My research began looking at Andrew Kotting’s work. His work was based around his daughter Edith who suffers from an unfortunate mental disorder that impairs her ability to communicate properly. Kotting takes this as a personal crusade to elevate his audience’s awareness to her intelligence by using methods of technology and film with visual and audio elements to construct a platform in which a network to her mind and ourselves can be established. I then came across one of his pieces titled ‘All in the mind.’
At the threshold of the last mystery, you have looked into the eyes of your creature self and watched the sun come dripping a bucket full of gold. - Andrew Kotting, 2014.
The sculpture is the focus of our gaze as the camera digs into it like an archaeologist looking for signifiers and meaning. The site resonates as does the adjacent beach on which children are seen shooting arrows into the eyes of King Harold.
The looping projection allows the audience to reflect upon all things Edith and her role as the great visionary and Christian Queen to these muddled isles. - Andrew Kotting
Following on from Kotting, I researched further developments of film and the mind and found Dave Mckean who has done a lot of work in the past linking to the parameters of within the mind. Mckean also filmed a feature-length movie called ‘Mirror mask.’ A perfect example of the augmented world an individual conceives to make sense and reasoning with the outside world. Known, commonly as reality. At this point, I was now aware of how I wanted this project theme to go and began layering in the brickwork to my idea.
All these images are short film pieces Mckean has done in the past, as you can see clearly the consistent theme is dreams and distortion of reality at times invoking a feeling of the unconsciousness and unsettling, Especially in Mckean's take on Punch and Judy offering a more violent toned view of the pair's story.
MirrorMask (2005) centres on Helena, a 15-year-old girl in a family of circus entertainers, who often wishes she could run off and join real life. After a fight with her parents about her future plans, her mother falls quite ill and Helena is convinced that it is all her fault.
Emotion is an essential part of our humanity; without it, we cannot differentiate between what is subjective and what is objective. It creates awareness and a deeper understanding of the world we’ve come to call our home. In some ways, Emotion is a world within a world and truly exists!
But how do we measure emotion?
Darwin did a study that is still used today called ‘The expressions of the emotions in man & animals.’ His book is famous for being scientific evidence using photographs as a major part of the research collected.
This was Charles Darwin's third major evolutionary theory, following its predecessors 'On the origin of species.'and 'The descent of man.'
Darwin's fascination rooted itself at the time he was a medical student and a publication by Sir Charles Bell's Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression which argued for a spiritual dimension to the subject.
Darwin notes the universal nature of expressions in the book, writing: "the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements."
This connection of mental states to the neurological organization of movement (as the words motive and emotion suggest) is central to Darwin's understanding of emotion.
MY PIECE FOR MAPS AND NETWORKS
It isn’t in one person do we define emotion, but in many can we ascertain the symptoms of this causality, to give substance to its name.
My piece is a direction that begins on another end. What are we to emotion? If emotion exists, which it does, how does it perceive us who uses its endowments for our benefit (reaction)?
Robert Plutchik’s theory is that we all carry the 8 basic emotions, which you can see in his wheel of emotion.
In my piece, I intend to have 8 actors who represent their allocated emotion, beginning with the first 4 in Act 1. They will transcribe the emotion visually for my piece whilst also be giving verbal speeches layering onto the ambient audio features to be added on in post-production.
The entire piece is intended to be spread over three acts. Act 1 will be the focus of maps and networks titled 'connections.'This will be looking at the individuals, as an introduction to their titles as it was. The short film will be played out with the emotions (Actors) cloaked, gazing into the singular light that shines down on their faces from above, almost as if a supernatural phenomenon has transpired. The idea here is to metaphorically speak of the transportation into this dimension immediately placing the individual and the audience into a spiritual paradox. As the beam of light deteriorates the vibrant colours of blue and red covert the light and fill the space as to say that the dimension is still a supernatural one substituting the source of lights natural colour.
The background becomes a black void and I particularly wanted this to be so as I firmly believe that the source of life isn't the light we thrive in but the darkness we're conceived in, as was light in the beginning.I thought this to be a good add-on to include as part of my piece as if to say a new world has emerged created in the black void. Is it emotions world? or another figment of our minds imagination into the dimensional world? Interestingly enough in Chinese culture black, corresponds with water and in 'The book of changes.' Black is regarded widely to be the colour of the heavens as they say;
The saying “heaven and earth of mysterious black” was rooted in the observation that the northern sky was black for a long time.
The entire piece is intended to be spread over three acts. Act 1 will be the focus of maps and networks titled 'connections.'This will be looking at the individuals, as an introduction to their titles as it was. The short film will be played out with the emotions (Actors) cloaked, gazing into the singular light that shines down on their faces from above, almost as if a supernatural phenomenon has transpired. The idea here is to metaphorically speak of the transportation into this dimension immediately placing the individual and the audience into a spiritual paradox. As the beam of light deteriorates the vibrant colours of blue and red covert the light and fill the space as to say that the dimension is still a supernatural one substituting the source of lights natural colour.
The background becomes a black void and I particularly wanted this to be so as I firmly believe that the source of life isn't the light we thrive in but the darkness we're conceived in, as was light in the beginning.I thought this to be a good add-on to include as part of my piece as if to say a new world has emerged created in the black void. Is it emotions world? or another figment of our minds imagination into the dimensional world? Interestingly enough in Chinese culture black, corresponds with water and in 'The book of changes.' Black is regarded widely to be the colour of the heavens as they say;
The saying “heaven and earth of mysterious black” was rooted in the observation that the northern sky was black for a long time.
Hence, they considered black to be the king of colours and honoured the colour more than any other.
White was considered to be purity but also the symbol for death and so traditional Chinese people dress in white to funerals, even to this day.
White was considered to be purity but also the symbol for death and so traditional Chinese people dress in white to funerals, even to this day.
As the scenes progress further a fluctuation between ambient and visual imagery will be mixed in with text-based imagery. Like a silent movie, it will script out the individual's silent emotion into words. what you will see is cinematograph work infused with the text form.
Towards the end of ACT 1, a crescendo of voices and imagery spiral into crowd sounding chaos before a suction of silence consumes all and the scene cuts to a limp less arm suspended in the air. The hand of the individual reaches out to no one, but from the void, a hand reaches to the lifeless one suspended in the air and takes hold before raising it upwards. This is the moment where the scene cuts and Act one ends, setting mystery for whats to come.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrew Kotting -
Charles Darwin - The expressions of emotions in man and animals:
Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotion -
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