Professional Practice - Secret 7 (Ideas Generation)

After checking the books Danny and Simon brought to the session and some other covers online. I realised they might be simple but the concepts are normally more complex, and they don't necessarily need to be understood straight away. They are ambigious enough to let them be interpreted.

I tried to do a similar process from the Study Task with the song Dream 3 by Max Ritcher. After watching the music video the producer make very clear that the Moon is the main progagonist of it, and the light that it projects.

Since the track is called Dream 3 and the music video is about the moon I thought it would be interesting to check the psychological oneiric meaning of moon. For that, I checked two books to compare results. One of the books is called Sueños (dreams) by Clara Tahoces, who claims that what we dream is influenced by the culture we live in and it can be source of inspiration or even premonition, but the most important fact is that it reveals our most deep fears and desires. The second one is Enciclopedy of dreams: the art of premonition by Maria José Antón.

Both books have different theories with some similarities, and these are that the moon can represent femininity, love and fertility. In fact, psichologically speaking, dreaming with the Moon can be compensatory, pointing out a lack of femininity. Another fact of it is that it has a double simbolism: it doesn't have a light on its own, it does have it by phases. Therefore, it is dependent of periodicity and renovation. Once knowing this, my interpretation of the music video is that the track is telling us a story of how love and romanticism evolves, and how we depend on it. It is the light in the darkness.

The track itself is quiet, dramatic and sad in some way. I wanted to focus on this dependence, and to know how to represent it I looked for two synonyms: addiction and obsession. I explored different responses to addiction from a drug perspective. Thought about a ballchain with a moon instead of a ball, a moon being a jail, a moon made out of dust, like if it was cocaine or even the moon on a spoon, like if it was heroin. I found a campaign for addictions to cigarettes that might be useful.

But I wanted to stay away from the drugs topic, as it might create confusion and add a meaning that is not wanted. Although, I wanted to keep the moon easily recognisable, so some obviousness is kept but with a deeper meaning.

Then I remembered the femininity, and I wanted to use it but in its purest meaning, without any type of sexualisation or patriarchal construction. After showing a colleague an idea of the moon and a hand trying to reaching it, he told me the moon could have a chain hanging from it. When I drew it I saw a balloon. Then I thought of a little girl trying to reach a balloon with a chain hanging and with the shape of the moon. It represents the dependence we create in ourselves, and how illogically we behave when we are in love, chasing something we can't reach and that it's actually harmful, as we want to be chained to something instead of enjoying our freedom.

During the feedback session I was suggested different artists to look at as well as other concepts to consider, such as other planets, eclipses, pulling the moon, making a typeface of the moon, first moon landing, moon walking, moon footprints, etcetera. It was when I realised that this concept might be too limiting, so I decided to start again with a new concept and, if it didn't work, I could always go back.

For this new concept, I played the track and wrote down the feelings that came to my mind, such as sadness, memories of happiness, night, tears, tiredness, slow time, emptiness, nothingness, void, hope. At this point I didn't know where to go with this new idea, so I just started to draw while I was listening to the song. I drew an irregular spiral that changed depending on what was happening in the track. I decided then to write down previous and new words that remained at the top of my head. They were sad, eternity (in a negative way), good memories that hurt, love hurts, pain and dependence.

Since genuinely wrote down the word "dependence" I decided to explore this concept again:

"If moon needs sun to bright, a person needs love to live"

That is a quote I came up with, but to be honest, doesn't represent what I actually believe. Personally, I believe in love, but not the love we've been taught through films and fairy tails, which is the kind of love that if you don't suffer, is not real love. That if you are not loved, you just exist, but it's a worthless existence. I don't accept and don't believe that.

The Moon can be in the shadows without sun. It would be invisible, but being invisible doesn't have to be something negative. In fact, the Sun is brighter than the moon because it has own light, while the moon only reflects its light. That light (in the metaphore would be the love) is just a reflection, a lie. The concept of moon can be reduced to a dirty mirror. It is not a clean mirror, otherwise it would reflect the sun as it is. If someone has own light is when the feeling of fullness is real. If your light (or image) is reflected on a dirty mirror, your appearance would be affected, it wouldn't be real.

Taking photographs of a dirty mirror reflecting a light could convey this message, using dark blue and green colours to bring the connotations the Moon carries.

Short rationale: "The Moon needs the Sun to project light. It can't replicate such brightness. The Moon is a dirty mirror. Don't be that. Have your own light."

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