I am making an installation made up of a series of experimental sculptural animations exploring and representing the idea of enclosed space, or ‘bubble’, of subjective experience and people’s lack of ‘shared’ reality. I am projection mapping animations onto objects to illustrate the sense of enclosed worlds that we all live in. The medium is very much part of the message. In a way the installations are there to expose these inner bubbles, so that they can be seen outside of ourselves, materialising them, to gain a sense of 'shared reality' and bring us together in a time of isolation. I've come up with three different installations that represent this. Because this is experimental animation the structure of my pre production doesn't follow the production line of a typical animation, I am not defining the final piece but showing the materials, ideas and techniques I will be using to make the installation.
Sculpture 1: Broken Femur
The invisible isolation of the subjective experience casts light on the very essence of our humanity, our compassion for others, selflessness, egoism etc. In this first installation I'm looking at the role of technology and cyber connectivity in isolating ourselves further within the bubbles we already live in. I was inspired by what the anthropologist Margret Mead considers to be the first sign of civilisation: 'the first sign of civilisation within an ancient culture was a femur (thigh bone) that had been broken and then healed.' Mead explained that "in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone through difficulty is where civilisation starts."
This made me think, that however connected we are through social media and the internet, it negates the tactile touch and physical presence needed to experience what it is to be in a civilisation, bonding and compassion. it creates a sense of connectivity which actually creates much more distance between each-other and the bubbles we live in.
I'm going to represent this by:
Projecting onto a real person lying on the ground either on a mattress or carpet with a phone in their hand. there are household objects on the bed around them.
The animation projected onto the person first will make the silhouette appear to be falling or chased.
The person's femur breaks.
The objects on the carpet or bed, become alive and try to help the person
They cannot reach the person. Here I want the contrast between the physical person lying on the ground and the 'fake' beings in the animation to be pronounced.
The human 'beings' turn into animals: their hands grow claws, become hairy and disfigured, maybe more aggressive.
The animation ends by one of the hands swiping the image of the person away, as if they were scrolling on Instagram. The first image of the person lying on their bed appears again, and the animation loops.
Why a real person is lying on the ground:
I want to emphasise on the distance 'screen connectivity' creates between people, and I think getting the viewer to watch a screen (the animation) projected onto a person who looks hurt, lying down on the floor, without helping them but more interested in the visuals that are projected onto them ironically materialises the physical separation the screen creates between people.
Animation technique:
In my previous work I tend to use a lot of different mediums of animation such as live action claymotion, paint, drawing, collage and animating in After Effects. I like using a lot of contrasting textures and colours and make things that have a tactile and textual quality to them, so for this animation I will do just that and then collage in After Effects.
My intention isn't to make the storyline explicit, the installation itself already has its own message and affect on the audience which is why I am not concerned with timing, animatics or making definitive decisions on shots and imagery. I have set and decided on the loose narrative by defining the succession of events that will take place in my storyboard. I'm also allowing the animation process to be quite intuitive, expecting much of the visual imagery I've already laid out to change and develop as time goes on, it is the idea, the loose narrative and the installation itself which is driving the making and experimentation.
The animation itself will go in and out of interacting with the person lying down and the objects surrounding them, so that the physical matter in front of the viewer appears animate and the media feels more tangible, blurring the lines between object and screen, physical and cyber.
Sculpture 2: Festering Sink
When thinking about visualising the 'bubble' of subjective experience each and everyone of us live in, one can't help but talk about the Mind. In this installation I'm using the space of the sink to illustrate mental processes.
The sink is a container and has subcontainers which fits within Plato's definition of the mind: 'a physical entity that contains other entities in space'. William James' definition of the mind; "a mind as a stream" describes the mind's quality of constant change which I want to illustrate through the movement and flow of the animation between plates, bowl, saucepans and use-stencils, old pasta and peas. I want each container to be animated to be 'alive', each has a different function and movement, as Kearn uses the metaphor of the 'sentient web' to describe how the mind operates, it is this sentience that I want the sculpture to have.
"Our minds contain many different perspectives, and they can argue or counter or talk over each other. we are all fragmented. there is no unitary self. We are all in pieces, struggling to create the illusion of coherent 'me' from moment to moment. " Fernyhough.
What it will look like:
Each bowl is alive, metamorphosing from abstract to figurative and back again, information constantly flowing in a 'stream of thought'. Stimulus (or data) is added to the brain by a drip from the tap and as the data enters it gets processed by the mind, transferring from container to container along pasta, forks and other dishes. Each container has a different function in the brain and can be seen through its particular movement in processing information. The bowls and containers also represent the interacting point of views Fernough speaks about.
I am going to use claymotion to animate the movement and metamorphosis that occurs in the bowls, from tests my projection tests it was very effective in creating a tactile and malleable property to the hard surfaces. The animated mark making looked like the objects were being made, modified and sculpted under your own eyes.
the drips of data added from the tap will be made from collages paper or digital images from real life, such as the news, social media and other media from screens.
vague synopsis:
The animations starts with the mind at rest: the containers are showing different swirls of movement. Several images and shapes vaguely appear and disappear at an in frequent rate.
The bowls are interconnected with 'strings' or any material in the sink that can act as one, transferring images from one bowl to the next but altering the figurative object.
Data added by the drip of the tap, falls into the firs bowl.
The data goes through the containers of the mind being changes in various different ways in each bowl.
As more data is added and the mind processes more information the water surrounding the bowls becomes more murky, colours change, and the figurative imagery becomes slightly darker.
The tap then stops dropping data, so no new information is added to the circuit.
The sink cleans itself by processing what is in the water and bowls.
The animation starts again.
Storyboard:
Animation technique:
I am going to use claymation to animate a large amount of this piece. The process of animating will be part of the meaning because I'm going to animate in a 'stream of thought' way, reacting to the data the mind is interacting with. changing the shape of the plasticine with no planned storyboard, moulding the plasticine into what the shape evokes to me next, materialising the stream of thought.
After several tests, I've decided to also animate with paper collage, After Effect and projection map using Maya and After Effects.
Sculpture 3:
This third sculpture is a much more abstract representation of the 'subjective bubble of experience'. When looking out at the world around us we only get fragments of information, making up the narratives in our heads to make sense of the world. We assume we all have this sense of 'common reality' when in fact we are isolated to the collage of experiences and information we gather.
I want this sculpture to be abstract because the real world doesn't have a narrative, the viewer can do the work of creating narrative in their own mind. I will represent the fragments of information that make up a 'bubble of experience' or maybe just a feeling of it. With this sculpture the medium is the message, also showing that I also live in a bubble, and can only create something that is subjective to my own experiences.
How I am going to represent this:
I am going to film and animate scenes that surround me in a specific place or of a specific time and 'stitch' these together on a surface that is also made up of pieces put together. Fabric is appealing to me for this project because it has a sort of symbolic meaning of a manmade surface created by smaller material.
I am going to take a much more free approach to the making of this, and will develop the visual elements in practice. medium-wise I will use live action and animation; the live action is to capture events and happenings, whereas the animation is to represent the feelings and more subjective, abstract happenings. I will then collage the videos and projection map them onto a fabric surface using After Effects and Maya.
I did an experiment with this in mind and filmed pieces of footage and used animation I had made that week and made a 'mood board' this style. I stitched together pieces of scrap cloth I had lying around and projected the videos onto it, fitting within the patterns and shapes of the cloth.
In a way I am opening up my own 'bubble' by making a mood-board of my own mind to be experienced by someone else.
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