This class uses cycles as an integral component of its processes. Therefore, focusing on the idea of cycles for this first project seemed fitting.
Because this project encouraged the use of randomness to create something that “plays itself” (once you start it) and holds the viewer’s attention for some time, playing with indefinite cycles seemed appropriate.
Find a “Moment of Joy”
The “Side Quest” for this project was to invoke laughter or a moment of joy.
When I started my 6 hours for this project, I was in a little bit of a bad mood. Consequently, I was not in the mood to create something joyful. Therefore, I decided to challenge myself to take something negative and turn it into something positive—since this artwork would feel more authentically “joyful” to me if that “joy” came from a genuine determination to find that joy within an honest acknowledgement of both the good and bad.
How the Project Supports those Motivations:
The Storyline
The beginning portion employs Sisyphean imagery to convey feelings of being trapped in cycles and not making any noticeable progress.
I experimented with the number of times this scene would play to try to play it just enough times that the viewer could think that this scene was all there would be—a psychological trick that would hopefully invoke negative feelings corresponding to this theme.
Since the animation was relatively abstract (there was no person figure included, for example), I was glad to hear from the people who watched it in class that they realized that this reference was being made.
Eventually, it is revealed that the rocks that are rolling backwards are rolling backwards into somewhere new and exciting.
The rock is traveling to these new places over bridges created by other rocks that had arrived there before. (I am not sure from the audience response whether this part came through, consciously or subconsciously. If I were to continue working on this project, I would change what the rocks look like to make it more obvious that the bridge is made of those rocks specifically.)
This animation of the traveling rock cycles indefinitely, with the background effects randomized each time. (This, combined with the effect of the Sisyphean section of changing the location after the viewer starts to think that section will be the only one, had the interesting effect of causing the in-class audience to not be sure for some time that this section would repeat indefinitely. While this has some obvious drawbacks, it does arguably complement some of the themes of this piece.)
While I want each viewer to come to their own personal interpretation of this piece, I am hoping it can encourage viewers to consider the idea that, even if we cannot see it, in the cycles in our lives we are stuck in—even the ones where the negative effects far outweigh the positive ones—we still get something each time, even if that is just a little bit more knowledge that we can use to get just a bit further next time.
The Technical Aspects
This project did give me the opportunity to experiment with a variety of Isadora “Actors.” My favorite one (which this project used for special effects and textures) was the “Explode” Actor.
I used User Actors (which I found could be used similarly to classes from more traditional object-oriented coding languages) frequently to keep things more organized and to limit the amount of copied and pasted Actors.
I experimented with Global Values (which have some similarities to global variables from more traditional programming), the Calculator Actor, the Comparator Actor, Actors that handled Triggers, and the Jump++ Actor for control flow, especially to repeat Scenes.
I tried to automatically set the Global Value at the start of the show, but some unknown aspect of my logic was incorrect, so I did have to remember to manually set it each time I played the show.
Much of the control flow resulting in the final effect on the Stage could have been accomplished with just the Counter Actor, Actors that handled Triggers, and the Jump++ Actor. However, I specifically wanted to learn about Global Values using this project, and there is some symbolism involved in the fact the Scene itself truly does fully repeat (rather than just a set of steps within the Scene). This does raise an interesting question about how the way something is done can in itself be part of an artwork—but is that worthwhile when it takes more time, is less clean, and ultimately results in the same user/viewer experience?