Yeah...

A story about how art is the only way a man who has been deprived of speech or understanding it can express the vivid images he has in his head. This film won one of the top ten awards for the MachinUWA IV challenge in Second Life (special award: "emotion"). I'm grateful to the judges and all the artists who inspired me.

Here are the artists with full titles (order of appearance in the film):

Typote Beck, "Dream of the Cold Sleeper" (flickering castle)
Nino Vichan, "Piume di Pavone" (peacock feathers)
Typote Beck, "The Superhero's Breakfast" (slow buses)
June Clavenham, "Living Fractal" (shimmering curtains)
Thoth Jantzen, "Great Balls of Fire" (talking heads)
Igor Ballyhoo, "Metamorphosis" (pulsing brain)
Artistide Despres, Petite Etude sur Olivier Messiaen (waving phalanges)
Lollito Larkham, "AminimA" (tipped over lamp)
Sledge Roffo, "Here Comes the Sun" (silhouettes of NYC)
Betty Tureaud, "Light Tower" (falling cubes)
Gingered Alsop, "Shattered" (boy curled up)
Fae Varriale, "Daughter of the Wind" (gauzy figure)
Capcat Ragu, untitled (woman washing her hair)
Barry Richez, "Body Space" (glowing outline of two lovers)
Soror Nishi, "Copper Beech: A Majestic Shade Tree" (in fuschia ;))
Meilo Minotaur, untitled (floating island with faces)
Romy Nayar, "En el agua" (doll under the shower)
Gingered Alsop, "Welcome to our Parlor" (turning flowers)
Josiane Sorciere, "l'Impatience" (the stressed out artist!)
Secret Rage, "Tribute to UWA artists" (floating crayons)
Gleman Jun, "Desperation" (the hands)
Dusty Canning, "Read My Lips" (mouth released from its wall)

Simon's artwork: yours truly

Quotation at the opening is from Paul-Elie Gerner (1888-1948), a painter, and taken from Herve-Pierre Lambert's article:
http://mutamorphosis.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/neuroaesthetics-neurological-di...

For information on artists-with-aphasia see:
http://www.aphasianow.org/Aphasia_Recovery/Inspiring_Arts_Crafts~336/

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Hypatia
• Pickens
• MachinimUWA
• University
• of
• Western
• Australia
• Second
• Life
• virtual
• art
• digital
• machinima
• therapy
• Wernicke's
• area
• aphasic
• Kevin
• MacLeod

[textcavation]

big hug, guys! Thanks for your encouragement! :)

[2SenseProductions]

holy shit the paintings are super credible as responses to the works. As always the language manages to be incisive and suggestive at the same time. The coolness of the music was a perfect "yeah." You paint the frame with characters, text has a pull of its own and I felt pulled into the imagery whereas text can so easily pull past or out. Are those newspaper characters made up to suggest his aphasic puzzle, or are they glyphs you excavated in your scholarship (or both)?

[textcavation]

@2SenseProductions huge thanks.. You're the first to notice the paintings which were the single hardest thing to do in the machinima... lol: make them wholly Simon's. I was afraid the writing would distract, but I really did want to make music, image and words part of the whole "look." The newspaper characters are random, and meant to suggest that that's what reading looks like to Simon. "Dirt Rhodes" ... yeah. :) DAMN STRAIGHT, man! I heard that and said that's it!!!

[DavidArvBragi]

Interesting, I like your use of non-time-linear streams of images, a technique that I've always had trouble using myself, with a few exceptions, must be the way my brain is wired. ;-) What inspires you to use aphasia as a topic?

[textcavation]

@DavidArv what inspired me? Terror. Sympathy. Other stuff. Long ago I sold a story to ST:DS9 called "Babel" about a planetary condition that interfered with your ability to speak sensibly. Wernicke's aphasia does just that but it's accompanied by impaired understanding of language as well, so you're totally shut in and you know it. Ravel and Baudelaire were both stricken. When I saw Gingered Alsop's Shattered (shown in film) I was moved to make the machinima.

[LalaLarix]

Impressive, Hypatia :).

[searby]

this is wonderful - well done you !!

[TutsyNavarathna]

Congratulations Hypatia like each of your movies, sense and sensibility.

Wonderful film :)

[penumbracarter]

Like your style alot!

[domainrouge]

oh, and I love the dancing in the light/out of the light...!

[domainrouge]

I've been dreaming this story since we talked about strategies for communication with diminished and undiminished capacity...leave to you to break and mend the narrative through art, music, action, repeatedly and still preserve flow and context...the music, the pacing, the broken syncopation of the themes, all spoke to making contact with the world and living in it authentically when language, the very bedrock of experience, fails us. Just gorgeous on so many levels, Hypatia. Thank you so much!