Animating Mythology as Interface, Forensics as Metaphor

ABSTRACT

I aim to animate and illustrate a transformation of consciousness by using forensic facial reconstruction techniques as a metaphor to identify the myth within the subject.

1.    INTRODUCTION

This project came about through an afternoon in graduate major studio and 87 post-it notes.  I wrote down everything in five minutes that I could think of that I found interesting. I decided to take advantage of having so many people from various backgrounds willing to give their opinions. After all the post-its were stuck to the wall, pers came over and choose their top 3 concepts. I went with the majority votes as constraints on my projects, those being: Forensic Facial Reconstruction, Mythology and Gods, and Rotoscoping.

These stories of mythology are simply trying to express a truth that can’t be grasped any other way …

Domains:

• Narrative
• Information Visualization
• Animation
• Information Mapping
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Comparative Mythology
• Theology

Research and Design Questions:

I hope to prove that mythology should be a major focus of the creative arts
I hope to show that mythology is still vital for human growth and that without a mythology pointing the way on the path to spiritual development, we all struggle more then we need to on our own.

Aim:

• To illustrate the inward journey of a personalized mythology by using a mythologized forensic reconstruction technique to manifest that myth outwardly.

Among other forensic techniques, I am trained in 2D and 3D facial reconstruction.  As an active member of the International Association for Identification (IAI) I became skilled with the methods and tools of forensic reconstruction that I will be utilizing and building upon throughout this project.  Being raised by a Jungian Psychologist affords me an extensive knowledge of mythology and it’s importance in our lives and cultures.  Rotoscoping and Adobe Flash are the components of this project that are entirely new to me and add an additional element of discovery.  Being a fine artist with an affinity towards science and technology I see this project as an engaging chance to add to the dialogue of the ever-blurring line between art and science.

After some research, visual mapping, iterations and prototypes, I came to combine these concepts to create a visual interpretation of my friend’s mythical transformation using a representation of forensic facial reconstruction techniques.

2.    MY APPROCH

My subject, Chris Abell, was interviewed on camera about specific mythological figures that helped shape his beliefs. Using Adobe Flash I rotoscoped the video footage taken during the interview. The animation continues by reducing the subject to a simple skull. Then, drawing forensic tissue depth markers that “grew” from the skull, I reconstructed Chris into Ganesha, the mythological figure he discussed during his interview. Using real documents I created a “forensic” report similar to the reports I would create in real identifications. The images contained in this report are screen captures from the animation showing the process, in layers, outlines and onion skinned transparencies. These images further inform the notion of the invisible made visible. A bound copy of this activity report was then presented to the subject as a personal record of his transformation.

Some argue that science and technology are replacing religion and myth. But science cannot replace the myths it dismantles because science does not deal with the human spirit. No search for truth in the outer, material world will give us answers to the inner, spiritual world.  But it is my hope to use science and the physical as tools to illustrate and inform the transformation of spirit.

3.    PROCESS AND PROGRESS

Using my knowledge of 3D and 2D forensic facial reconstruction I will “reconstruct” images of friends to resurrect and “identify” the mythological heroes within them.

So I dug thought my old textbooks for inspiration and to refresh my memory.  I was shocked at how OCD I use to be.  The color taps you see on the text were made from post-it notes folded over and then covered with clear tape.  Each color stands for a different aspect of forensic art: age progression, postmortem reconstruction, 3 dimensional, 2 dimensional and so on.  How obsessive was I!  And look at my mark ups, hahaha … I wish I still took notes like that.

While I was working on the Chris’ metamorphosis I discover these images created with frames in onion-skinned layers.  I have been interested for many years in using layered transparencies in traditional and digital media.  So this discovery has been really intriguing to me.  These captured images reveal the history of the process and the mapping of the illusion that makes animation possible are really intriguing to me.

So I am now creating a forensic log and book documenting the images using the layer/and frame/construct and opacity …

I really like the look of these oinioned process shots.

I think they work beautifully as print variations of the animation process.

