DANM Thesis Page (find drafts here)
Abstract:
My thesis project will be the creation of a series of three short digital animations called The Voyage of the Mask Inside, which are meant to be screened cinematically and in order in sequence, in a gallery, a theater, or online. Collectively these animations tell the story of a fictional character called the Inner Mask, whose physical body evokes the ordeals of social masking and performance of identities, and who wanders through various fantastical environments in search of a missing substance which goes beyond the illusory "mask" presented the world, a substance which the Inner Mask feels lacking in itself. The Inner Mask encounters various other entities whose bodies are assemblages of various masks, bodies and symbols, and explores spaces in which interactions allegorically refer to moments in which social masking comes into play.
The character of the Inner Mask has been part of my artistic work for the past 8 years, and I have articulated the character in pen illustrations, writing, and sculpture. Digital 3D animation has become my latest iteration and means of communicating the message of disorientation within the socially-understood self of a person, and has opened up particular possibilities of symbolization and surreal imagery.
A mixture of animation techniques and software will ultimately be involved in the animations, the primary medium however will be 3D graphics, created in Blender 3D. The medium of animation overall as a system of communication has the ability to allow for the realization of a distinct system of the possible within which the impossible perform as the believable, and familiar objects can be made to express stories. 3D graphics in particular allow the illusion of real objects which needn't be affected by gravity, mass or surface tension, allowing for vivid allegories to be assembled, and for transformations to be part of their language.
I discovered Blender in October of 2008, when I was searching for a means to create and render 3D graphics for a possible interactive virtual environment. Blender is the only freely available software of its kind which can be downloaded in full for unlimited use by the private creator to make films, games, and digital sculptures. Blender has become not only the vehicle for realization of the project, but a major source of inspiration for many of the scenes and events in the film, as Blender's ability to simulate certain aspects of reality, and to deviate from other aspects, have fueled my technical experiments as well as much of my generative process of storyboarding and story development.
My use of Blender, as opposed to a commercial product such as Maya, helps support the shareware/freeware movement and the efforts of developers who provide such tools as Blender explicitly for the use of artists and creators who have no access to more expensive tools or who would rather use non-commercial tools given the choice. Support of freeware, I feel, also supports an alternative model for promoting and distributing software. Blender stands as a unique freeware product, in that its complexity causes its users to be heavily reliant on interactions with other users in order to master it. The users and developers of Blender thus form a hugely cooperative unit, and a major facet of Blender. Blender became an open-source product as a result of popular demand by the community of Blender users, when the company Not a Number lost financial backing in 2002 (Blender.org) and Blender continues to be upgraded, maintained and developed as a non-profit public benefit by the Blender Foundation in Amsterdam.
The series attempts to provide an immersive theatrical experience which provokes thoughts around the idea of identity as a masquerade. In the films, the character sets out on a quest initiated by the realization that its own body and face are of no substance, being literally hollow, and in its exploration of its world, repeatedly encounters entities which it mistakes for solutions to this predicament. The character's failure to acquire that "substantiality" in any concrete form external to itself (although it remains obsessed for long periods with candidates) is meant to point out a flaw in the reliance on external cues for self-understanding. The philosophical context of the film, which I will explore further in the written Thesis, includes coming to a better understanding of how performative objects and artifacts of representation (such as masks, dolls, and mannequins) serve to articulate ideals of self-hood and exemplify the "realization" of social fictions through visualization, and how these objects attain, in their obvious fabricatedness, a believability in their claim to embody the truth of identity beyond that of their human counterparts and associated performers.
I also seek to understand how "the mask" poses a transdisciplinary articulatory device for expressing contention between the 'self' and the 'image of the self' seen as prescribed, projected or performed. What I mean by this is, I mean to explore the ways "the mask" becomes the key symbol representing the boundary and interface between ones-self and others, ones performance or presentation of a self, ones conformity of appearances to the landscape of appearances, and the divide perceived to exist between the performance and the (more elusive?) "performer" located elsewhere than in the facade shown to society.
