Chiharu Shiota & Tomoko Shioyasu

Chiharu Shiota

This is a piece of work made by Shiota, I picked this one out because I like the contrast of the pure white dress hanging within the dark web-like design of the wool. Even though it is just wool it has quite a menacing effect like you shouldn't go in there and it makes the dress seem more precious, like it's protected and shouldn't be touched or something bad will happen. I then found what the artist thinks about her work and its quite interesting because describes the strings of wool intertwining looking like lace which isn't really that scary but I thought it reminded me more of a spiders web so it just shows how everyone can interpret pieces of art in such different ways.

Below are two quotes about what the artist says about her work:

.how lace is significant to their work

“I am more interested in the lines, which are often represented
in my work through black string. These strings are woven into each other, which can make it look a bit like lace, which is also intricately woven. The difference is that my strings are in a random pattern, whilst lace follows set designs and patterns”.

...the ideas behind the work

“My installations with clothes always refer to the clothes as a second skin, which carry the memories of the people who wore these clothes”

Tomoko Shioyasu

Tomoko Shioyasu is a Japanese artist who specialises in sculpture, in particular paper tapestries. Shioyasu makes the giant floor to ceiling tapestries out of nothing but paper and uses tools such as utility knives and soldering irons. Her designs are normally very intricate and seem to show natural and organic things like 'the flow of water', 'forces of wind' or 'patterns of cells'. I think her work is amazing how something so seemingly flimsy can hang without ripping which I guess is down to the fact that the incisions she makes to create the patterns are very delicate and small so it still leaves a significant amount of paper in order for it to support itself. I like this one above as it looks like swirling water or a wave. It's remarkable how she has made it look so realistic just by using one medium or material as well, just by creating a sense of texture and different tones it actually looks quite life-like.

Sources:

Lost In Lace [Internet] - http://lostinlace.org.uk/artists/chiharu-shiota - Accessed 1/3/2013

This is Colossal [Internet] http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/03/immense-paper-cut-tapestries-by-tomoko-shioyasu/ - accessed 1/3/2013

Set Building Session

Today we went back to the workstation to carry on with the set from the other week but another group had been in there and taken it all down because of this when we got there we all just knuckled down and started building it again how we wanted it.
We decided as a group to build it with one long side (3 panels) on which the bed would go on (upright) and then one shorter side (2 panels) where the fireplace is going to go and that is where the books are going to be resting on. We also decided that we wanted to dress that wall with curtains, pictures and other bits and pieces we come up with along the way. Next to that wall is where the door is going to be, the door is where the scene will link to the next one as the guy will be drawn to it by smoke coming through the key hole or something like that and then he will look through it and see the next scene which is the woman chopping vegetables/persons arm.
Once we had the panels up we tried to get as much of the previous wallpaper off as possible to give us a smoothish surface for our wallpaper and paint. This was quite a hard task in itself as some of it was quite stubborn and I think a few of us got a bit bogged down with it because once we started we felt we had to get every scrap off which probably wasn't necessary. Once the walls were ready we wallpapered them with plain white paper down one side and red where the fireplace was to go. Me and Luke then painted the rest of it around the door red while the others did the larger wall. Others members of the group were working on other things as well like the more detailed part of the decor including pictures and other weird things to dress the room with.

Article on Uncanny

While searching for things that were uncanny I came across this image which really struck me. Despite obviously how the man looks there is something I find strangely beautiful or maybe compelling about this piece as there's so much detail that's been put into it and it looks so realistic.

















“When we die, we fall into the trough of the uncanny valley. Our body becomes cold, our color changes, and movement ceases.” Human models fall into the uncanny valley because they remind us of death. “It may be important to our self-preservation,” he concludes. - Masahiro Mori (Japanese Roboticist) 

- I find this an interesting way of describing why people have a weird or uncanny feeling around models because they are lifeless, stiff and have no warmth which reminds us of what people are like when they die and that's why we're a bit dubious and unsure of them. Also the model above is also depicting a dead person which I guess makes it even weirder or more uncanny because it is so realistic.



