Participants' production diary conclusions / Ville Eerikäinen /

Visual Narration of Candira

On the 10th of May 2001 18:44 Man had put a question to Candira in the Mirror:

"Returning to reason, Candira?"

On the same day 19.03 Candira answered:

"Return is too simple. "Returning" could go forward, too. Using what you have to create something new instead of just neglecting and opposing to situations... What do you mean by reason?"

The short dialog above happened during the chaotic and confusive 4th stage of the Candira web drama. Man never answered back to Candira. By doing so, he left his question open to answer. What could he have meant? And has his question something to do with visual narration of Candira? Before I am able to show my interpretation of the question I have to go through the main lines of the visual narration of Candira.

During the Candira production my central research problem has been the visual coherence of the Candira web drama. In this sense the starting point was that we needed visual continuity - use of formal likeness to create continuity and rhythm - to our narration. (Arnheim 1970, 55-56). Because seeing is understanding of a structure (Ibid, 27), there had to be so connecting aspects in the visuality during the narration. Especially, when we used different kind of visual media - film, 3D-world and web-sites. Thus we needed visual coherence both to combine these media and to support the storyline of Candira.

From the very beginning, it was clear to all of us that we wanted to use moving image as much as possible. Moving image worked like the basis on which the visuality of Candira was built up. In this context, the cinematic approach of the diary design of Sami Haikonen and Egon Randlepp was very essential choice. Because other media - a trailer called Teaser and a 3D world and a transition animation from the diary to the 3D world - were naturally based on moving image, the cinematic diary was a crucial entity when aiming to create coherent visual narration. Especially, when the diary had the major role in the whole narration of Candira.

Throughout India, from time immemorial, an idiom of simple forms has provided the language of inward searching - a vocabulary of signs to express the human relationship with the universe. - The Sanskrit texts stress the necessity of inner visualization to discover the true nature of reality. (Mookerjee 1985, 23. This is interesting especially in the light of Western art history, which usually names Wassily Kandinsky as the inventor of purely abstract art and the first stresser of the necessity of inner visualization (Honour & Fleming 1994, 657-658; Kandinsky 1988)). In this sense, another important selection in the diary design of Sami and Egon was the use of the five colors of the Indian ritual art - green, light blue, orange, blue and white. They can be compared to primal forms and by representing earth, water, fire, air and ether they represent the mental journey of Candira from stability to pain and chaos, and finally to the state of bliss. Thus in the narration, the five colors represent just that inner visualization and search of which the Sanskrit texts talk about. In the end of the Teaser the colors and the inner search of hers was stressed, when she teared out the last one of the five colored series of five paper men and put it next to her own image in a mirror. At the same time the voiceover said: "…I had to get over it and found my roots." There was an abstract promise that the solution is coming in the end of the drama.

Although the five colors have a clear cultural meaning, their total function might have been unknown to many participants. On the other hand, the five colors still create visual continuation between the used media even in a purely formal level and refer to the structure of the whole web drama. But still I think like Fernand Léger did that pure abstraction is no acceptable and that there must always be some connection to reality (Frederiksen 1992, 115-123. Léger ja Pohjola). Thus the key element of the visual narration became the fibre textured paper. A beautiful but fragile paper was introduced in the Teaser representing the metaphor of the mental state of Candira. From the paper she cut the above mentioned line of paper men. Following the idea of Léger during the narration the paper was abstracted so that the paper nature was reduced and the fibres of it were emphasized. Finally, on the texture of a lotus flower at the 3D world this development was seen most clearly.

There is still one essential thing to mentioned when writing about the visual continuity of Candira. That is a transition animation from the diary to the 3D world on the fifth stage. The problem was that how to create the transformation from 2D based web site to 3D based avatar world as smoothly as possible? My solution to the problem was to experiment with film animation in a way that the sequence of the film animation was deconstructed frame by frame and reconstructed frame by frame in the depth of the 3D world. Because of a little distance between every fotogram the result was a pulsating and 'to your face smashing' animation, when travelled through the depth sequence. Also because of the distance mentioned the frame, and that way the 2D plane nature of it was perceivable, especially in the beginning of the sequence. Opposite to that the single frames couldn't be seen at the end of the transition. Thus, there happened a material transition from 2D to 3D in the formal level of the animation.
Working with the material nature of the moving image was not the only level in the transition animation. The animation happened right in the beginning of the 3D world where a before-chaotic- minded Candira found her state of bliss. This meant that there also had to be a transition in the level of content. In the context of total coherence, I used the paperman and the five colors. The idea was that she had to face her problem and go through it. Thus the animation was created by scaling from the paperman to its structure and finally to the single atom of the paper. This way Candira travelled in her mind from the image of the real world to a chaotic abstraction and finally ending to the meditative primal form. With the help of close-ups of the fibre textured paper (Léger pointed out and showed the meaning of the close-ups in Le Ballet Mécanique, 1921. The close-ups open a possibility to new kind of interpretation by framing and scaling detail(s). See more about the aesthetics of Le Ballet Mécanique for instance Le Grice 1977, 36-40). and the five colors the storyline of the five stage narration is abstracted to 20 frames and repeated that way.

With the help of the above mentioned elements we aimed to visual coherence in the narration of Candira. The feedback I have got tells that the experience of participants have often been confusive and strange. Especially, the connection between the 3D world and the rest seemed to be too weird. People did not understand that the 3D world was a computer generated representation of her mind. May be the idea to use visual stimuli in the capture would have helped (so that the computer would have shown images to Candira. Because of the error in its code, the computer wuold have started to show the images which it had generated. When these images would have depicted her very personal sights, for instance the room from the Teaser, she would have understand that something bad is going on - that the computer is capturing her mind.)

But still, if confusion and strangeness are the key words to describe the visual aesthetics of Candira, then it is possible to think that Man referred with his question "Returning to reason, Candira?" to the avantgarde film Return to Reason (Retour à la Raison, 1921) of Man Ray. The film was made so that Man Ray put for instance nails and salt and pepper directly on top of the film material, and then exposured it. The result was that the shapes of the objects were quickly moving in the film and the perception of them was hard, because of the very fast montage. Thus the name of it, Return to Reason, is full of irony, because to the average bourgeois of that time there is not sense at all in the film. Rather there is confusion, strangeness and madness to him (See more about Return to Reason for instance LeGrice). If we compare the aesthetics of Return to Reason to the experience which the experimental web design of the Candira web drama had created during the passed four stages, it is reasonable to think and ask like Man did: "Are you going crazy, Candira?".

Reference material:

Literature
Arnheim, Rudolf 1970, Visual Thinking. Faber and Faber Limited, Lontoo
Frederiksen, Finn Terman 1992, Léger ja Tanska: taidehistoriallisesti merkittävä rakkaussuhde. In exhibition catalog Léger ja Pohjola, s. 115-125. Ateneum, Helsinki.
Honour, Hugh & Fleming, John 1994, Maailman taiteen historia. Calmann & King Ltd, London.
Kandinsky, Wassily 1988, Taiteen henkisestä sisällöstä. Taide, Helsinki.
Le Grice, Malcolm 1977, Abstract film and beyond. Studio Vista, Cassell & Collier Macmillan Publishers Ltd, New York.
Mookerjee, Ajit 1985, Ritual Art of India. Thames and Hudson, London.
Willis, Roy 1996, World Mythology. Duncan Baird Publishers, London.

Films
Man Ray. Return to Reason (Retour à la Raison), 1921.
Léger, Fernand. Le Ballet Mécanique, 1924.