sairenheddo. It then stalks around, adding to the sound pollution on this poor island and killing people by bursting their eardrums and internal organs with sound waves.
For this one, I tried drawing it first, then asking an AIbot to come up with an image.
I don’t think the aibot really grasped the whole concept of “Sirenhead” so I’d say this was not as successful as others have been. I picked the top center as my favorite of these because I think the parking lot and building show good cracks, unauthorized vegetation, etc.
Much obliged to Trevor Henderson for coming up with this monster!