Inspired by Ursula Le Guin's ‘Paradises Lost,’ this piece is set on a spaceship where generations succeed one another on a long journey to a new planet. It explores the disconnection and separation from Earth felt by the 5th generation, with no memory of their origins.
See below my process to achieve the final outcome.
Select Stills
Degree Show Exhibition
Process
I was inspired to carry out this project due to my love of science fiction films. In particular, science fiction that is grounded, minimal and maintains focus on the people beyond anything else. I was interested in how filmmakers such as Tony Gilroy, Denis Villeneuve, and Claire Denis could create such tactile environments and emote sensations convincing the viewer they were with them in outer space.
Le Guin's story "Paradises Lost" is about the separation of humans from the source of their lives, as their surroundings on a spaceship are completely unnatural, yet it is all they know.
Additional sources of inspiration derive from Ishibashi Yui’s sculptures (images displayed below), where I found an inherent tension between humans and nature, portraying the need of each entity to be a part of one another. My spaceship citizens do not have the same relationship with nature portrayed here though I was thinking of how they could feel or foster the inherent draw to Earth's ecology.
Moreover, in the work of CGI artist Maciej Rebisz, I was drawn to the overwhelming and confronting feeling he conveys. It shows isolation and brings across an existential tension. While the setting of my project is intended to be indoors, I aim to show the isolation of citizens through other means of overwhelming confrontation, such as claustrophobia and being barricaded from any connection to culture.
After some brief ventures down the route of artificial intelligence, I ended up in a world of opening title sequences for film and television. The title sequences for series' such as 'True Blood' and 'Dawn of the Dead' became turning points for my project. I was absorbed by how the designers could re-contextualise found footage to introduce the tone, atmosphere and exposition for their bodies of work. I used found still imagery in a similar way to create what would be the spaceships archive and decided this archive would be how I illuminate the separation between our rich and textured cultural context and their lack thereof.
I used obscure images all relating to the concepts of isolation, existentialism, otherworldly nature and manmade depictions of nature. I was also influenced by the idea of the Kuleshov effect, whereby the viewer is influenced to make certain subconscious connections among a series of images aided by shape connections and especially their cultural context.
As the image sequence for my project developed further and further, it became apparent that I had to create two experiences- one for the spaceship citizens and one for the audience. I had to convey the placement of the citizens, without the same cultural context my audience has in which to view and understand the images, to an audience that is here and now.
To do that I have the audience witness the creation of the archive image sequence and see a citizen making incorrect or wild speculations about imaged objects that are known to us. I then show someone in the future viewing them as a stand in for the audience. These became the characters and points in time you see. My audience knows what a church pew is because of their cultural context, but by depicting it interpreted as the deck of a ship I aimed to bring across a displacement sensation. Doing this was to make clear the disconnect between the archivist and our world and our time.
It was important to me that the project be rooted and grounded in the visual language as well as the overall concept. I wanted to focus on sensory details and make the world feel as if the viewer can touch and feel it because the characters can touch and feel it. To do that I made the key elements analogue.
I found my tangibility hook when I experienced using a microfiche. I enjoyed the raw exposed mechanics and the crisp sound of the film as spun through and slipped off the spool when it stopped abruptly. After the image sequence became paper, that became the visual language and the other elements followed suit.
The Live Action Shoots
The archivist shoot was designed to give foregrounded context as to where they are, who they are, what they're feeling, what they're doing and why they're doing it. I made a lot of changes along the way in the production design to foreground the feeling of displacement, isolation and attempts at connections with Earth.