____________________________________

I submitted a few of the onion skinned images to a juried art show, 2 pieces were accepted.

Joseph Campbell pt1

“It’s the edge, the Interface between what can be know and what is never to be discovered because it is a mystery transcendent of all human research.”  Joseph Campbell, during an interview in 1986, when asked what was the power of myth.

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: “Follow your bliss.”     John Allen Bell

Between the Known and the Unknowable,
These stories of mythology are simply trying to express a truth that can’t be grasped any other way …

The Power of Myth, Interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers

Volume 1, The Hero’s Adventure
Mythology as an Interface Between the Known and the Unknowable

Heroes Evolve as the Cultures Evolve …
Moses meets with Yaway on the mount
Buddha:  3 Trials: Lust, Fear, Social Duty
(Nirvana is reached when your mind is in a state with none of these states)
Jesus:  3 Trials:   economic = stones to bread, political = control the world, let him save you
Muhammad:  Camel caravan master:  meditate and meditated and meditated and one day a voice says ‘write’ and  that’s how we have the Koran.

And what all the myths have to deal with is Transformation of Consciousness – That you where thinking in this way and you have now to think in that way.

Johan and the WhaleThe decent into the dark

Water = Unconscious
Animal in the Water = the Dynamisms of the Unconscious, all that is in the unconscious

As the hero descends and the creature of the unconscious rises to the surface  three  things can happen:

1. The hero is devoured by his unconscious and is lost to the world
2. The hero confronts the unconscious and with an openness and understanding, recognizes a tameness the message it brings with is
3. The hero destroys the unconscious, assimilates that nature by drinking it’s blood …

Siegfried and the Dragon Fafnir

“Our life evokes our character.  It’s very nice to put yourself in situations that evoke your higher nature rather then your lower.”

“… put yourself in the field of higher power … are you going to be able to handle it?  Thinking in terms of myth in reality is therapeutic and helpful from human growth.  This is killing the dragon – braking down your ego to release the bliss

Sacrifice:  “You come out of the forest with gold and it turns to ashes, that’s another motif that occurs”
Self-sacrifice, losing yourself, giving yourself to another … creation myths, transcending duality, pairs of opposites, God vs. Nature, sin, morality, participation in sorrow, the Gospel of Thomas, Old Time Religion, computers, religion as “software,” the story of Indra: “What a great boy am I!,” participation in society.

Mythology as Interface: Mom’s Influence

Along with being a immensely spiritual person, for many years my mother was deeply religious as well. She was a lay-reader and active member the Episcopalian church. The distinction between spirituality and religion is important here because there were a many times in my mom’s life when she lost her religion, but she never lost her spirituality. In other words, she lost her faith in humanity, but she never lost her faith in god.

My mother was also an artist. She found release and joy in her expressions and tried to share with the world the wonder she saw in it. She was an artist that worked in many different mediums from ceramics to soft sculpture, but she was more a photographer then anything else. (I still have close to 18 – 500 page binders of negatives to catalogue.)

Another aspect of my mother that effected me greatly was that she was a Jungian psychologist. She did her best to live her life according Jungian philosophies and theories. She raised my sister and I on the words of Dr. Carl G. Jung, and those words have had an affect on every part of my life to this day. I hold no degree in Psychology, but I am a Jungian.

It’s helpful to have some knowledge of Jungian philosophy so the words and pages that follow reveal their whole meaning. Anthony Peña I think sums it up well.

“ Jung discovered that – resembling the physical body – the human psyche (soul) is purposeful, and the psyche acts as a self-regulating system with checks and balances designed to develop and then maintain psychological health and wholeness. At birth the human psyche contains the “seed” and potentiality of future personality growth and development. Over the course of a lifetime, our “seed” naturally unfolds and/or develops according to it’s potential in a purposeful manner. Today, Jung would be classified as an interactionalist – this meaning that the development and growth of the human personality is a combination of inherited genetic potentials and environment.”

Dr. Jung developed the principle theories of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for higher development of the personality.

