Mentation on the metaphorical
Early concept draft of a heart shot
In the early draft, the heart was the main symbol. But during the middle of the production, I rethought about how this visual of this symbol are a bit too strong, direct, and cliché to indicate the topics.
Viewing that the close-up shot of the washing machine have already given much clues on the themes, reducing the urge to get the whole understanding of what and why is it happening from audience would be more suitable approach for this semi-narrative animation work.
Early concept
Thus I decided to be more vague for the rest of the shots. The figurative symbol becomes just lines which is abstracted from the idea of the threads of hearts and turned out it looks like the veins, the streams, and the connections which audience could have interpreted.
Final deisign
The scenes of hearts transformed into the veins like streams and ultimately converge into a drop, like a tears, a dot, or a sphere. After redesign of the heart scene, I needed to rearrange the sequences and redesign the scenes at the last part of the whiteness realm of void. While imagining what that dots could be seen or meant to us, I happened to watch a video of an astronomer talking about his pathos towards the universe.
......The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
...... Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
(from: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot)
It got me thinking how small we actually are and how negligible our issues, linkage with others are. It is like we only stay here at the universe for probably not more than a millisecond compared to the unknown lights years lifetime of the universe itself. Time and matter are only incarnated and matters in that tiny blue dots.
To have a sense of transcendence to a mind (spiritual side) probably is the way we take a glimpse of the essence of oneself. It is indeed a bit abstract to describe with. But still, I see it as elevation from physical, fundamentals, and micro perspectives of our matter to a void of nothing as a realm that is nothing yet is everything.
The threads (veins/lines) and drop (sphere/dots) were also constructed in the whiteness void's scene after the streams of anonymous faces' scenes. The threads were tear off and be found in the streams. The threads connect with replica (the various parts of itself) and forms infinite circles.
This sequence of shots probably the best way I tried to depict the above message which is like a breakdown from the atoms (the scientific and fundamental sides of what "construct" us). It might be a possible abstract form to provide a sense to describe the "spiritual" side of it.
