Throughout this whole Introduction to Animation unit, we were asked what is (or is not) animation, book, sound. How we perceive and understand these phrases, what is my own take on them.
Who am I?
What is book?
My journey working on this project began by asking myself a (not so) simple question: what is a book? What can be or can not be considered a book? The closest description of a book I discovered that I agreed with was: its purpose is to tell a story. No matter the format, narrative flow or lack thereof, it can be a book as long as there are some elements leading to the semblance of evidence of the existing deeper meaning. I see ‘book’ as a term for holding a collection of stories. Book – a collection of stories.
Format of the book
And it started moving from there. The traditional bookbinding, ancient as the paper itself. But I wanted to move away from it. Experiment and find a new way to interpret the format of it.
I am fascinated by the art of origami. The power that is granted to take a blank piece of paper and without and other instruments, just your hands, bring this piece to life in the form of a creature or other fascinating object. While looking into using origami for my project, I found the shape – Icosahedron, 20 sided polyhedron to work with. I decided to choose it as a format and template for my book.
I knew that we need to make 12 pages, I converted that into 12 topics to cover for my book. Them being:
- Loss
- Empathy
- Home
- Love
- Family
- Artist
- Community
- Culture
- Shadow
- Animus
- Persona
- Fate, Chance and choice
YOU ARE HERE
My final project was built on the main idea of identity – I am a multidimensional individual both fragment and the whole. I consist of so many pieces, both compatible and contradicting, but still, they manage to keep me whole and let build upon them as both individual and artist.
I wanted to touch upon 4 Jungian Archetypes while talking about identity and inner world.
PAGES
Artist – storyteller. A person who tells their own or other people stories through their medium. I have stumbled on the interesting word SONDER – the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. The definition of this word was created by John Koenig who wrote the dictionary of obscure sorrows’.
Home – people I want to go back to. It is the people who make the house feel like home. Home is not the place where I sleep or four walls I pay rent for every month. It is the space I feel safe, protected, and where I can let my true self be released without any judgement.
Empathy – the feeling of connecting with a person on an emotional level. I view it as a blessing and a curse. It lets me build an emotional connection with people quicker based on mutual understanding and eagerness to see from others perspective. But it further entails the need to find justification for an action. I catch myself justifying other people toxic behaviour because I can imagine seeing from their perspective. Having too much empathy unwillingly makes me feel bound and tied to different perspectives and overthink everything.
Loss – I see loss as a painful beginning. Loss affects not dead or lost, but living and found. It’s the feeling of never getting it back and learning to move on without it. One of those lessons came in the form of my mother passing away. ”Don’t waste your time. Use it.” The words my brother told me after the funeral. It’s important to acknowledge the loss but it’s more important to take the lesson and learn to move from the past.
Love – As an Ace/Aro person I don’t define love as a sexual attraction. Love has so many forms. Love is a connection, like a new sword, that gets stronger after each dip into the water of challenges misunderstanding, trust, hustle. It is work put in that strengthens it and makes it worthwhile.
Family – people that define home. My brothers that let me grow and flourish, The blood family that raised me and put the cornerstone of my beginning. Ties that we hold and connections that I make is not defined by my blood. Family is the body that I feel safe, supported and willing to grow myself.
Community – as I woman young adult and student, the need of like-minded people is prominant. It’s important to belong somewhere but I am not entitled to define myself my everyone’s standards or agree on everyone’s positioons. What is important is the want to grow, better yourself, understand others .
Culture – as a Lithuanian I feel the need to define myself as such. I see myself as an extension of the culture I grew up in. Not so much as kitchen or folk culture, but the mentality and historical upbringing of our country. The moral compass I inherited through my family as well as from the place is important and defines part of me too.
Shadow – based on the Jungian archetypes, the shadow is the part of the unconsciousness that is our darkest instincts and desires that aren’t accepted by the society we live in or by the person themselves. I am more thrilled by the implication of different look at yourself and finding what describes you in shadow is interestiong.
Animus – based on the Jungian archetypes, the animus is the masculine part of the woman, as Anima is the feminine part of the man. It is important to discover and take time to accept all part of our individuality as equal no matter what society tries to force on the individual. It’s needed to know myself because no one knows myself better than I do.
Persona – based on the Jungian archetypes , Persona is the way we act while interacting with different people or groups. It is mask we put on to seem more aproachable, more friendly, intimidating, confidant. The way we want to present ourself. It is imortant to distinct yourself from your true you and the character you play. Water
Fate, Chance and choice – I am not in control of my whole life span. I can change some things, make desitions and plans, but it is never in hands to decide what will happen to someone else in some unindentified period of time. It is important to learn and find your own way to deal with it.
The 20 sided polyhedron is the representation of YOU ARE HERE, my outside and inside. Each piece of this 3D puzzle is unique and if deconstructed and put into the right order it reveals a short animation sequence. It is a short clip – representation of my soul. You can delve into each piece of me separately, but only if you put the pieces together, the map of my soul will become visible to you.
(Disk, the driver, is the soul. It’s, as the name entails, the one who drives, runs our body, as the program driver run the computer.)
my book is like a vault. It is closed, guarded. But even if it’s open, the only way to truly know the meaning of all the pages is to decipher and connect. Throughout outside panels, there are morse codes scattered around.
Critical appraisal
Throughout the introduction to animation unit, I was given many opportunities to not only broaden my knowledge but also rethink and reevaluate how I experience and appreciate artists and their work. Throughout the practical homework and discussions in lectures, I had slowly developed the base concept of my final project of this unit.
The base of the concept is held by the idea of ”I as multifaceted fragmented being, undefined and uncontained”. My goal was to show many different parts of myself, how even if they contradictory, it does not mean they aren’t able to exist together in one. By taking inspiration from such creators such as Shioto Chiharu, Tracey Emin and storyteller Mattew Mercer, I used it to blend my experiences, thoughts, feelings into this project. I want to show my point of view on myself, my identity, who I am, and then I AM HERE.
I wanted this project to be as meaningful and as personal as I was able to make it. With this notion, I dedicated time to observe my surroundings, my own artistic lense, how I am able to perceive what surrounds me, without the invasive perception of the stereotypes or foreign biases. To know yourself is to know your own bias and question it constantly.
Through the whole time I spent on my book, I learned to focus more on myself, who I am, got to know myself a little bit better. I wanted to get to know myself as raw as I could, without anyone’s intervention. Who I am as a person, as an artist, as an individual.
I perceive myself as a liquid, water. It flows where ever it wants, can change forms depending on its surrounding environment, can shape itself however it wants but always will stay the same liquid after. I adopted this mindset because I believe that everything and everyone is evolving not depended on the wants to do so or not. It is in my power to take my past, experiences, failures or success, moulding into what I want to be despite opposition. Because I know myself the best and I am responsible for it and my place in this huge scheme we call existance