As a part of working in the industry you are often asked to create work in groups or as a collective in the ” See you in 6g ” we would be asked to work in a group with a selection of our peers working together to create outcomes as a team and banking the work load between fellow workers working to strengths and weaknesses to create the strongest out come , in the brief we would be exploring the theme of Utpoia and to visualise our own idea’s of utopia and Distopia today, keep to this brief would be use of imagination and research to develop an out come linking to both theme’s we would be asked to create a theatrical piece that unfolds over two scenes exploring Utopia and Distopia , this considering dialogue props and costume , then the second out come would have to be a 3-Dimensional model related to the idea throughout the outcomes can also contain 2D elements e.g. Drawings , Painting’s ,photographs and more traditional techniques, Once briefed we were placed in to out selected groups of 5 or 6 peers that study on the course , I was placed with 4 team members I had not met Emma , Angela , Di-Young and Tiffany now the groups had been selected we could move on to arranging meet us to discuss the research and initial thought on the project “See you in 6G”.
RESEARCH
Before our first group meeting I looked to the brief and started to research into the theme of utopia to develop my own opinion and idea’s to put forward to my group , starting the research with the meaning and definition of a Utopia and Distopia.
A Utopia society is seen as a community or society that, in theory posses highly desirable or near perfect qualities , Utopia Ideals often place emphasis on egalitarian principles of equality in economics,tournament and justice , through no means exclusively , though by no means exclusively , with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology.The idea of a dream world with perfect surrounding and atmosphere , I feel like the idea is see as fictional as it is something near impossible to achieve as every dream world would not be the same , the word utopia was coined by Sir Thomas More from the Greek language for his 1516 book “Utopia” describing the fictional well known story of the ancient society in the atlantic ocean ,”Atlantis” a city to be said to be underwater hidden from the evils of mankind , this I feel is interesting Idea and starts to give me the idea’s I need to start exploring the thought of my own or our groups utopia.
With the theme of Utopia we are introduced to the theme of Distopia , basically the opposite of a utopia a world or community that is undesirable or frightening looking more in to themes of war , Armaggedon , bloodshed and depression , the counter story to the manifesto the evil twin the darkness lurking in the back ground. Exploring to develop the understanding of Utopia and Distopia and both work hand in hand and no dream can be the same as darkness will shed through due to different views and pleasures.
Film Research-
Big Fish
To further develop my understanding of the theme I started to explore some movies that issue idea’s of utopia and Distopia, the films all containing fiction and surreal theme’s and utopian Idea’s starting by looking at well known block buster film Big Fish a fantasy drama film directed by well known artist/director Tim Burton this film based on the original book by Daniel Wallace , The film follows the son of a great storyteller as he attempts to his mend his relationship with his father his farther exploring his stories of the past , In the film we see the main character (Ewan Mgregor) visiting a small town hidden in the forrest here we see an example of utopia and Distopia the town filled with people who have never left living in there own perfect little world, the town striving on there own perfection and happiness , we see the character want to leave this town regardless of its perfection to carry on his journey and the towns folk ask why in shock , this show an example of how utopia and Distopia can work hand in hand due to difference in what people want and how this can alter there idea’s of utopia.This film uses imagination and fictional idea’s to really enhance the idea of utopia with the town acting so perfect it’s almost sickly this fairytale town in a perfect example of utopia and I will consider the idea of creating a small town or fictional place that focuses on a utopia , from this I have also started to take in to consideration how important location and props are when we see utopia’s created from imagination , the background is key in creating your own illusion.
Her – Spike Jones
In the movie Her a different approach to utopia is explored here we look towards idea’s of sceince fiction and future , this utopia could be seen as a more realistic approach as the film is fictional but also follows a path that you could see developed in the Future “Her” follow the life of young writer who’s develop an emotional bond to his newly purchased d operating system that answers his every need , The film explores the world of future technology and its possibilities we see the character find a new burst of life as you watched and enjoy the relationship he is developing with this new artificial lady in his life , as this develops we see the idea of utopia as the relationship between the man and computer is in a positive light as they grow together and become emotionally attached , as this happened the Distopia effect is instantly thrown on to the viewer we start to see complications and how this is not a normality , from the perfection the destruction starts to follow penultimately as we see the operating system being rebooted and losing connection with the character and he then goes on to learn how his relationship has not been real and the system has grown this way with millions of other users , we see the character go from utopia to distopia in a very unusual way , personally I found this film very interesting as you watch you constantly have a feeling of desperation as the relationship between the man and Item is very real , this utopia and distopia is very interesting this film is great inspiration with modern film exploring future utopia’s in a different way.
Another example exploring utopia through an animated style is the popular anime film Ghost In A Shell here we a vision of the future , exploring and exploiting the turns technology could take we see robotic Ai characters as law enforcement but we also the Distopia of this technology driven world ridden with hackers that disrupt this future world , linking again to disruptions between any utopia we see the negativity seeping in from some direction , this film is very beautifully made the anime film really creates and impressive utopia of the future using fiction and imagination to create this beautiful world.
