Final Analysis

Digitopia Analysis

The film Digitopia, created by Miwa Matreyek in 2005, is a very abstract film, which uses various elements and principle of art to create a story of the destructive nature of humans. She has carefully selected a particular colour scheme, lines, shapes and movement, which work with her use of tone, light and art principles give the film a storyline and valuable messages that can be interpreted by the audience.

Miwa Matreyek has used various visual art elements in her animation, including colour, shape, line and movement, to create her desired overall visual affect and mood. The colour scheme that has been used is monochromatic, and consists primarily of blue of the sky and shades of grey. As blue is used globally to portray peacefulness, optimism and tranquillity, the colour scheme works to add those feelings to the scenes that contain colour, and emphasise the contrast with those that don’t, giving them a darker, more dismal, miserable mood. Likewise, the shapes and lines predominately used in the images of the animation are mostly geometric, even in the nature scenes. This is demonstrated in the jagged horizon line of the mountains, which convey feelings of pain and suffering to the audience. As previously mentioned, the shapes used are also geometric, such as the rectangular buildings in the city scenes, the only exception being the hands, which are more organic in nature. This 'organic' aspect of the hands is also shown through their rhythmic movement in the beginning and final scenes of the clip, however their movement slowly becomes more robotic and perfunctory as the film progresses. It is clear that the art elements of colour, line, shape and movement all work together to add various moods, optimism, tranquillity, pain etc. to Miwa Matreyek’s animation.

Additional elements such as tone, light and texture have also been used through out this film to work together with the existing elements to tie the film together and complete it. Tone in particular plays a major role in multiple images of the film, and is a crucial element as it has not only been used to create the illusion of form and make the film more realistic through the addition of a whole new dimension, but the artist has also used it in conjunction with light to add contrast in various scenes. This is evident through Miwa’s use of greater amounts of black to create darkness in the city scapes and more abstract scenes, which distort the images to expose the raw emotions of depression and suffering or evil, and emphasize the contrast between the lighter and more colourful, optimist scenes. Tone has also been used in some instances to add the illusion of texture, as is apparent in the mountain scene, where shading has been used to create the shadows, and rocky texture in order to bring the mountains and the shot to life. When put together, this juxtaposition of images work together with the sound to create a very abstract composition of moods and emotions, differing from optimism to depression, and add essential messages and a form of storyline to the film, and form relationships between the otherwise quite non-related images. In summary, it is unmistakable that not only do the various elements and principles used in the film play their own personal purposes, but also work together to generate the most vital aspect of the film; its purpose.

In this animation, the artist, Miwa Matreyek, has made a clear statement about the destructive capabilities of humankind. This is apparent through her story of human’s exploitation of once peaceful creatures in order to create slaves, who work for them and are constantly tested on. This is demonstrated in the beginning scenes, where images of hands exist peacefully on the mountains of their home, absorbing the energy given to them by mother earth, who is represented as head protruding from the earth. It is clear that this scene is intentional tranquil and peaceful because of Miwa’s use of the colour blue, which is globally understood to be an optimistic colour, and the peaceful, albeit eerie, music. One particular scene, where humans are sitting within the hands and appear to control their movements, forcing them to walk over destroyed forests, perfectly portrays the message of exploitation, destruction and abuse, a message that can be applied in today’s society about of our destruction of nature. Additional scenes of humans testing and experiment on the hand creatures further cements this message, relating it to animal testing and such in our society. Everyday thousands of square kilometres of rainforest are destroyed by humans for use as paper, timber or land for plantations, and although this does not particularly relate to my life, or me, it does however relate to our society as a whole because it is reminding us how we need to work to conserve our very fragile environment. Specific elements in the film do represent particular things, and there are quite a few examples of symbolism throughout the animation. Take for example the very first shot, which contains the dove symbol for peace in Miwa’s representation of a deity or god. Another instance of symbolism within the film is the image of two hands, one with points and images of organs, and the other of various characters. These images represent both palmistry and reflexology, but in this case have been included by Matreyek as an explanation, in which a theoretical concept has been taken literally, meaning that the hands have actual organs and personalities, which is why they are alive. Matreyek has chosen to create her animation exactly the way it's is, as a very abstract composition of shorts clips, so that individuals can personally interpret and find meaning in her animation, therefore making it appropriated and relatable to an incredibly wide audience.

I believe that this animation does have intrinsic value and worth because it is not only a quite important piece of culture as a piece of art, but also contains a very valuable message to today's society about how it is necessary to take care of the world in which we live, which is increasingly important considering the various environmental issues that are constantly arising. As the images that Miwa has included in her animation are also quite confronting, there are mouths protruding from the darkness, creatures made of hands etc, they are not necessarily beautiful, and so watching this film may also enable people to look at the world around them anew, and appreciate a more abstract form of beauty. My only criticism of the work would be that the film is slightly disturbing, and initially does not appear to contain a message at all because the various shots that Miwa has chosen to include do not really fit together or relate. However this does also work to add to the abstract feel of the film. In conclusion, although I do not particularly like this film, I do realise that it does contain valuable messages and is in its own abstract way, a beautiful piece of art.