Conclusion to the question

My final piece to conclude my investigation on how emotions are visually conveyed through context and worlds. The context of my illustration is to visually tell the audience how complex the human brain is, particularly emotions, and how it can overwhelm the mental state of the individual. The tangling pipes represents the complexity of emotions and the little characters clinging on the pipes represents the moods and various attitudes each emotion can bring out. The head falling apart symbolises the overwhelming thoughts bursting out from our physical shell, representing the uncontrollable that we cannot contain when we experience each emotion. 

Final piece to conclude my investigation

My investigation in exploring how context and worlds conveys particular emotions has taught me that the importance of object placement, composition and colours are critical, although these are only useful to convey the emotions of sadness, loneliness or anxiety. To convey other emotions such as anger or depression, it is usually relied on various subject matters (characters, objects or ambiguous visuals) as metaphors, connotations or symbolism, to exaggerate or to indirectly convey the emotion within the visual outcome.  

One of the artworks from the series, “The weight of Silence”. Eric Lacombe

My investigation in exploring how context and worlds conveys particular emotions has taught me that the importance of object placement, composition and colours are critical, although these are only useful to convey the emotions of sadness, loneliness or anxiety. To convey other emotions such as anger or depression, it is usually relied on various subject matters (characters, objects or ambiguous visuals) as metaphors, connotations or symbolism, to exaggerate or to indirectly convey the emotion within the visual outcome.  

Painter - Edward Hopper (Sadness)

In the next experiment on how context and worlds conveys particular emotions, the emotion I will be focusing on will be sadness and I will be looking into the illustrations of Edward Hopper, particularly his illustrations of open rooms, to explore the use of colours, space, composition and subject matters on how it can convey the emotion of sadness. 

Rooms by the Sea (1951)

Office in a Small City (1953)

Room in Brookyln (1932)

Stairway (1949)

Sun in an Empty Room (1963)

His illustrations of open rooms which focuses on the use of colour, as well as incorporating reoccurring visual subject matters such as windows, chairs and a person, conveys the sense of grief, helplessness and loss. Unlike loneliness, when people experience sadness, they tend to shut themselves away in a room, excluding themselves from social settings and society. These particular illustrations of open rooms, which looks like rooms in a home environment, relates to the idea of exclusion, where the windows/doors reflects as the door to a social setting, or an escape from the struggle of sadness, while the room itself reflects on the exclusion the person is shutting themselves in. The empty environment in which the illustration is set, reflects on the grief and/or loss, where nothing but emptiness fills the room, representing the hollow state of the person who is experiencing nothing but sadness. 

Breaking down on the compositions of Edward Hoppers’ illustrations. In most if his ‘open room’ illustrations the perspective is very simple and I think the use of careful use of space, object placement and the use of various colours helps to capture the sense of ‘hollowness’ in the rooms. 

Manipulating and removing subject matters on some of his work to explore the impact it may have as well to exaggerate more on the ‘empty’ feel of exclusion. 

Experimenting on colours and different environments to see if it would have the same feel/approach to Hoppers’ work.

Conclusion piece on the exploration of Edward Hopper’s illustrations that conveys the sense of sadness. Instead of approaching the idea of using the ‘open room’ to visually convey the empty space as a representation of sadness and exclusion, I use visual elements such as the windows or doors to communicate the idea of hiding away from the social setting. The idea of a single window not lit as the others is to represent the exclusion of one shutting away from the others, while the other lit windows acts as a collective to represent that ‘lively’ social setting. When one experience sadness, they rather be left alone, cutting themselves off from society, hence the window not being lit like the others, metaphorically shows that they would rather be left alone, feeling hollow and lifeless due to helplessness, grief, or being in another negative emotional state (depression, anxiety, loneliness) that prevents them from moving forward. 

Poetry - Dante Alighieri's "Inferno" (Anger)

For the next experiment in exploring how emotions are conveyed through imaginative worlds and context, I will be looking into literature, specifically poems, to interpret how the power of words and phrases communicate such emotion. After exploring Anxiety/Fear, Nostalgia and Loneliness, the next emotion I will interpret, now within poetry, will be Anger. The poem I will look into as my primary source will be the poem known as “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri, where I will be focusing on the first act, titled “Inferno”. I will be exploring some of the poem’s phrases and deconstruct it to produce visual illustrations and experiments that will convey the sense of rage or silent anger.

“ONE night, when half my life behind me lay,

 I wandered from the straight lost path afar.
 

 Through the great dark was no releasing way;

 Above that dark was no relieving star.
 

 If yet that terrored night I think or say,

 As death's cold hands its fears resuming are.”

Visual interpretation to “ONE night, when half my life behind me lay,

I wandered from the straight lost path afar.” Using traditional medium (pencils) and using various mark making to convey the sense of chaos. The two face shaking back and forth represents “half my life behind me lay” conveying the two faces trying to separate (one leaving life behind and the other lost in chaos).

Visual interpretation to “Through the great dark was no releasing way;

 Above that dark was no relieving star.” The star (or the moon) represents the no relieving star with a face of evil, conveying the side of evil, which connects to hate, and hate connects to anger.

Visual representation to “If yet that terrored night I think or say,

 As death's cold hands its fears resuming are.”  The hand representing death, and fear is the mouth and teeth, representing the “terror”.

“THE day was falling, and the darkening air

 Released earth's creatures from their toils, while I,

 I only, faced the bitter road and bare

 My Master led.
 I only, must defy

 The powers of pity, and the night to be.”

Experimentation of “THE day was falling, and the darkening air. Released earth's creatures from their toils, while I, I only, faced the bitter road and bare.” The creatures with the expression of hate, anger and rage underneath the “bitter road”.

