“Tabula Rasa” – The Final Project of Foundation

Once the collections project had ended, the time came for the final project of Foundation to start. So long to fortnight-long projects and hello to extended briefs. For this project, I wanted to add to “The Legacy of Steve” and recreate them as a symbolic characterisation of emotion. This process has become a favourite and I loved every minute of it so I do hope that Steve will make more appearances in the future.

“What is Tabula Rasa?” Idea Brainstorm

When given the brief for this project, we were given a presentation showcasing what Tabula Rasa means across all mediums of study. During this presentation, I began to scribble down notes as well as add my own points of inspiration that came to mind. This led to a tangible spider web of concepts that I could perceive becoming ideas on how to launch my process for this project.

Idea Generation

After compiling all of my brainstorming into a web of various ideas and pathways, I needed to find a way to meld projects together and figure out what concept I wanted to go forward with. Since I wanted this final piece to be an all-encompassing project that showcased all the things I’ve learnt during this foundation course, I began this process by listing all of the ideas I had previously looked at while cross-analysing them with the project pathways I wanted to pursue within my brainstorm. This led to me having a culmination of projects that I could progress with, allowing me to perceive all avenues and kickstart my research.

Exploring “Invisible Cities”

When we were given the brief, a notable work that I found myself drawn to was Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. The book itself recounts fictional conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan as the explorer describes the various cities he has seen throughout his travels. Since the idea of building my own fictional city seemed like an intriguing way to explore the topic of Tabula Rasa, I decided to read the book while jotting down notable cities that I found interesting. After summarising a lot of the cities in the book, I categorised them depending on the criteria of how I could utilise the city in a final project form if I wanted to pursue this research further.

Aspects of the Brain Research

When I was initially given the brief for this project, I knew I wanted to use the concept of tabula rasa as a way to bring the blank state to how emotions are expressed. This would allow for the perception of emotions as well as other aspects of the brain to be more easily acknowledged and enjoyed in a new format, I started this exploration by looking deeper into what makes the brain tick, breaking it down to its key components and how those traits can either strengthen or diminish certain emotional responses. This also led me to develop a form of logic matrix to help better understand why we feel certain emotions and how our perceptions can change depending on certain aspects of our brain.

7 Deadly Sins + Heavenly Virtues Research

To help add some attributes to what can be perceived, I decided to look into both sins and virtues as descriptors for how a person can behave. I found that each one tended to have an opposite on the other list while also framing what can be considered good and bad behaviours. In my opinion, framing them in this way is a terrible thing as it is a lot better for there to be a perfect balance of both good and bad attributes to retain an ordered and more profound sense of self.

Characterisation Process

Once I figured out what aspects of self I wanted to explore and showcase in a new way, I decided to break them down into their own characterised formats. I knew that when it came to my final piece, I wanted these abstract elements to be shown in a more personified way to allow viewers to relate to them in a more personal manner. I began this process by assigning each aspect a gender-neutral name as I wanted the forms themselves to be outside of the gender binary. I also gave them a few character aspects that would help me identify key features in their design as I develop them into their final forms later on in the project.

Oriel Myrddin Gallery

In the middle of this project, the Oriel Myriddin Gallery was housing an exhibit where the city of Maurilla from Invisible Cities was brought to life through the work of guest artists. Since during this time I had already read through the book multiple times, I thought it would be a fun experience to actually see a form of the city itself with my own eyes rather than the visualised forms that my mind had created through reading the detailed and expressive words used to describe them within the book.

Eyes without a face

Alongside this project, I was tasked to write an essay to help reinforce the core idea of what I was going to explore for this project. The essay itself can be read in a different post but to summarise it, I looked into the concept of tabula rasa as a form of erasure and compared it to how masks can erase or force an expression upon a character. One of the main points I used for cross-analysis was the use of masks in the film Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face), which with the use of neutral masks disguises the main characters’ true emotions of pain and suffering through a blank expression. This film became a strong point of influence for my project, sparking inspiration for mask designs as well as giving me enough passion to distinctively mark down key timestamps.

Main Idea Explanation

Now that I had built up a varied body of research, I needed to start planning a core idea to follow. I usually begin this process by stringing together as many of my initial concepts as I can, attempting to compile as much as I can into core fragments I can piece together into a bigger picture. This led to me finalising the use of 3 major concepts that I wanted to showcase as core elements of my final piece, focusing on the use of masks, characterisation and emotion to be the main showcase of my idea.

Mask Formats

Since I didn’t have much experience with making masks at this point, I began to sketch up various forms of masks to create a baseline of what kind of masks I could create. I looked at a range of both full and half-form masks to showcase a wide range of how masks themselves could be utilised in both my designs and their practical use. However, I realised halfway through this study that I would be unable to create both masks and characters within the timeframe so I sadly had to cut this experimentation short. I still developed designs for each characterisation’s mask and I hope to explore more mask forms and make my own in a future project down the line.

Character Portraits

At this point in the project, I realised that I wanted to bring back the character work I began to develop within the Collections project. To further expand on what I started with, I designed the characters I wanted to showcase in the final piece into stringed forms. This allowed me to visualise what body language and colour coordination I wanted to use to help better convey what emotion they were characterising so that viewers would know on instinct. I also went ahead and planned out each character’s mask as I had mentioned before.

Exhibition Formatting/Drafting

Once I had planned out each individual character that I wanted to make, the only things left to do were to make the objects themselves as well as figure out how I was going to compose them for the exhibition. Now the making of the characters was the easier of the two tasks but when it came to how I wanted to display them, a few ideas came to mind. The idea I ended up going with was reusing an old junk drawer full of compartments and treating it like a shelving unit to house all of the characters, giving them an environment to live in and interact in.

Final Outcome

Overall I would say this project was a huge success, it was a great introduction to the world of exhibitions and having my work on display to the public was a surreal experience for sure. The whole stress aspect of it I could do without but as long as my passion and love for the project outweigh the negatives then it is something I can easily push through. This project will be something I will always look back on and I hope sometime in the future I can adapt what I worked on here and add depth to help bring more joy and expression to the characters and how they can be perceived. Thank you for reading.