Week 4

I have been thinking a lot this week about the theory side of this project, specifically the relationship between psychoanalysis and art. I have been reading more things about Jung and his theories and have come across some of the theory on dreams and their meanings. One of the things that has struck me is that Jung’s theories centre on a balance or harmony of the conscious and unconscious with the view that communication between conscious and unconscious is of paramount importance and that creativity one way of reconciling any imbalance.

“The creative mind plays with the objects it loves” – Jung

To begin with it was a big step to move away from character-based animation into something more abstract, but in a way it is something that I have been unconsciously preparing for some time. Looking at my photography work and other little bits and pieces I have come to find that I often take pleasure in ‘playing’ with certain sounds, substances or objects almost absentmindedly in everyday life. The idea of using the sediment from the bottom of the rabbit food came to me after playing with the henna sediment that is always left after I dye my hair. I like the way that the water makes its path through the grains and the way that the individual grains behave as part of the mass.

I enjoy the idea that parts of the unconscious regularly assert themselves in the form of dreams, fantasies and creativity. This actually fits quite well with my own personal direction, leaving behind vain attempts to storyboard in favour of a more instinctual approach to my practice. I have found that this suits me much better then trying to plan things that seemingly cannot be planned for. If psychologists like Jung were correct in their theories about artists, we have little control over our creativity anyway. For the most part I can accept that I am far happier when I am in a position to express myself creatively than I have been during times when I have had to repress those urges.

Part of me is curious as to what the materials that I use say about me as a person/artist. Elizabeth is macabre to say the least and she has been in the bulk of my character-based stop-motion, in fact I think it’s fair to say that she is a part of my own character. This is where my interest in Jung’s ‘shadow’ archetype really comes into play if I were to analyse myself, and my own practice, using his archetypal theory. I’m not sure where playing with light and texture comes into the theory. At the moment I am working on trying to make distinct definitions between what should be created for each archetype (persona/animus/shadow) and what their relationship should be. If we are to relate directly to the theory it would seem that the persona and animus have a fairly close relationship, with one feeding from the other.

Wednesday of this week has been given over to the sound aspect of the project. I am beginning to see that I may have been wrong to try and reign myself in to producing 3 sounds and 3 images in such a regimented way. I have found that instead of sticking to ‘the plan’ I have deviated slightly and although I have made valuable decisions about the project I haven’t yet done what I set out to do. Some of this relates directly to the decision to use voice for the sound design rather than instruments or other noise-making objects. As I hadn’t planned on doing this previously I have only really recorded sounds made using various objects. Today I have felt a little like I am at a loss as what to do with the rest of this unit. I could go through with what I proposed, using the artefacts that I have already gathered. This would mean that I am sticking to my brief and seeing it out until the end. I could also continue with the brief but re-record the sounds using only voice, this would be far more useful and I could start to investigate tonal qualities and look into how best to use voice in my Masters project. I could also ignore the plan entirely and let nature take its course as such, this would be a way of taking the theory literally and seeing what might pop out of my own psyche. I think I will probably opt to switch over to using voice and basically follow the brief that I set myself. However, this may be an indication that I should be less rigid in my next self-negotiated project and that I should give myself more room to experiment.

Instead of abandoning my time in the MA sound room I decided to look at what I have got in terms of sound and look at applying the sounds to some of the animation that I have done over the last few weeks. I find myself looping sounds quite a lot. I applied a fat EQ to the 1st sound clip that I had and found that it was actually a space in between the performed sound that I liked the best. I looped it and looped a part of the rabbit food animation to see how they would exist alongside each other. I’m not sure that this has been that helpful so I will probably need to step away and reassess how to approach this.