The paragraphs below explain why we avoid things to do with death and why we have an inbuilt instinct almost to be squeamish about death. Mori basically states that things that look like humans, for example models, make people want to stay away from them because they look sick and we as humans want to avoid anything that looks ill because we want to live as full and healthy lives as possible. Ghazanfar thinks there's a more simpler explanation and that's we've evolved to be able to recognise our own kind or species innately or instinctively so we know who we can interact with and it's the same for the animal world. I also think it's about safety as well because we all know who/what we can safely interact with and if something doesn't look right at first we are cautious about it which helps to protect us.

'But all along Mori hasn’t seen our avoidance of death as a consequence of repressed emotions the way Freud did. Instead he has understood it to be a mechanism we developed to keep ourselves safe. Nearly every hypothesis since has had this flavor. It has been suggested, for instance, that we avoid almost human figures because their peculiarities make them look sick, and we have developed an evolutionary mechanism for steering clear of pathogens. Another theory posits that we avoid figures with features slightly off from our own because they appear to be less-than-ideal mating material.'

'Ghazanfar rejects all of these hypotheses. “What is really going on is much simpler,” he says. He believes the uncanny valley response occurs because an animal—human or nonhuman—is evolutionarily inclined to develop an expectation of what members of its species should look like, a supremely important skill, as it lets the animal know with whom it can and cannot interact.'

Source:

Seed Magazine [Internet] http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/uncanny_valley/P1/ and http://drmstream.com/2009/11/more-on-the-uncanny-valley/ - Accessed 26/2/2013

My Uncanny Proposal Moodboard

First Moodboard attempt

This is my moodboard for the 300 word proposal I did on the subject of uncanny. In this moodboard I wanted to reflect the strange image I had in my head when writing the proposal and convey something that is unsettling and not really a place or situation you would really want to find yourself in. I deliberately made the board quite minimalistic because that is one of the main elements that makes this space unnerving is the fact there is not much there and what is there is not necessarily normal of what you would find in a room.

The first thing I started with was a background colour, the room I described was dark with no windows so I thought a deep red would look quite atmospheric and red is always a good colour for symbolism e.g. danger, blood, bad or even love. To fill the background I selected >New Fill Layer< and then chose Solid Colour and red and then chose the shade of red I wanted.
Then I looked for a mirror on Google images, in the proposal I said it was an old rustic mirror, I liked this one because it looked a bit worn but also quite simple. I then found images of flies, with a grey background to match the mirror, and cropped out a small section and transferred it on to the mirror and resized it to fit the length of the glass. I used >Layer Style< then >blending Options< and turned the opacity down slightly so it blended it more.
I was originally going to have a puff of smoke in the room (when the fly lands on the floor) but then I decided to have it fill half the room because in the proposal it also says the room fills with green smoke and I thought this looked more effective ans eerie. I also turned the opacity down on this as well so you could see the red walls through it a bit more. I used the >Blur tool< to make the line between the smoke and red background less harsh.
To cut the images out I used the >Magnetic Lasso Tool< which you draw round the image with clicking in all the places you want to put a point like corners or where there's a change in the shape or line, you then click back at the starting point and can then drag it and place the cut out image where you want. Sometimes images need tidying up so I used the >Eraser Tool< (changing colour, shape and size to what I required) and carefully went round the bits where you could still see a bit of the edges or background.

I think for a first attempt at a Photoshop Mood-board this isn't too bad and I look forward to doing more as I learn something different every time I use the programme. I also like the creative element and it is a really good way of getting your idea across to other people because it's hard to get across things like colours, textures and an overall feel sometimes with just words.


                                                          Final Moodboard

Group Production of the subject of 'Uncanny'

As part of this module the class are going to collaborate in making a short film that incorporates the use of special effects - things you do/make during production, visual effects - done in post production using software like After Effects and also a set which we will have to design and dress ourselves.