Another Classic the Truman show exploits a character being locked in a utopia for the public to view and enjoy we then see a change of events when the character “Truman” realises his whole life has been a fake utopia like world this drives him to great emotional change as this Uptoipa becomes a Distopia and he tries to escape to the real world , this example showing how utopia can some times be something hidden from us , as we are led to believe we are happy and then the truth Is formed and a Distopia is created I like this idea.
Through out the research I started to develop my own opinion of the term utopia , I started to link the theme of utopia to growing up with the idea of as a child you remain un exposed to the real world and you live in a happy bubble to then grow up in to the real world where you learn about pain and what it is to really live in the world and how that could be seen as a Distopia , personally I believe this as I feel when I was younger I was led to believe that life would be more fun filled than I have to find out , we go from playing all the time as children having fun to then growing up to be an adult to engage in work and the starting signs of depression and desperation.
After research we then had our first group meeting where we all gathered and discussed our research and initial thought’s , here are some notes from our group discussions.From this first session we had decided that we would explore the idea of utopia’s in families and how as a child we see our opinions change of our families as we grow up from utopia to Distopia.
Early idea’s exploring the usage of a green house to show the inside and outside to show utopia and distopia , looking at children’s toys and stories and starting to experiment with the idea’s of family.
After the first meeting the group had decided to work together on this projects focusing on different sections to bring the work together nicely instead of focusing on idiviual approaches and putting them together we decided to work together as I team and meet up most days during the week to keep idea’s connected and the project going down the right path.
The idea of chess was also brought up to be further researched we all decided to explore the idea’s of our utopia but also start to refine are idea connecting to family, from this more research was then needed into chess and the idea of family.
Chess – Research
The game of Chess is believed to have originated in the 7th century in India and no other game in history has been so widely reflected in art and literature. Chess remains an intriguing and complex subject for these contemporary artists, who have chosen to create outstanding works of art, each infused with their individual style.
“From my close contact with artists and chess players I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” Marcel Duchamp, 1952
The group had decided for our story the chess pieces would be the characters so we would assign certain characters to certain pieces,The initial pieces we would be focusing on would be the King . Queen , Horses and The Ruc as these were most notable pieces.
We then decided to link the idea of the pieces to the family the grand parents being represented by the queen and king and the mother and father by the ruck and horse we would explore these characters having different personalities that would relate to our utopia the group and I all also came to the decision it would be an interesting way to expose this by exploring the usage of black and white pieces, once we had this idea set we started to create imagery and drawings of how some of the characters could be presented here are some of my development sketches.
Here my initial drawings for the idea of using chess pieces to represent our characters I have explored creating some more wacky Distopia type designs focusing on the more wild crazy part of the characters personality , exploring illustrating the Ruck Pawns and Horse chess piece , each trying to show the transformation for utopia to Distopia , we had decided that when creating are video pieces we could use drawings and 2d imagery in the video as screen shots and backgrounds to add more depth and effect.
As we would be creating a 3-D piece we started to develop the idea of the 3-d piece being set out like a chess board in some sort of game style but also containing are characters the chess pieces , we would start to consider creating our own character based pieces from these drawings and liking to the well known already used pictures , I started to mould my own creations using play doh a cheap alternate to clay , I explored the forming of pieces and explored in creating characters of more colour for the crazy part of the narrative that would show the transformation of characters , here you can see the initial pieces that I created , making the King , Queen and Joker as can be seen here 
Also starting to experiment with creating other little props form the design ,
I continuned to experiment with the play dough to see what interesting creature I could create taking inspiration from robot chicken and Ooglies when designing pieces and starting to experiment with creating more surreal fictional pieces that I believe will fit in well with the utopia theme as it is often imaginative and crazy,After this further research the group continued to meet up to show what designs we had made and how the work flow was going , after looking through each others designs and idea’s we chose the style we would be following for the chess piece design , we would be moving away from my designs and focusing more on the black and white and the simplistsy and sleep of the original chess colour, through selection the group decided to focus on chess designs of my fellow group members Emma and Angela who had created some very beautiful pieces I feel far more impressive than mine so as a group we made a good decision of taking there designs forward as we started to think more seriously of how we would create our outcomes.
we had now created our own narrative in our group we would be exploring how family and growing up is a way to represent utopia , the family seen as a utopia as our idea was that as a child you remain unexposed to many harsh cruelties and with age you start to out these pieces together having a utopia Distopia effect taking inspiration from alice and wonderland we started to create our dream utopia world. So the idea would be to represent the family members with chess pieces focusing on the Ruck, Queen, King and Horse each family member would be assigned to a chess piece/character, the narrative we would focus on would contain a young girl finding a chess board and then falling into the board and becoming a part of the game the game then she is introduced to the pieces starting with the white broadcasting a utopia but then we would see a transformation to Distopia with the pieces turning white.Then we would start to consider the other part of performance of the video that would link in with the stop frame animation , this would have to consider different aspects like costume and set design.
We were then assigned different area’s to further research , I was asked to look into the development of costume and set design , I started my looking into costume design.
stop frame research – robot chicken video clips
- Narrative decision for video
- Research into costume design
Costume design
layout table scenery design
Video Filming / Acting
stopframe filming .
Assigned the job of sound –
Audacity
Picking Songs
Editiing songs
Overall video and 3d piece
athleetsfoot 