Context of Practice- Visual Response

The basis of my Animated response to accompany my CoP essay is to depict disillusionment with the modern world, specifically modern ways of living and social conventions in an age of social media. The way in which I chose to approach this was deliberately more obtuse than usual, opting to utilise suggestive imagery and symbolism in order to tackle the themes of Modernity and disillusionment.

Storyboard for my Final CoP Animation

The animation consists of a series of camera pans between a woman and her neighbour in what is supposed to be a modern apartment block. The idea is that this woman longs for human interaction, a point illustrated and symbolised by the flowers on the windowsill. I deliberately chose pink Camellia flowers as they symbolise 'longing' and are reflective of the main character's internal feelings. Externalising the internal is a technique I am very interested in exploring in my animations and the colour palette is also designed to reflect the depressed psychology of the main character.

Subjectivity is another technique I employ in order to communicate my message. My intention with this animation was to show a character's perception of the modern world, which is not necessarily accurate to how it is in reality. When the camera pans to the other window, this is supposed to be symbolic of the character's perception of what is going on next door. When the character leaves the scene we are brought back to a more objective view of the scene, where the window next door also has flowers in the window. What I am trying to say with this is the modern world, as symbolised by the setting in the case of this animation, skewers our perception of the truth, a point discussed in my essay on Postmodernity and that in actuality while we may feel lonely and isolated in the modern world, many others feel the same.

My animation is Postmodern because it seeks to deconstruct perceptions of modern life and expectations, as well as in its multiplicity of styles, especially the colour palette. The soundtrack, taken from the Spike Jonze film Her which deals with similar themes in a Postmodern way, dictates the rhythms of the editing in a way which draws attention to the artificiality of the animation in a way that is self aware. While I do wish I had more time on my animation I am overall satisfied with how I get my point across and feel it effectively commmunicates some of the points of my essay.