We have been split into 3 groups and in each group there is a director, producer and art director but essentially we will all have a go at everything. In my group is Luke, Alex and Jess and we're mainly in charge of the second part of the film which is the part that requires the set. In our scene we have a guy who's in a room asleep on a bed, the bed is going to be vertical to the wall though so when we film the guy getting up it's going to look like he's floating if we have a camera on a track next to the bed. Our guy is then going to spot the little doppelgänger of himself on top of the fireplace and we're not quite sure on what is going to happen but a book is going to fall off the fireplace and squash the little man under it and we're going to use a little plastic arm or something placed next to the book to show he's under it. Smoke coming through the bedroom door keyhole is then going to alert our guy to something strange going on the other side of the door and he's going to look through it and see a woman who at first looks like she's is chopping vegetables but then it turns out to be a body part.

This scene reminds me of the Erik Johansson work because I can picture an arm that eventually by the time you get to the end of it or the hand has merged into a vegetable and the hand is a fennel or something that looks a bit like fingers.

The 3rd group are going to be concentrating on this weird woman scene and then the 1st group are in charge of the little man that our character see's (which is himself). There's starts of with a man who is scratching something on his arm which is possibly a bug or something under his skin and then it will be revealed that this person is a little man standing on a fireplace. I think in their scene they are also going to have a freaky person that crawls in a weird, stiff manner towards the door as well.

I think this will be very ambitious to pull off as we have so many different elements going on and at the beginning we were going to have 4 different characters but me and Luke thought this might be too many so suggested that our guy in the bed also play the character of the little man on the fireplace as it will make it look more uncanny to have a doppelgänger and also will save us having to find another actor.  We also thought that if the 3rd group have the weird woman and the person crawling that if we have time to do both things that they too should also be played by the same actor as I think it will look a bit strange if some other person just starts crawling out of nowhere and would make more sense if it was the woman as it will already have been established that she is a bit crazy.

Erik Johansson

Erik Johansson is a photographer and retoucher from Sweden. The main focus of Eriks work is illusion and he likes to create illusion within his pictures and also with his street art where on of his pieces was an illusion which he created in Stockholm that from the right perspective looked like a giant whole in the ground.



I am a real fan of his work and I first saw some of his work in The Sun newspaper a couple of years ago. I like the way he takes ordinary things and makes them look really unordinary usually by flipping things round for example below the arms are broken instead of the vase and the arm is melting instead of the icecream.



         Arms Break, Vases Don't

Melting Point

                                                                       


         Revelation Fields

The picture above is another example of something Erik experiments with a lot in his work is playing with peoples perception of things. In this picture it looks like the girls hair but as it gets closer to us it looks like a field.

In the picture below it looks like a guy is ironing but then you realise he is in fact ironing himself and his full body and flat, ironed, body merge seamlessly together.
     
                        Stryktalig



His work is quite freaky and weird and in that sense it reminds me of the uncanny in the way that it plays with our perceptions of things we think we know then he puts a completely different spin on things and what we're looking at looks very realistic in one sense - it's things we recognise a lot in ever day life but then there is something not quite right about these images.

                                Face vs. Fist



I think Erik Johansson's work but be really interesting and a challenge to try and recreate in film using special and visual effects and something I would one day like to try.

Hand tools workshop and set building

Today we spent half of the lesson learning how to safely build a set using the wooden sets with the A-frames that are used to stabilise it and the weights which are then put on to hold it down. (see below). We also learnt how to safely use the ladders by always putting them face on to the set or whatever you're working on as they are not as stable if you use them side on. We also had a look at what tools etc were available for us to use to build the set with and what existing props we had to use to design the set with. Susannah has a collection of stuffed animals which I think will be quite useful to use in a set for the uncanny as people always think stuffed animals are a bit freaky as they look so real but are not alive and also the fact that they did once used to be alive is a bit off putting for some people.
We also started discussing how we wanted the set to be built so how many frames or sides and where the bed, fireplace etc was going to go. There was already an existing set which we started to dismantle until we were left with the bit that we wanted to use and then the second half of the group carried on where we left and we then went to have our hand tools induction.

