Title: SUBSTANCE ENCOUNTERS
Project Holder: Natercia Chang
Credits: Laura Fong, Sahar Hashim, Ivo Santos, Asami Tesuka
Music: "Bafo de Shiva", by Norberto Lobo, Gloria Tang
Concept:
Full dome - as a new way of projecting images, films and videos, this format is more than a technical tool to maximize effects and audiovisual, it is also a platform for experimenting narration and visual languages.
Given that the medium is round shape and 360 degrees, the world is the first thing that pops up in the mind. My visualization is very much based on the history of the world; how one civilization started and how one ended. The title of the project "SUBSTANCE ENCOUNTERS" employs a meaning of one civilization coming into contact with another. The people and culture are like substances, that mixed and influenced one another.
Ideology:
World civilization thrives productions, business, technology and much more, sadly at the same time it involves sacrifices, which seem to be undermined and forgotten, such as deaths and identity-loss. Colonization makes up the history of most of the countries nowadays, but who would bother to take a look back when advanced technology and business opportunities are everywhere in the twenty-first century. This project aims to retrieve the nostalgia of our own origin, reinforcing the idea that people should not forget the past. It is, however, not a critical way to depict colonization, rather it portrays the emotions when one culture is influenced and mixed with another.
The film contains three main parts; the snow (blue-white Africa), the fire (green Americas) and the fluid (red Asia). Literally the protagonist in the film, who has an Latin origin, has three encounters with three women. In the first part, the African appears in the snow, contrasting her origin and history - the Africans were forced to be shipped in an inhuman environment, the scene reverses the subject, that the protagonist (inferior) was lying down in the freezing cold and the African woman (superior) appears from above, making a god-like effect. The second part is the encounter with a South American woman. The juxtaposition of their kiss and fire denotes the passion of their exchange, while fire is also a symbol of danger, which reminds the sacrafices and destruction in the Americas when the Portuguese and Spanish first settled. The last part tells the encounter in the far east. The Oriental culture was not wiped out, yet, the west and the east influenced each other. The white fluid represents the whiteness of the west and the red represents the Oriental traditions, which are both poured on them, suggesting the idea of transculturation.
The use of colors and the soundtrack are also important for interpretation, as each color has a connotation for each culture presented. The title of the music means "whisper of god" in English, which is actually the inspiration for the project because it reminds me of the evilness hidden under then gentleness facade of religion.
The visualization on the dome format is the collage of the three parts and two substances - fire (flames) and water (fluid, rain and snow), which are in a 16:9 format. It is a represenation of how the history is documented and structured.
Working Process:
Since I am filming footages instead of graphics, I wanted to test how a non computer generated image would look like. Here are some test images for reference.
The shooting of the video takes three days, it is the post production which takes up much more time. I first produced a 16:9 video with soundtrack, then I output 15 different clips and make the collage on After Effects.
Videos:
16:9 version <videoflash type="vimeo">19304935|500|300</videoflash>
full dome version