Reasons and aims
I undertook those two projects in order to inform and influence my practice, storytelling and costume designing.
On both projects I focused on perception and how differently each person experiences the world.
Conceptually both projects are topics that many people are unfamiliar with, Deafness, on "Music is Special" and Depression, on "What do you see?".
My aim was to inform the viewer through my creations and make him feel more familiar with those difficult topics.
For "Music is Special" I focused on creating costumes to enhance the movements of the body, attemptitng to translate hand-signs into a visual image.
For "What do you see?" I focused on creating costume designs revealing symbolic elements and having them transform throughout the story.
I wanted to create a debate on what is normal and what abnormal, and on what is real and what unreal. This is why I chose to see these topics through the eyes of children, as at that age a child's mind is not exactly set o what is right and wrong.
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"Music is Special"
 Fairy King |
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 Fire Wizard |
 Fairy Queen |
"What do you see?"
 Girl |
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 Mom |
 Dad |
 Evil Lady |
Two projects, both very dfficult and different from each other but both helped me experience new apects of my work and explore new concepts, techiques and circumnstances. I have concluded that i enjoy searching for topics that are not normally tackled by costume and performance designers and are not easily acceptable by others. People that are misunderstood and mistreated. I want to try to experience their lifes, get into their shoes. That was my aim in both the Music is special project, by collaborating with the children and making them the directors and composers of our stories and songs, and in the What do you see? project through researching,experimenting, exploring senses through my own experiences and investigating how perception works.
Through these projects I feel I know my work better, for example I have realised i like darker concepts that can be interpreted or presented in a lighter way. Also, the concept of having silver linings between dark and light, good and evil. I want to create costumes which mostly use symbols to indicate the characteristics and background stories of each personality, but most importantly I want to be able to transform my costumes within the performance, change their meaning or reveal hidden menaings.
This year I realised that I prefer working in the film industry as there is the possibility of technological manipulation in the costumes designs I create. I understand that I might be more concept driven when creating my costumes rather deciding with the actual fabrics and materials, which is an area I feel I need improvement.
One common aspect I undertook and really enjoyed in both projects was that I had the chance to create stories and costumes for concepts and themes that are not as well known, thus the viewer has to become more familiar with them through my work and costumes, in order for him/her to better understand them and hopefully accept them.