FEELINGS AND SHADOWS

Going back to our last reflection, we will now focus on one specific word of our art definition: feelings. Feelings and emotions are one of the most important aspects of  humankind, and this is not something that we realize frequently, perhaps because to feel is so common to all of us. To understand art, we need first to understand feelings. Fear, anger, happiness, sadness, solitude, interest, anxiety, ease, love, friendship, are these are different types of feelings. We saw that feelings are not homogeneous, this means that whenever we feel, for example anger, it is not only anger that we feel. Maybe we feel angry and disappointed too, because a friend did something wrong. Or we may feel happy because we bought tickets for a concert, but we also feel anxious and interested.

SHADOW PLAYS 

Art, as we said, has a lot to do with feelings. Almost every piece of art involves feelings, just as the little story that we have been reading. The activity consisted in identifying all the emotions that were in Chapter 2. We formed groups of three students and every group chose a feeling. The task was to represent those feelings in a short shadow play. The idea of the shadow theater is to explore another way of expression and representation. The spectator can not see what is going on behind the curtain, all we can see are shadows and forms. So the question raises: Do feelings have forms? Can we represent an emotion only with shadows?   The shadow theater puts us in a very creative situation, because we have to learn to use the shape of our bodies to communicate. And not only of our bodies, the shape of every element or tool can be useful. We learnt that the size of a thing behind the curtain depends on how far or near it is from the light-bubble and that in this way we could make really crazy things. We could create a monster or a pair of giant scissors!
Now let's see some of the things that you did!

Here is an excellent image from Luquitas. It is really, really expressive. Anxiety, perhaps?

A nice work with hands. This is a perfect example of the meaning of shadows and shapes.

Here is an excellent example of the use of sizes. Agos is really little, while her partner is really big. We have to remember that we are not trying to copy reality, we are dealing with impressions and effects. It would be difficult to find such a small girl and such a big man in the real world, but here, they suggest an interesting relation; maybe they're father and daughter, or a dog and its owner... who knows? Reality doesn't matter here, all we care about is  interpretation.

The use of different elements and tools to make them look as an other thing.

This is also really expressive. Happiness?

Finally, a short video. Look at the effect that causes Magui's shadow when she approaches the curtain, it's fantastic! It looks like a monster's attack!

MORE ABOUT FEELINGS (sólo para 3er año)

We discussed a little bit more about feelings, here are some of the questions that remained without any answer during the class and that I would like you to think a little bit: How important are feelings in our everyday life? Is it true that reason is opposed to feelings? And if that is true, what happens with the common opposition between science and art? Do we choose when to use feelings  and when to use our reason? Or is it simply that we use both all the time and we can't choose no matter what?

Good luck with the extremely fun adventure of thinking!



Aviso: el texto puede resultar difícil por algunas palabras nuevas, pero deben hacer un pequeño esfuerzo por tratar de comprender las ideas más generales. El diccionario siempre es buen amigo!