Project 2 – Chenlan Yao (Ellen)

Title

Myth

Group member

Chenlan Yao (Ellen)

Yu Sang (Thea)

Jiayan Liu (Katie)

Project Abstract

Our project is based on a puppet show about a fable that shows our attitudes. From preparation to the final realtime performance, we built the scene and the story step by step. This documentation is my personal reflection of the whole process of this project.

Project Description

Inspired by a Chinese rap called 神话 (Myth), our project is aiming at telling a story based on this rap music. The story is about a king who has no free will and always follows others’ talk without having any own idea. His kingdom was thus decaying gradually. Someone told him that if he could find the devil and kill it, he would then get free will and respect from the whole kingdom. He went on his adventure. Surprisingly, when he found the devil, the devil was calm and told the king to kill it immediately. At this point, the king realized that if he followed the devil’s call, he would become a real puppet who could never make the kingdom prosperous. The most horrible thing should be the talk and guide by the others, which can make one lose his own ability to tell right from wrong. These talks make up one’s own devil, which is the dark side at the bottom of our hearts. We want to present a story that contains some implied meanings behind it. It is necessary to have one’s own will and mind instead of being influenced by others. 

Perspective and Context

As Youngblood argued, “man no longer is earthbound. We move now in sidereal time. We must expand our horizons beyond the point of infinity” ( Brougher, Strick, Wiseman, and Zilczer 120). Every Lumia artwork focus on expressing a kind of atmosphere and its cosmic feelings and meanings in an abstract way. But in our project, we are trying to express something spiritual in a more concrete and substantial way. We want to build a kind of microcosmos that focus on one person (the king) to reflect a larger understanding of the world.

Development & Technical Implementation

At first, we had a rough idea about the figure of the dementor (the one shows in the Harry Potter) as it was a good choice to create a kind of gloomy atmosphere. With the composition of the story, we decided to make the devil into the figure of the dementor, and use a special tissue-like paper to make the devil in order to create a hazy and ghostly image. Because the whole story is performed by paper shadow puppet, we spent some time making paper puppets and adjusted them. We did some researches about the traditional Chinese shadow puppets making. It was not that easy as the threads sometimes may not be strong enough to hold the puppets and the environment scenes sometimes may fall apart. It took us several days to finish the paper cuttings and puppet makings. For the digital parts, I was in charge of the making of background music which is continuous during the whole process. I used the SEQUENCER to create a basic audio clip and added several jumped-in voices by a DRUM SEQUENCER. The final audio pitch is as follows:

At the same time, Katie is in charge of video effects. After I finished my part, I shared my patch to Thea, who is responsible for mixing and controlling the audio. We also recorded several sentences talked by one of our classmates to be the lines of some characters (others’ judges to the king; devil’s talk; the voice from the king’s mind) and mix them into the audio pitch. 

For the setup for our performance, it contains three parts: the audio patch, the video patch, and the puppet performing stage. The Logi Cam was placed in the very front of the performance background as we only wanted to record the shadow of the puppets, and the performance stage was right behind the Cam. We put some boxes under the Cam and used them as a stage so that the Cam can capture the better scene in a better height. The light from a torch was held and moved by Katie so that the light could change anytime. The Cam was connected to Katie’s laptop so that she can add effects to it. I, as a performer of the puppets, was on the left side of the scene so that the shadow of my body would not be on the background. 

diagram

Video patch:

https://gist.github.com/JiayanLiu27/e911824cb8eca4074b1b18075bdf2461

Audio patch:

https://gist.github.com/TheaSang/85b97f92a144c0b42f15dd8ecacd2541

Performance

I was quite nervous before the performance as I was responsible for the puppet performance which was the fundamental part of the whole project. The performance moved fluently, but it would be better if the Cam’s position could be a little more precise to make the performance in the middle of the scene, or if I could move the puppets according to the position of the scene captured by the Cam. It depended on more frequent practice. The effect basically fulfilled our original idea and imagine, but still, something unexpected happened. First, the audio clip of some characters’ lines was not clear enough. Many of our classmates felt that the language was not clear so that they could not understand what was happening in the story. I think it is due to the clearance of the original clip, or maybe because we played the audio too fast and changed them too frequently, or it is because of the incongruity between the background music and the lines. Second, some parts of our video effect were not successful enough as what we saw during our practice. For example, in the first scene, we supposed to make the picture became blurry gradually in order to create an atmosphere that the king was affected by others’ words severely. But the consequence turned out that this effect was not performed better enough. Anyway, the performance went quite well, and it is the charm of the realtime performance as you never know what you are going to encounter. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, our project can be expanded a lot in the future. For the idea, it would be better if we could develop the story to a more macro and cosmic perspective, or to make it contains a deeper understanding of the atmosphere and cosmos. The story itself is good and the way we explain it is fine and profound as well, but I think we should develop its further implication and find a better connection with a broader view of the world or express a kind of feeling more directly, which can be more connected with Tomas Wilfred’s idea and also the basic idea of visual music and Lumia. Also, the effect added to the scene is needed to be further developed, which can be another way to express some feelings directly. With the help effects, many changes in the atmosphere and environment in the scene can be shown more visualized so that the flow of the story can be clearer and can make the whole scene richer and contains more. The performance can go further instead of simply a puppet show with some development of effects. 

Work Cited

Brougher, Kerry, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman, and Judith Zilczer. Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900. Thames & Hudson. April 1, 2005. pp. 126-161

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