Digitopia

Imagery in 'Digitopia' is all based around hands and surrealism. In this film, I see many hands. Hands were creatures, hands were body parts, hands were wings, hands had crowns on them. This use of imagery was an excellent visual cue that the artist had a fetish for hands. There was also great use of pre drawn backgrounds in contrast with the animated parts of the film e.g. The hands. The film featured use of stopmotion with help from photoshop to draw in the robotic arm and show the blood circulation. Many pictures were cloned (repeated)


The mood portrayed in this video is very calm and relaxed. The soundtrack by Goldfrapp is beautiful and catchy, the singer has a soothing voice. The movement of the hands is very smooth and fluid, aiding in creating this calm notion. The laboratory scenes with examination of the hands and parts of the body is suggesting that our system is running smoothly, it is a utopia. The reassurance of this may keep people constantly worried about their health (hypochondriacs) calm. I personally find that the mountains give a calming effect, because they are from nature. Nature is generally placid, and the mountains, although in black and white, are beautiful. This brings me to my next point. If there was more colour in the video, the mood would have changed. The lack of colour gives the film a lack of energy (not in a bad way!) which helps convey the idea of a relaxed and calm mood.



The music soundtrack is by 'Goldfrapp'. The music harmonises well with the video played. When listening to the lyrics, I found that 'utopia' was said a lot. The film itself is called digitopia. A utopia is a perfect world, and that is what the video was trying to achieve. There was clearly a lot of editing in the movie (most was probably done in photoshop!) many parts of the movie would have to be cut and pasted into different places in order to form a sequence. A good example on the editing of the movie is the fact that towards the end, one person is filmed doing the dance, but is cloned digitally (with height and width adjusted) to make it look like there are many people, and they are all synchronised with one another. The movie is very surreal, so the person commanding the hands would obviously have to be edited in, as would all of the hands, eyes, drawings, objects, human head (so in summary, most of the aspects!)





Mayterek's use of colour, shading, shape, fluid movement and scale were all used successfully to create a deep and meaning film called 'Digitopia'. The use of colour was very limited. However, this proved successful in creating a calm atmosphere. The electric blue background was used consistently in Digitopia. There was also use of red to show the blood circulation, essential to allow the audience to understand what is happening. Red was also used in other scenes in the laboratory. The foreground was in black and white to allow it to contrast against the background, thus bringing the audience attention to what is happening in the foreground instead of the background. Mayterek used scale to help create the world of surrealism in her film. Some hands were larger than others, like when they were creatures. One hand was significantly larger, hinting to us that the smaller of the creatures was maybe a baby. Another example in which scale is used is in the part of the film where Mayterek was wings. She uses her own hands in the front of her body, and larger hands are used on her back. Mayterek also experiments on a very large arm in one of the laboratory scenes. The hand was much bigger than her and this added to the effect of surrealism. Mayterek created shapes out of hands. She made creatures out of them, which were really amazing to watch in action. She made hands fly, sway, open, close and she made them transportation vehicles. All of these actions looked different from the others. The fact that so much could be made out of hands really was fascinating. The hands had very soft shading, which provided the illusion of 3rd dimension. The softness of the hands also created mood, for if the shading was sharper, the mood would have somewhat altered. The soundtrack in the film was repetitive and calm, with 'utopia' constantly appearing in the sound. The film can be interpreted as a music video for the song, as it seems as though the video was intended for the soundtrack, especially when the lyrics are 'it's a strange day... no shapes or colours' because it is a strange day- many shapes are made out of hands and only 2 colours are used, the rest of the film being in black and white. The soundtrack was powerful and well composed. There were no signs of editing in the music.





My interpretation is that everything is possible with our hands and our imagination. With our hands and minds we can create a 'utopia' in which medicine is very much effective and our world is at peace. Close to the start, a human head is shown emitting signals into the air with hands receiving it. The hands are symbols for people. The flying hands are people that are still looking for something to do. Medicine is a big part of the video, and using the symbol of our hands, we can interpret that the artist is implying that the stake of the world is in our hands, the evolution of medicine is in our hands, the future is in our hands. I also think that it conveys the meaning that our body is a utopia. It is perfect. The body has a heart, arms, legs, circulation, immunity and digestion. I believe the whole video is based around imagination, our utopian body and the fact that anything is possible with our hands.

My mum thinks this piece is beautiful. She thinks it is about the importance of the human body and its significance in the world. She thought the idea was clever, and that Matreyek is very creative and talented.
A few of my friends found this video repetitive and slightly boring at times. They think the hand idea is well executed, however, some of the parts they did not understand the meaning of. They believed the video was about the power of hands.

I think the intended audience for Matreyek are people of a certain maturity (teenagers or older) because my mum, who is obviously very mature, found this video spectacular to watch and appreciated the depth and meaning of this film. My friends, who are 13-14, found the film rather boring at times. They did not fully understand the meaning of the film. So, from my own personal research I had gathered, I believe that the film was intended for mature audience; possibly teenagers.