In the hand tools induction we learnt basic things like how to safely use jigsaws and drills that we had a go with. We were also taught how to do basic joints in wood by overlapping the 2 pieces - half lap joints and also how to make structures, like a frame, more secure by attaching another piece of wood to form a triangle or A-frame. I found this lesson quite useful and productive as it is good to know how a set is built and also using hand tools is a good skill to know anyway in everyday life as you don't know when something like that might come in handy.



                                                             
                        

   Try Square



   Marking gauge                       

Chisel
 

Next week we will be carrying on with building and designing the set so in the meantime we need to carry on  communicating as a group on Facebook and coming up with ideas as to things we want to include in the designing or production etc. 

The Subject of 'Uncanny'

The subject of the uncanny is when something appears strange or not right in the mind of a human being.

The unfamiliar and frightening or the familiar mixed with the unfamiliar

Intellectual uncertainty

When something is different, unrecognisable or strange in the way it looks, sounds or behaves etc for example a person coming back to life when you think they're dead is a common fear. Also when people are shown as coming back to life they're not normally themselves as they were known to others before the event of death so this adds to the weirdness still. They were familiar but become unfamiliar.

Unheimlich is opposite to heimlich meaning familiar 

It is something that is familiar but also strange at the same time like a talking doll – the doll is something quite recognisable and known to us but it having the ability to talk is strange as it goes against everything we know. Also things like doppelgänger  the German translation literally means ‘double goer’, which is a double of a living person that is thought to be paranormal and therefore sinister. In most films involving a doppelgänger the one that isn’t the actual person is often portrayed as the bad one or there will be something not quite right about them like the behaviour will be odd or the way they talk.

The uncanny has a lot to do with state of mind and when something strange does happen that appears to be uncanny it’s normally seen as something happening within a person’s mind or their own perceptions rather than something that is actually happening in reality. Sometimes it is deliberately made ambiguous for example if you were an audience watching a film you wouldn’t know whether it was all just a dream, a figment of someone’s imagination or whether it was actually real and this leads to a greater sense of unease for an audience member because people would normally rather know something than not know.

"Jentsch says: “In telling a story, one of the most successful devices for  easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a  human being or  an automaton;"

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00vdxt5 - Mark Gatiss

300 Word Proposal: Subject of The ‘Uncanny’

Tag Line – You can’t swot the fly in your mind

Log Line – A man enters a room where a pesky fly just won’t leave him alone and this encounter leads to some strange happenings between the man and the fly or maybe the man and his own mind.

Short Film Synopsis -

A man walks into a small dark room with no windows but dimly lit with two lamps. On first glance it appears empty; he stops in the middle of the room on hearing a noise, a buzzing noise that gets louder and louder. A small black fly starts circling around his head, he tries to swipe at it but it keeps going faster and the buzzing is now almost deafening. It stops, right in front of his eyes then drops to the ground with a loud thud that echoes around the room, as it hits the ground it bursts into green smoke then is gone. 

The man walks towards a rustic full length mirror on the wall and stares at himself – the pupils of his eyes look like 2 black flies. 

He notices a transparent black balloon floating behind him in the mirror that wasn't there before, within it a fly is buzzing around. He turns around and tries to bat the balloon away but it stays floating on the spot. He goes at it again with aggression, hitting and punching it but with every impact to the balloon the buzzing just gets louder and the balloon remains there gently swaying. It spontaneously bursts without a sound and green smoke engulfs the room. 

The man turns away from the smoke coughing and closing his eyes tight, he realises the buzzing has stopped so slowly opens his eyes until he catches the reflection in the mirror which causes his eyes to widen in horror. The room is swarming with flies; the air is so black with them he can’t even see the door he came in through. The man braces himself to turn around and face this nightmare but as he does so all he is met with is the one solitary fly which then flies out the door.