I think my mother’s greatest desire for all of us (her children) was to “follow our bliss” and never forget who we are. She did everything in her power to teach us how to do that. I think she did a pretty good job.

I love you mom, miss you.

Bhutan Masks

This mask is one of a set of five animals known as “The Five Dignitaries.” They are known as the symbols of authentic presence. The dragon represents unwavering steadfastness, and the experience of fulfillment and unconstrained spontaneous achievement. The dragon is representative of the water element. These masks are carved in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. The wood is carefully chosen from a type of wood called roshing. Roshing is not easily found and carvers must trek into wilderness areas to find it. After the seasoning process, the carving is begun. Roshing is highly valued because of its ability to withstand cracking during the carving process. This is important because the masks are completely hollowed out from the inside so that all that remains of the mask is a shell. This is a slow and painstaking process.

Metamorphosis Animatic

Here is a rough – quick and dirty – animatic for the animation portion of this assignment.  I realize there are no tissue depth markers on the first two position … there will be.  On all of the transformations – the tissue depth makers will slowly grow out of the skull as the skull morphs in size and  shape, as this happens the skin will begin to resolve into the picture.  All of this will happen over a video of the person telling a story of the character they are turning into.
Like I said,  this is just a rough.

Metamorphosis Map

Production Considerations

• Metamorphosis Animation: Frames Per Day Breakdown:
  • 900 total frames @ 2up for 30 seconds (@29.97 frames per)
  • 450 total
  • 150 frames per week
  • 30 frames a day for five days per week

• Musical considerations:
  • Alla Rakha/ Vision of Peace – The Art of Ravi Shankar
  • East Greets East: Kaharwa, Tribute to Nippon

• Mythology Mapping:  One Week to complete

• Rough Daily Breakdown ‘til the Bitter End:

“Fact of the Mind”

This is what I’d like to map in the final week; the ” identify, analyze, and interpret the symbolized ‘facts of the mind,” and map out where their symbols overlap and/or they intersetion with science. (visulize science as a filter that becomes a dam for phycological growth and development. As we disprove out myths and discredit them as fact we must maintain their importance as insight into greater inner wellness and development. It is the anology of mythologies to our own life and excictance where these lessons are held, not in their grounding in facts.

In other words I hope to map “facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter.” (Maya Deren)

The Hero’s Deed

3.    FUTURE WORK

As a work in progress I hope to continue to develop the project and record it’s evolution; creating further documentary interviews, rotoscoped and hand drawn flash animations and forensic reconstructions and reports. I am currently in the process of sculpting the bust of Ganesha.  This will then be filmed and rotoscoped for a degree of realism and a smother transition.  I have plans to introduce 3D methods of digital construction to the animation using Maya, ZBrush and Mudbox.  Other considerations for further research include motion capture and using 3D scans of the subject for modeling.  3D printing techniques will be included to bring the digital models into the material world.  The final presentation of this project will be in a cumulative gallery instillation. I hope to create one 5-minute animation by intelligently combining the individual subjects’ transformations, along with several small sculptures and an illustrated book of my subjects’ relationship to their myth within.  In doing so I hope to inspire others to contemplate and explore the myths they themselves may have hidden within; contributing to the dialogue of mythology in our technological culture and the merging of art and science.

4.    REFERENCES

[1]    Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (Anchor, 1991).

[2]    C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious, ed. Gerhard Adler, vol. 9, Collected Works of C.G. Jung (Dell, 1968).

[3]    Webster’s New World College Dictionary (Cleveland, Ohio: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2009), http://www.yourdictionary.com/religion.

[4]     “Lord Ganesha,” http://www.iyyappa.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=55.

[5]    “Hindu Gods: Ganesha,” http://www.sanatansociety.org/hindu_gods_and_goddesses/ganesha.htm.

[6]    Anthony Peña, “Myths-Dreams-Symbols: Jung in a Nutshell,” Myths-Dreams-Symbols: The Unconscious World of Dream,

http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/nutshell