MA Project

Right, it's about time I got back into the habit of posting on here again. I have been doing stuff, honest, just not much to show or write about until recently. I've mostly been trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do for the final masters project - reading stuff, watching stuff and generally getting a bit worried. I eventually came to the conclusion that I want to make a film consisting of a series of small, interlinked pieces of animation using various techniques (hopefully making me employable) that are unified by a theme of some sort.

The theme I've chosen has kind of been at the back of my mind for a while now, but I haven't really had the time or the opportunity to think it through properly until recently. I read a book called "The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out", a collection of essays, lectures and stuff by the quantum physicist Richard Feynman a year or so ago, and some of the articles got me thinking. I'm no scientist, but reading this and other such books like Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and "The Blind Watchmaker", have opened my eyes to how FUCKING AMAZING the sub-cellular world is. I've always loved watching natural history programmes on TV, and been fascinated by insects (especially Ants) and their behaviour, but those shows tend to cover fairly similar, familiar (to humans) ground. The way these authors write and speak about their subjects just really inspires me and sets my mind wandering, trying to figure out visual ways of conveying the absurdity and wonder of the theories they communicate.

So that is what I plan to attempt. I am in no way pretending to fully understand many of the concepts and theories that I'll be using, and I will in no way be trying to accurately represent them - they are merely starting points, something to come back to for inspiration when I get lost, and to spark my thoughts off - I will follow them on whatever tangent they choose to take. Feynman's theory of quantum electro-dynamics, for instance, has lead me to animate some Rice Krispies. That's how my head works.


People have done this before of course (the excellent Semiconductor for example) but I think I can bring something new to the subject. Ignorance, perhaps, or just complete misunderstanding. This post has gone on too long already - I'll explain myself better next time, but I'm probably just as confused as you are at the moment...