L6 Subject PDP

Looking back at the last year of my work, it appears fairly sporadic and erratic in content and ideas. But I think that the projects I chose to work on helped me improve on specific aspects of my practice. They were all tied together by aspects of my dissertation, and although the project that I have ended up with is not directly linked in subject matter, I have found that they both lent themselves to a particular way of working, and similar research philosophies.

My first project was an exercise in skill building, and I believe that I improved massively in my visual language, pacing, and methodology. Last year my main issue with my work was that I rushed it, and I really tried hard to take my time with this project, and I think it paid off. The subject matter didn’t have enough ideas and thought behind it, though it was fairly relevant to my dissertation, and I decided to change course.

I moved on to looking at various cautionary tales, and the tropes and themes of them, like gluttony and forbidden knowledge. I was really intrigued by the cyclical nature of transgression and punishment, and how we seem intent on ironic retributions. I tried to get this across in my work, and created simple, abstract images and animations that delivered the messages of the cautionary tales I was reading. I also started to consider more the materials that I was using, and what they meant for the communication of the work. I specifically looked at The Brothers Quay when I was thinking about how I wanted my work to speak through texture and materiality. I found that during this project I really got to grips with thinking more thoroughly about what my illustrations communicated, and what I was interested in exploring through visual means.

After looking at horror, cautionary tales, and cyclical punishments, I found a narrative that really spoke to me about all of these themes I’d been investigating. In Dante’s Inferno I found all of these subjects. But I still felt that I needed to have a deeper meaning behind what I wanted to show within the narrative of the poem, as well as relate it back to my dissertation.

I thought about what I had most enjoyed about writing my dissertation, and decided it had been the Freudian concepts that I had explored and considered, as well as older psychoanalytic theories about how and why we viewed the world how we do.

When I first researched if there had been any Freudian readings of the Divine Comedy, i found that there had been many comparing the levels of Dante’s hell, to Freud’s diagram of the levels of the subconscious. I found that really interesting, and was set on making a parallel of the two.

I’m happy with what I created, and I think that the narrative is subtle, how I wanted it, and also intriguing. I think that perhaps I got a little caught up in how I was presenting it, and the work suffered because of it. I know that if I had planned and sketched more, it would have looked better, but I’ve barely managed to get it all done in time anyway!

GLUTTONY

This is a terrible photo. It looks better in real life I swear! I struggled to press the button for the light, hold the lights in the right place, and take the photo. And there’ll be less background light when the frame on the front goes on, so there’ll be a shadow of it’s mouth on the back wall. And also, in real life you can look around and see the middle head of the Cerberus. Also, the tail is really straight, and I’ve only just realised.

Now that I’ve gotten all the excuses out of the way I can actually talk about the work.

This is to represent gluttony, and in the poem, Cerberus guards the souls who are lying in the mud. I just wanted a simple model, so I focused on Cerberus. The three snarling heads brings focus on the mouth, and I’ve added drool coming out of all their mouths. I’ve drawn even more attention to the mouths, by casting the shadow of one of them on the back wall.

Premise behind Betrayal

The idea behind the Betrayal layer of the story is based off the part of the poem where Dante comes across two heads protruding from the ice, and one is biting the other. In life the bitten one betrayed the other, and now they are locked together forever.

I thought it was apt for my interpretation because the idea of heads biting each other really hints at the the story being about the mind and unconscious. The ice as well has a meaning; It’s a nod towards the idea of the mind being an iceberg, mostly underneath the surface, and also the incorrect notion of the subconscious being this unmovable force, when in reality, it’s a shifting, and changeable part of consciousness, the modern notion of the “adaptive unconscious”.

A Bump in the Road Comes

I’m having an issue, and that issue is that one of my boxes is not fit for display. 

It really does look terrible, and I’m not sure how to fix it. I don’t want to display anything that isn’t up to standard. I’d rather not have a show, than a poor quality one. I might try to take it out and re do it, but at this point Ive accepted that I might only have 8 boxes at the end, which is not what I wanted. I’ll try again, but I’m not holding out much hope. I think a start would be printing a digital version of the sky I wanted, rather than trying to paint it.