In my thesis, I will begin by establishing a foundational understanding of what is meant by the term “mask,” by examining the writings of Z. S. Strother and John Bell and others who have researched the uses and meanings of masks in various cultures. I will continue to explore how the concept of masked performance and masking can be understood in the context of social performance, identity politics, and gender-as-mask. In particular I will explore the writings of Judith Butler, and also of Joan Riviere, Elizabeth Grosz and Julia Kristeva, and examine how these authors have articulated femininity and gender as acts of masking, and the role of the body in identity performance. I will include perspectives from sociologists and psychoanalysts towards an understanding of the role of masking and performance, in identity portrayal.
In order to contextualize my own work, I will offer examples from digital animation, recent puppet animation from the Czech Republic, and experimental animations, which explore identity performance, social masking and gender roles. My thesis will investigate the history of animation and of digital animation, and will also explore the work of artists who also employ certain fictional characters, such as Murakami, and who express these characters across multiple media.
The contemporary animators of the Czech Republic whose work I will explore include Michaela Pavlatova, Jan Ott, Jiri Barta, and Lucie Stamfestova These animators use of the body as the signal or territory of the self, sometimes posing as object of desire, sometimes as barrier or portal to knowledge of the self, and sometimes as a thing to be sculpted into that object of desire. I believe that these films and mine grapple with the idea of finding, rejecting, or pursuing a desired self, and of seeking an existence characterized by embodiment of a particular self.
In various animations which I will explore, the body becomes a tool of exploration of the self which goes beyond the body, or is not found on the body, and the self becomes the target of searching, crafting, mimicry or escape. Where do I go looking for myself? Where do I find myself? Does it make a difference, whether I am an alien or monster, beautiful or hideous? What does my real self look like, is it better than what I've got on? Can I get out of this and into something better by way of sex, surgery, a spiritual quest, or disguise?
Artistic References
i.Mirror
Cao Fei ("China Tracy")
Video created in Second Life- the video revolves around ideas of performing a self on a stage, both in second life and in "real life," and of loosing ones' self in that performance. The characters in the video are 'performed' in avatar form, and confront the fact that their SL bodies are projections of a thing desired: youth, beauty, wealth- and then on the other hand that they perform these aspects on the stage of RL as well-- and melancholically realize that sometimes SL and RL are hard to tell apart in this respect.
On a graphic and visual level, the video operates in terms of landscapes found in SL, 3d graphics representing buildings, monuments, nature, and other general features of 'reality.' However, SL, and 3d digital graphics in general, allow for dramatic distortions to the visualizations of artifacts from reality, whether these be to mimic destruction, enact physics-defying stunts, or position the viewer at cinematically impossible perspectives, or to distort or inflate the object otherwise to achieve representations which display not only the 'reality' of an object but evoke somehow the relationship of the object to the person behind the film.
This act of melodramatically evoking a relationship to the object, I concieve as a sort of digital object theater. I found this video on
and was drawn to the cinematic staging of the simulated world, using the nonphysicality of 3d graphics to distort "reality's" appearance.
is of particular interest.
Some Notes:
The keyword is visualization-
I call this character a 'mask,' and say that his story (although gender is uncertain where this one is from) is drawn from experiences of performing self for others-- an experience referred to in general as one of wearing "the mask." This character can be called a kind of mask, however it is more foremost a kind of body- this character is defined by its anatomy, as are many of us that dwell in the 'real' world. The concern at the back of the creature's quest is that of a performed self, taking the place of something more 'authentic' in the social world- this concern arises also in virtual performances; as the concern that, given the freedom to invoke any persona and embody any type of experience, the tendency is still to perform certain "desired" traits, design ones self after a few, specific and restrained models of being. The question arises of the 'reality' being suppressed, banished from the visual world (the world of surfaces), and of whether there is in fact anything there 'behind the mask' being performed.
This question, of whether there is in fact any "reality" to perform or not perform, is a source of this Mask's alarm and quest. This character in fact has, visibly, only a hollow space where other content would be in a 'literally realistic' body. The Mask actively attempts to fill this space, however finds only other masks are suitable. Meanwhile another character, with even less in the way of cranial substance, called the Empty Moon, is similarly pursuing this Mask- trying to fill its own empty space with the Mask's fullness.
The Mask's behavior and performance style is reminiscent of an exploring child, a mime, or a harlequin- unfamiliar with everything it encounters, curious about the strange decorations of its world, never becoming quite fully a part of or normalized with the world it is exploring.
