Masks: Rituals and Theatre

As part of a studio project, I took refrence from masks. Coming from italy, masks are an important part of my countries theatrical history. So I decided to briefly research it.

Masks were orginally used for religious rituals since prehistoric times, but as everything else, it evolved into an object rapresentative of the theatre.

 

Masks can be found in every corner of the globe, and are a vital part in its artistic history.

In Europe, mask where first used in greek thetre to both interpet the character and amplify the dialogue so the sound reached every area of the theatre. 

In italian history, a mask originated in every region of the country, and each mask was interpreted as a character in various folkoristic comedies. Some of the most well known masks are Alrecchino (Harlequin) and Pulcinella, originating from Milan and Naples rispectivley.

 

I we move across the globe, we find that masks are more used for traditional purposes, religious events or celebrations, and each continent has its own characteristic mask. 

In sub-saharan Africa, masks ar an essential component in ritualistic dances and religious rituals, most representing humans or animals. Different regions have different styles and meanings.

 

In Asia, masks represent gods and demons, but are mostly used in the theatre, to reinact ancient legends and myths.

 

In America, the natives used masks to speak to animal gods and to perform rituals.

As we can see, masks are and have been a excellent medium to expolore, study and understand a country's history and culture; from religion to entertainment.

Digital Reality: Blurring the lines between nature and codes

While listening to music while drawing, I came accross the music video for David Guetta's "She wolf". Although the music is much to be diesred, I found the video quite interesting.




 

The visuals and tone of the clip, dark and cold, somehow fit very well with the track. But what is perhaps most striking is the relationship between the enviroment and the digital distortions that occur throughout the video.

I searched for articles reggarding the blurring of the lines between nature and digital reality, and surprisingly found very little, but I will carry on in hopes of finding something with an accademic background.

I believe that in a creative setting, this would be a really interseting concept for perhaps a novel or a graphic novel, as it induces to think about the enviroment from a different point of view and forces the creator to think outside the box. I will certainly try to intoduce this in one of my presonal projects.

Japan's Monsters

In this lecture, we spoke of Japanese culture and aesthetic, how its consumerism has affected society and its appeal to western media.
The focus of the lecture was to establish the line between "Cute" and "Monstrous", a line that's very blurred when we look at a piece of animation like my Neghbour Totoro:

 

Although the characters may look soft and with a sunny disposition, they all have certain features that render them slightly morbid and disturbing, like the Catbus as we see above.

The "Giant Monster on the loose" genre is also significant in japanese entertainment, as one of the most famous "Giant Monster" film, Godzilla, now a clut movie, is originally Japanese.

This genre, though, emerged also in american filmaking, as we see with King Kong.

With this in mind, it easy to see the meaning of Geissbhuler's Pease Poster.

Speedpainting

During my struggle to gain interenet visibility, I decided to create a YouTube channel and upload speedpainting videos.I go introduced to speedpainting videos during my early studies and I've always found them an excelent source of inspiration.
A speedpainting is a video in which an artist records themselves creating a digital or traditional drawing or painting, speeding it up and editing the footage, creating a record or their creative process
Here are just a few examples by popular YouTube artists:

SeaSaltShrimp:


                                                                                                                                                                 
Mary Doodles:



                                                                   
Vivziepop:

Animation: a History

"Animation refers to the creation of a sequence of images—drawn, painted, or produced by other artistic methods—that change over time to portray the illusion of motion."
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Zeotrope:
Invented by William Geroge Horner in 1834.
Injected movement into the still image by creating a succession of still onto a round base and, thanks to the fast spinning motion, induced movement, or rather, animation.
The zeotrope allowed a multiple audience.

 

Contemporary zeotropes can be found at Pixars Studios and Studio Ghibli:

Rotoscope:
Invented by Max Fleicher in 1915.
it was a device used to trace live action

 

It was complicated to use due to the speed of the capture; it was also hard to draw smooth and life-like movements.

Research:

Cell Animation:

Invented in 1915.

It was easier to produce with more stable results; fluid animation.

Research:

Postmodern: The Fourth Wall

One of the characteristics that defines postmodern work is the concept of breaking the fourth wall, a "practice" which consists of breaking the so called wall between the spectator or viewer and the piece of work being shown. 

This concept follows the phylosophical ideologies of Denis Diderot but the fourth wall illusion is often associated with naturalist theatre of the mid 19th century.

As mentioned, the fourth wall is the immaginary wall at the front to a stage in a traditional three wall box-ste, through which the audience sees the play. This concept applies to any from of entertainment, including books, comics and videogames in which the charachters talk directly to the reader or player.

When we talk about comic books, the character most famous for breaking the fourth wall is Marvel's Deadpool:

Other than being a generally complex character, despite being famous for his outgoing, annoying and at times rude personality, Deadpool and the storyline that follows him faces other deep concepts such as death and how man reacts to it, self-awareness and the descovery of one's true nature and reason of existance, self-conflict and awareness of ones flaws, and the multiverse theory.

Here are some examples:

In animation we see the breaking of the fourth wall in the Loony Toons short "Duck Amuck", in which Daffy Duck, the protagoinst is forced to adapt to the constantly changing scenerey that the animator creates. 

Creepy and Surreal: The Uncanny

In this lecture we faced the topics of Surrealism and the Uncanny, two very interesting topics when applied to art.

As explained, there's a substantial difference between surreal and uncanny.
Surreal is something that is distorted and strange but the viewer sees it straight away. For example:

But Uncanny is something equally strange but the viewer can't grasp it right away:

For an Uncanny effect we can distinguish something strange about something familiar from something strange added to something familiar.

The Uncanny is more disturbing than surprising.

We see this in E.T.A. Hoffman's "Sandman"

Nathanael, the hero, first encounters the Sandman in the form of a grotesque lawyer, who performs alchemical experiments with his father after Nathanael and his sisters have gone to bed. One night Nathanael hides and sees what's going on. But he is discovered, and nearly has his eyes burned out with coals. He escapes but, subsequently, his father is found dead after an accident with an experiment.

"Don't you know?" asks the unfortunate hero's nanny. “[the Sandman] is a wicked man who comes to children when they won't go to bed and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes, so that they pop right out of their heads all covered in blood, and then he throws them in a sack and carries them off to the half-moon to feed to his little children; they sit there in the nest, and have hooked beaks like owls, which they use to peck the eyes out of the heads of naughty children."

This Stop Motion Animation is based on the Gothic Horror Story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, and features carved wooden puppets

The Uncanny is a conceptual point in a graph created by Masahiro Mori entitled the Uncanny valley. In this graph we see how the line move between the realism of an object, or in this case a person, and the empathic response of the viewer:

This is also explained in detail in a video created by Vsauce on Youtube: