Carcass: Machines, cyborgs and future cities

Here are two more pages from my sketchbook that are mainly scrapbook images of Futurism, androids, machines and architecture for inspiration.

Below is an image adapted from architecture in Valencia . I tend to work with cut outs and sketches at the start of a project as I find playing with photographs, altering the angles and shapes can reveal interesting designs that can then be drawn up or digitally enhanced.

Images are from Futurism-Movements in Modern Art (Humphreys, R., 1999),  History of the Future (Lorie, P., Murray-Clark, S., 1989) and my own photo collection.

Advertisement

Carcass: Organic verses technology/past verses the future

Above:- sketchbook work that shows the struggle between organic and machine and some of the Futurism art that inspired my first week on the project.

The world of Carcass is one without trees or nature, of humans playing God and their ability to control what they want to be; taking todays body beautiful/technology to whole new level through gender change, body restructuring etc. Whether it is a future of dreams or nightmares depends on your point of view. For me, any world without nature in its organic form can only serve to separate us from what it is to be human. I see elements of Lucy’s Carcass world as an attempt to return to nature but using technology. Maybe the buildings  have some kind of organic form that represents the past, that is metamorphic; buildings, people, ideas etc. in a state of transformation or growth. The main character seems at opposition to herself and to the world. The main characters are pulling in different directions. But Lucy wants to find herself, physically, metaphorically, historically. What or who is Lucy? What are her building blocks and can she control these?

Early on I was drawn to the Futurism artists vision of the future as much of their artwork as they embody elements of change, loathing of the past, love of speed, noise and mans triumph over nature which was a severe departure  from the organic art movement Art Nouveau a few years before. In a way it was a form of rebellion.

From internet source:-

The Italian painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910 in which he vowed:

“We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshiping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal.”

http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Futurism_%28art%29

 

 

Powerful words from the artist that painted these following works. His painting embodies the new by the use of strong lines, bright colour and seems to show a struggle between the old and the new. However, they are strangely organic and provide some interesting contrasts that could be useful when constructing Lucy’s world.

 

 

Carcass:-Beginnings of a scenic design project

This last week we were given our first DFTE scenic design project in which we read the script Carcass by Julius Ayodeji, break it down, design sets and concepts etc. then present our designs to the rest of the group. It’s a fairly big project to do in 4 weeks but it’s probably realistic in terms of what is expected in the industry.

First stage:- Reading the script several times; first sweep was to get a gist of the story as a whole and to break down into scenes/sets-external/internal-night/day, second sweep was to get insight into the themes, feelings and mind-set of the characters which will help focus my visual/contextual research for the coming week ahead. This stage was also for jotting down the props/furniture and some key ideas that came to me as I read. This will need to be written out in a way that is expected by the industry so I will check out this week exactly how to present the information. But, for now it’s in a rough format–just enough to allow me to move to the next stage as quickly as possible

Second stage:- Main research stage in which I gather visual and contextual research and start applying it to the script; I have started collecting images from the internet on my Pinterest page plus internet links to refer to. I also ordered some books from the library on dystopia and gender for inspiration. At the moment I’m focusing on the themes/inspirations of metamorphosis, transformation, gender, futurism art, architecture and dystopia which will give me plenty to fill my sketch/scrap-book. I see this stage taking up a fair bit of this week which means that I will have 2 and half weeks to do the designs/concepts/storyboards and model–a tight schedule–but necessary. This is the all important point in which the ideas start to form and it will allow stage 3:-design/concepts to flow more smoothly. This week will also be when I look up all the stages of film design that I’m less familiar with, such as storyboarding, soundstages, concept ratios and I will brush up on my technical drawing knowledge.