Why are we obsessed with crime series? This heat-sensitive book examines

The pair also came across some interesting production methods; one shot shows a fake blood mixture made behind the scenes using a mixture of cocoa, healing clay and strawberry lemonade. “This really shows how improvised things often are on sets, considering the amount of episodes to be shot. The realism of a scene is often not very important, but the film crew is also guided by ideas and notions of what a crime scene might look like,” says Malte. These images are featured on fold-out pages throughout the book, along with embedded metadata to give a “factual” appearance “reminiscent of a police archive.” The use of fold-out pages allows viewers to decide whether they want to see the sometimes violent images.

These studio images sit alongside a portrait series in which Jan and Malte used AI to alter the appearance of various actors appearing as victims or perpetrators in crime series; hairlines recede, bangs emerge, lines and wrinkles appear, and facial hair disappears. These portraits are used to interrogate both historical instances of criminal categorization, and concerns about modern methods of image framing and alteration as evident in the rise of AI. “It is based on photographic approaches by Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon in the 19th century, who used 'police photographs' to categorize and stereotype suspected criminals based on their physiognomic features in order to capture and pathologize what was considered criminal behavior,” says Malte. “These underlying assumptions of physiognomy also serve as the basis for contemporary AI image training sets, reinforcing human categorization based on visual bias.”

The idea for a heat-sensitive cover that leaves fingerprints as you read was born during a conversation with the couple's former professor, Karen Fromm. It takes up the idea of ​​leaving a mark – a common thread that runs throughout the book – and the physical involvement of the viewer. But it was no easy task. After weeks of research, the goal was achieved by screen-printing thermochromic, heat-sensitive ink onto the cover. The effect is brilliant – it reinforces the uneasy quality of the book's contents and reflects the kind of imagery we associate with reactions to fictionalized crimes.

Overall, Malte and Jan want the book to awaken the vast amounts of fictional crime films from their “sleep,” says Jan. “We are so saturated with such visual representations that there is hardly any room left to think about the potential effects of being exposed to them so frequently,” he continues. “In German society, for example, the perception of security and crime plays an important role in legitimizing political decisions, such as state control and regulatory interventions in the behavior of individuals.” These themes are further explored in the book in articles by Karen Fromm and sociologists Adlo Legnaro and Andrea Kretschmann.