Inspirations & References
Photos
Reflection
For our diorama piece, we came up with a narrative that would depict the government’s interference and surveillance of our everyday lives. There is a lot of speculation on how the government has access to our private information through the apps and social media interfaces we use. Lately, it’s become more and more apparent that the things we do online are getting tracked as we see ads specifically curated towards us through our searches. Many conspiracies have even come out of this phenomena accusing the government and social media sites of listening into or reading our private conversations as well as watching us through our cameras.
To emphasize the severity of this problem, we chose a young child as our protagonist also representing the majority of internet users since nowadays kids have access to the internet before they even start elementary school. We made the figurine out of air dry clay and painted her with warm colors. We wanted ro give her and her room a really cozy feeling, a place you wouldn’t expect dark things to happen, to elevate the element of surprise. We made her a bed, a desk, a bedside table and a wardrobe. We also made a bunch of props like books and posters to make it feel like a kid her age would be living there. For her overall palette, we chose pink, orange and purple as the main colors to increase the coziness. We sat her on her bed with her computer to show how many people use the internet, in the privacy and comfort of their room. This detail was important because your bed is your most intimate space yet that’s where you use your phone the most so it just shows how unsuspecting people are, especially kids when using the internet.
Then we created another space right adjacent to the room which was a fictional depiction of a governmental room. While making it, I was really inspired by Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” and implemented some of the mis en scene in the diorama. For this room, we wanted to strip all of the color and made the room black and white. We painted the floors to look like it had black and white tiles which was very reminiscent of a chess board. This quality also relates to strategic and conniving methods the government uses to get their information. On the black wall, we put a big world map to illustrate the power they possess and that it doesn’t affect just us but that it’s an global problem. Right below it, we added a humorous element which was the all powerful red button referring to the age old stereotype of the government but also symbolizing our fears of the government. We made some desks to place on the side of the room to give it a more office-like feeling. We made three figures to represent this side: one was an middle aged woman with red hair, one an old man with graying hair and one a young man with curly black hair. We did a range of characters to imply that the people who are watching us could be anyone. We gave them especially mischievous faces and red eyes which are again very stereotypical but we thought that there is a reason these stereotypes were made and that’s because people are afraid of the power the government possesses.We made a hole in the wall that separates the two rooms and put the figures so that they’re peaking into the young girl’s room. This action was the physical manifestation of what they’re actually doing to us through the internet.
As our goddess, we chose Durga since she’s the protector of the righteous and the destroyer of evil. We wanted to represent her very minimally so at first, we thought about having multiple hands harassing the figures but that was hard to do so we opted for one big hand instead. We made the hand blue to contrast with the room and to imply that it was there to stop them. However, during the critic we realized that that narrative wasn’t that apparent so I kind of wished we put the hand in front of the hole to make it more obvious. Still, I’m really happy with the way it all came out.
I’m a huge fan of stop motion animation and actually my dream is to become a production designer for stop motion films so this was right up my alley. I was happy to be able to put my knowledge into use. I’m really grateful for getting my group mates because they made this experience extremely fun and everything went very smoothly. This project was probably my favorite out of all of them and I just really enjoyed making this diorama.
