STUDY TASK 1

ZINE

 


Please skip ramble below. Its an explanation of the idea behind the Zine. Sorry. 

This project was a great kick-starter for the brief. It allowed me to balance a range of ideas that I had in regards to my chosen author into a series of images that represent the duality in Sagan's teachings and our own beliefs. He was an extreme realist and struggled with humanity's constant fascination and gravitation towards the supernatural. He of course understood and respected peoples cultures and age old beliefs, but begged the question that in a world where we have a system in place that can prove and disprove theories and hypothesis with stone cold evidence and facts, why did people still seek out pseudoscience as a benchmark for their beliefs?

It is a question that I think is more rhetorical than proposed. I believe humanity's search into mysticism is something that stems from our love of the unknown. There is a mystery and romance within uncertainty, and a bleak belittlement in accepting some of the facts proposed by science. I believe this is the same reason why people are prompted into religion, because, even though everything has been written out for us to a certain extent (e.g. guidelines for living and a very authoritarian manner in which religion governs our everyday actions) religion still leaves so much to faith, and faith, or hope, is something that is integral to give meaning in our lives.

 I'm sure Sagan was aware of all this, but he also saw that there is meaning in science, and with it a perfectly reasonable moral compass to guide us through all these hardships. He passionately sought to discard humanity's system of punishment and reward. Why be a good person for fear of spending an eternity in hell? Why not be a good person prompted by the knowledge that we are all one with the universe, all made of the same starstuff, and all fighting the same battle to survive on this tiny speck. It is like when a person gives to charity, is it really very charitable to donate solely for the purpose of self gratification and expectation of reward in some other life, or karma? When our actions are prompted by the gravity of punishment and reward, are our actions truly meaningful? Or just a perpetuation of a society that gives only to expect something in return?

I have always been a mystical person at heart, but I have also never allowed it to come before what I know is proven by science. This has always created an internal battle within my psyche. I have always wanted to believe there is an afterlife, but at the same time I completely understand that there is no solid evidence of there being one. This duality of thought has led me to appreciate Sagan greatly, because even though the prospect of not having another chance to live, to see my loved ones that have passed, to understand our purpose here is extremely depressing, it also prompts me to stop diddling. It kicks me in the face and tells me with the full gravity of its truth, 'I may never get another chance' today is today, and live it for all it is as there may not be another. Love the ones you love with all you have, don't hold grudges, forgive and understand everyone is fighting their own battle and surround yourself with people who exemplify this and help you achieve this goal, to just live. These lessons are much more grounding than anything religion can propose, which is, in my experience, normally to physically put the fear of god into you in some way.

This sounds like a ramble but these are the questions and thoughts that helped me make the Zine, as far fetched as that sounds. Because science can be so dry, so above me that I don't understand what is being proposed, that it makes me want to search for simpler, kinder, more forgiving notions about the planet we live on. And I know Carl Sagan knew that because he stated

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.

Without outlandish ideas and notions, science would never have been born. And so I sought to combine multiple elements of my personal experience, of Sagan's wonderment with our nature and the attraction there is to both. I wanted to create a parallel of meanings, and the beauty in them both. This was crazy ambitious to do for a two day project, but despite the quality of my drawings, I quite pleased with the outcome.

Visually there are methods I wish I had chosen over others.

Like polishing up the images on photoshop or not using pencil for grey tones. But overall I wanted to convey the history of words, what we now understand them to be and the visual associations we tie to them.
To show how far we've come, yet how little has changed and above all to show the irony of how much more poetic the fantastical images seem, when they are the meaning to the words we use daily and don't even realise it.

Science is poetic, and Sagan let me see this with his multiple writings on the subject, his eloquent narrative of our history on this planet, and his childlike wonderment and appreciation which to him gave meaning, but to other insecure souls shakes the foundations of everything they know and emasculates the ego.

As visual reference for the Meaning of Words, I used a deck of tarot cards that my mother owned when I was little. I loved these cards and thought they were beautiful, I also loved the notion of tarot cards, and of the divine. I wanted desperately to know what my future would be, and realised this was what I relied on before I realised that my future is my own to create. This shift from passivity to action, to empowerment is something I am forever thankful I have managed to develop.

I began to correlate these ideas to what Sagans' message was relating to all this, and how true it rings. Its almost a form of brain washing to feel that you have no control of your future, and therefore you don't harbour the will to change, and are forever the victim of your fate.

To think how old these words are, dating back to Greek philosophy, and mythology, is ironic in a way, because they are words that we use because they are what we have used forever.
To me this is a perfect serendipitous reflection of our society being so rooted in the mystical, it is so much in the essence of what we fall back on, the easy comforting answer, yet the answer that allows us to dig our heads into the sand and not take responsibility for the state of affairs.

I wanted to give as little information in my zine as possible, I wanted the viewer to make these connections on their own, and in a way it is a reflection on something I hold to be very true, and its that the power of suggestion is much greater than stating everything neatly and presenting it as an argument.

Like a person going to rehab; they genuinely have to want to go, you cant force them. So I presented these ideas in a way that I thought would be whimsical yet thought provoking. How provoking they proved to be is up to the viewer to decide, but I think that if we continue down a path that as a society that has to be told what to think, not develop ideas on our own and ask why, we are just creating sheep not healthy, intellectual human beings.

An example of Les Tarot de Gruyeres

By Jose Roosevelt

Examples of his paintings

I toyed with multiple ideas for images before deciding on tarot cards and association. Below are some examples

Carl always judged religion, not to ridicule but to say it is unreasonable and illogic so I made these two thumbnails as an idea for that 

Carl Sagan had an asteroid named after him and so I thought of this simple and literal illustration for it. I used graphic markers for the asteroid and face and different powdered inks for the background. It really worked well to create space

This is an idea I drew simply because I liked the effect of outlining lines over lines, trying to incorporate starts in there too

This one is the idea of man and woman against the void of space. Really quick idea, not a lot of thought other than try and keep it simple to see what comes out and can look good or be the start of an idea

Lastly I thought I might do a comic strip paraphrasing one of his quotes