Given my initial research into motion graphics and it's related fields which of the Summer Briefs lend themselves to this project?
Sea of Slumber - This is the project I did and I could certainly build something from a tangent of the work I have already done. Initial Ideas involve time a lapse derive around Nottingham with a sketchy illustrated overlay.
Right vs Left Brain - Not quite sure about this one
Illustrate a Classic Novel - This is potentially the easiest; it could either be a panoramic scene or effectively a book trailer, perhaps something akin to a motion comic. Gustav Meyrink's Der Golems? Just about anything by China Meiville? Frankenstien? The Windwork Girl? Battle Royale? The Lost Symbol (Back to sigils + glyphs again? too much?) Casanova's Historie De Ma Vie*? A Song of Ice and Fire? Dune? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Explore the concept of Utopia - This is what my mind initially jumped to and that is creating a short animation about how "Utopia is not a place, but a state of mind." promoting a eco-conscious, philosophically guided transhuman outlook and pushing for a cultural shift.... But in 30 seconds? it would be crammed.
Top 10 Science Myths - Another data heavy one, I'm not convinced 10 myths could be adequately covered in 30 seconds. Perhaps an infodump style thing? (Steam of thought a practical option**?)
* Historie De Ma Vie - Create a short about the crazy life Casanova lead?
**Stream of Thought - Design the animation as an infodump with the fluidity of stream of thought.
Out of these Utopia and Sea of slumber, much as before grab my attention best. There is a lot there to sink my teeth into and so I start; after attending GameCity by brainstorming with my most excellent friend Millie who has a most wonderfully unorthodox view on things, I thought this would be an excellent way of putting disruption into practice, by finding what emerged.
We went on to discuss the ideas more at length with more discussion
We discussed the idea of personal utopia in relation to the idea of a societal utopia and what political viewpoints and lend themselves to utopian living and how the binary of masculine and feminine dynamics affect up this.
By approaching utopia from a personal view point inevitably lead to the analysis and abstraction of the idea of self in both a Jungian and biological sense. Our modern society, thanks to technology such as the internet seems to support this partitioning of conciousness into multiple outwards phasing personas. These are particularly visible on-line where I have met people who are wholly fictional constructs while others live in a state of duality, altering what facets of themselves they show to others.
This comes back to the idea of people as an amalgam of various parts, and our struggle to harmonise them. Looking at this from a psychological perspective the idea can certainly be viewed through the lens of "Sea of Slumber".
So I have settled on sea of slumber, given how little time I had to develop the idea for my summer project I decide to remain grounded in the ideas that brought me here. Following the train of enquiry I spent a lot of time pondering on the manifestation of unconsciousness in dreams and the idea of multiple competing facets of personality.
In Paprika the titular character is a dream avatar created by the main character to help her interact with her patients in dreams. Being a dream construct Paprika is not bound by the normal rules of reality which are really shown off in the title sequence here.
In Dali and Disney's collaboration Destino we once again see two figures traversing dreamspace and warping it to their will. Its an excellent example of surrealism, I also appreciate Dali's dream sequence in Hichcock's Spellbound.
In Vanilla Sky Cruise's character reconstructs his ideal self to continue life but over time the illusion begins to break down as his demons come back to haunt him, confusing the two women through whom he defined his life as his scarred "dream" self haunts him and only through his acceptance of his reality can he be free, forsaking everything for nothing and a hope of a future.
In Fight club after a bout of insomnia The Narrator's subconscious manifests itself as Tyler Durden who through a combination of hallucinated conversations and outright "possession" attempts to bring the Narrator's life more in line with "his" ideal. The Narrator wished for more excitement and agency in his life and in his mentally fragile state dreamed up Tyler Durden to do just that
In the real world, shamans and lucid dreamers both call upon spirit guides in their dreams. Again these are agents of their unconsciousness and only the most blatant of many examples of people giving their subconscious the semblance of personification in order to gain a deeper understanding of themselves or the universe around them.
Then of course there are those with multiple personalities but I don't know an awful lot about that and I'd worry about misrepresenting a serious illness, still the subconcious manifestation of a specifically unwanted personality construct is an interesting one.
Looking at it through the lens I approached with Millie really makes things interesting, if our personalities are literal manifestations of "the collective is much greater than the sum of it's parts" then what is to say a secondary personality is any less valid. Why not look at things from the Tyler Durden character's perspective. Here you have a being; with a purpose, born with dreams and formed whole, not put together through random experience and long personal growth, influenced by numerous people. You are the manifestation of a desire, a muse like spirit urging creation yet separate from the host conciousness.
Today we're quite happy to live unamazing lives as long as our basic needs are met, breaking the mold can be risky and as such is a scary prospect, the arrival of such a desire may not be welcome and so we ignore it through procrastination until it disappears from our mind. But if it was a concious being then a more literal approach might be neccissary;
Psychological auto-cannibalism
But what is this creature? looking inwards for inspiration one of my most fantastical desires is a transhumanist one, surely this if manifested would seek to be free of it's human limitations?
Wthout a scanner I've had to upload these with my phone, I'll repost some cleaned up versions when I can.
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