On Meaning
See the motion graphics here: On Meaning.
Prompt
Express an issue with a minute long video.
Idea
I’m deeply influenced by John Vervaeke, a professor and cognitive scientist who created an epic, 50 episode, one hour per episode long lecture series called Awakening From the Meaning Crisis. My video takes its ideas from there.
From the very start, I wanted there to be multiple ways of processing the same information. I had just finished reading Iain McGilchrist’s tome The Master and His Emissary, which talks about our left and right hemispheres. This fitted really well with the idea of the 'having' and 'being' An idea from the humanist psychologist Erich Fromm, described in a book of the same name. See Vervaeke talk about it in this interview clip.
The two modes is more about how we process things, rather than what. Are we looking at things in terms of parts, pieces, abstractions through this more instrumental way of relating, or are we taking them more as a fluid whole, more poetically rather than literally.
That’s why I landed on having 3 different aspects:
- narration
- more descriptive, literal graphics on the left
- more metaphorical imagery on the right
Process
Early thoughts, sketches and keyframes.
Digital keyframes. This also shows a perhaps more subtle visual aspect of ‘stepping into the light’ (en-lightenment), shifting from 50% opacity black, to normal on the word “enlightenment”, to white.
This shows the mapping of the script images, which I collected on this arena channel.