Another take on the sentence, though focusing on the other words such as “earth’s creatures from their toils”. A visual representation of earth and underneath is the release of facial expressions of hate and anger from “earth’s creatures”, aka humans of earth.

After the initial experiments I will continue to explore mark making with traditional mediums and will now incorporate colours that associates with anger (dark red is the most common colour to associate with this emotion). I will also look into visual illustrations by various artists who has depicted Hell in many forms to get a sense of what subject matters were used as visual metaphors for anger.

Subject matters within the depiction of hell that conveys the sense of anger and hatred are of: monsters, demons and fire. Other visual metaphors include eating (devouring), destruction and pain (both physical and emotional pain).

Cerberus (1824-7). William Blake

The Lovers Whirlwind (1827). William Blake

The Inferno (1410). Giovanni da Modena 

The Inferno, Canto 9 (1857). Gustave Dore

“THE gateway to the city of Doom.

Through me

The entrance to the Everlasting Pain.”

Visual interpretations of “THE gateway to the city of Doom.” The screaming mouth representing the gateway and the tongue is the road leading to the pumping organs (the city of doom and everlasting pain).

“Then the demon Charon rose

To herd them in, with eyes that furnace-hot

Glowed at the task, and lifted oar to smite

Who lingered.”

Visual interpretation.

“ARISING thunder from the vast Abyss

First roused me, not as he that rested wakes

From slumbrous hours, but one rude fury shakes

Untimely, and around I gazed to know

The place of my confining.”

Visual interpretations. 

Conclusion to the visual representation of anger based on the context of the poem “Divine Comedy”, by Dante Alighieri, Act 1 titled “Inferno”. The humanoid being, immobilised and merged with the ground, tears its head open, representing the sheer anger, with the inner emotions being released, screaming the pain of hate. The limited colours ranging from red, orange and pink are the colours that associates with anger, also indirectly conveying the dangers (the colour red representing ‘danger’) of what the damage anger emotion can emotionally inflict on your mind. 

Bibliography

Poetry Soup, Inferno, Alighieri, D [Online] [Accessed: 23^th Jan 2016] Available from: http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/inferno_english_2383

Film Director - Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" (Loneliness)

Film direction and cinematography in Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” (2014).

The film “Interstellar” portrays the loneliness of the world and the feeling of separation from loved ones. While the film is centred on the theme of exploration, it’s portrayal of utter loneliness is inseparable as the two themes heavily connects with each other.

Nolan’s portrayal of loneliness comes from the idea where humans are natural born explorers and must venture outwards to seek and break boundaries, however the consequences of doing so results with the suffering of loneliness in the unknown.

Interstellar Saturn scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITwYEIY2FlE

(1a)

(1b)

(1c)

(1d)

Still scenes from the film where negative space contributes to the essence of loneliness and utter isolation.

Nolan’s perception of loneliness in directing some of the narrative sequences involves negative space and the scaling of subjects as key elements to depict the theme of isolation and the sadness of feeling being away from loved ones and from home. The direction of cinematography is similar to that of photography where negative space can subtly convey the sense of being emotionally isolated from everyone around you.

I had made some experiments where I deconstruct the playfulness on the way Christopher Nolan compose/direct some of the scenes in terms of object placement and camera movement in visual storytelling.

An attempt to alter the cinematography of Nolan’s film by adjusting and cropping some of the still images from sequences in the film where negative space is heavily used in the portrayal of loneliness. I had applied the rule of thirds on each images to help rearrange the space and object placement within the film/camera frame, which are critical to create the immersion of isolation in visual narrative.

Experiments using various subject matters and methods (digital painting) to create the sense of loneliness in combination of composition (photography) to visually communicate the sense of feeling emotionally isolated from civilisation. Continued using the idea of scope and scale from the first set of experiments, I played around with colours as the main focus to communicate emotions, which can visually speak a particular emotion on its own, i.e. blue and green representing sadness, red and yellow representing playfulness, passion or energetic. The subject matters doesn’t necessarily have to be humans and I had chosen some objects that somewhat connects with emotion, such as the kite, which represents the freedom it would give a person and to leave all the problems behind (the loneliness, depression, etc.)  And the tree, which represents the solitary feeling (also referring to the actual solitary trees that grows on its own in the middle of nowhere).

From these experiments, choosing colours can be difficult as it could limit the expression I wanted to convey, as the emotion is mostly isolation which only the colours of blue or green can relate to closely. Warm colours kind of contradicts that representation loneliness and it doesn’t seem to work overall. 

My conclusion piece to the context of Loneliness in the film “Interstellar” directed by Christopher Nolan. The experiment is to reflect the emotional state of loneliness with the universe, where we are nothing but stardust in infinite space, essentially implying that we are all forever alone as one. The sleeping figure is to symbolise the slumber that has an effect on those who have loneliness, floating in the void who wants to shut themselves out from society and wants to avoid contact. The stars in the surrounding darkness in space are to symbolise the hope and dreams that there will be a day to break free from that loneliness that we are seeking, on our journey to find love and happiness that we have longed for after suffering from the feeling of isolation. 

References

(1a) Nolan, 2014

(1b) Nolan, 2014

(1c) Nolan, 2014

(1d) Nolan, 2014

Bibliography

Interstellar Saturn. March 2015 [Online] [Accessed: 27^th Dec 2016] Video available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITwYEIY2FlE

Interstellar, 2014. Film. Directed by Christopher NOLAN. USA: Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Legendary Entertainment, Syncopy, Lynda Obst Productions.