Digital Story

Journey into Creativity

This digital story is about a “Creative”, or a digital media artist, in the future, named Jezebel. Since I only had a minute to work with, I had to rely on imagery, colour, archetypes, a minimized story line and the thematic power of metaphor.

http://youtu.be/6_UFNQdknXI

The inspiration for this story derives from a blog posting I created for publication online called “How to work with your Creative Flow“.  Working in the creative industries demands a great deal of an artist.  For example, in the last week I had to launch 4 new websites, two of them over 100 pages in depth.  Such a manic development phase is taxing on the mind and body, but it is more taxing on the creativity.

Creative Independence

I chose the name “Jezebel” for my protagonist to suggest rebellion and a sense of independence.  The use of allusions, metaphors, colour and image sequence are all designed specifically to take the viewer on a journey into their imaginations to get a quick glimpse of their inner artist.  The story begins with greys,  just like a  Vancouver November, to suggest how we as citizens in a Fordist-based society in transition have been taught by our school systems to treat our creative side.  Math and English are given priority over everything, leaving the arts at the bottom of the funding formula.  As a result we are producing the perfect citizens for a manufacturing-based economy, whereas we should be teaching creativity to help us exist and prosper in our global networked cyber-linked society.

Future Networked Society 2020

The story takes place in the future, where the network society has taken hold and the world’s cities are divided into districts of knowledge production.  Our protagonist, Jezebel, is a Creative who has burned out and is unable to access her creativity to produce knowledge for the Internet, and this terrifies her.  In order to get past the wall of despair the artist lives in without creative space, she plugs her mind into the Internet, which at this point in the future, has truly become a physical manifestation of the collective unconscious.  Therein, she digs into her memory spaces for visions of nature, beauty, colour, and flow of ideas.  This journey is symbolized in the story by entering a digital portal, travelling through data and ending up on a beach.  Her relief is then displayed by the symbolism of water – a huge archetype across all cultures of the human family – and the magic of the creative vision is her ability to walk on it.  As her journey ends in the path through the woods, or the journey back to consciousness, her mind is alive with abstract thought and colour, making her internal computer chips buzz with the electricity of creation.

Too often we forget to nurture our inner artist and left in a creative wasteland where we move forward through our days in machine-like motion, rather than noticing the beauty around us.  Learners entering the creative fields in particular, must discover their inner artist, work to understand their own personal creative flow and be rewarded for their innovation and unique perspectives.

Creative Growth can be Painful

The creation of this digital story was the result of my own creative walk upon the thorns of limitations of technology. Usually I would use tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere Pro to develop an inventive perspective on such a project. However, instead I limited myself to using stock images purchased at 123RF.com, and worked with online Web 2.0 applications. I started first in Prezi, then when it was not sufficient for my needs, moved to Vuvox , and One True Media, both of which I found to be frustrating by their lack of flexibility and the ridiculous limits on time. Rather than paying fees for a membership in an online program I would rarely use, I constrained the creation to be one minute long, and worked through You Tube’s interface program Stupeflix. Again, I found the journey constraining, since I wanted to make more than just a glorified PowerPoint presentation. However, this software was the best I had tried and it enabled me to generate a computer voice, build in interesting transitions and develop a decent product. I would experiment with this with my own students.

Sound/Colour/Image Bytes

The strengths to this approach to writing are clearly in the visual aspects – colour, metaphor, imagery, archetypes, and animated narration. However, due to time limits provided by the software, limited capabilities and editing abilities, the products become catalysts for thought, rather than an exploration of an idea. Sound bytes are interesting, but without this write up, I wonder how many of you would have seen the weeks of thought that have gone into it?

Here is version 1 of the script (sadly it was too long):

Sinking deep into the swirling mass of memories, nature, ideas, beauty and the elegance of creativity, her creative spaces within were replenished. Her inner artist danced within like a catalyst sparking idea after idea in an abstract flow that only Jezebel knew how to swim within. Emerging renewed and intellectually vibrant, her internal computer chips buzzed with the energies of creative flow and while her mind became one with the machine, it was brimming with colour.

Version 2 is much shorter,as is evident in the video.

Utilizing Web 2.0 is excellent to communicate quickly and easily, but working with limitations of online software due to cost restrictions can constrict the flow of creative thought. However, this medium is extremely powerful and fairly easy to learn quickly. One minute time-limits are an issue, particularly if you are wordy, as evidenced in this post.

Resources

Bendle, Mervin F.(2002). The crisis of ‘identity’ in high modernity, British Journal of Sociology, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713694401~tab=issueslist~branches=53 – v5353:1, 1 – 18. doi: 10.1080/00071310120109302

Castells, M. (2004). Informationalism, Networks, And The Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint. In Castells, M. (Ed.), The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Photographs used in production (2011, July 24). License obtained from 123RF.com

Other effects or graphics created by Kenneth Buis.