THE HUMAN CONDITION

THE HUMAN CONDITION VIDEO SCRIPT

This is Ahuman.
This is a bed, table ,chair..
These are the things Ahuman collects around them.
The sun indicates the change and the clock indicates the amount of change.
The clock tells Ahuman when to sleep, when to wake up, when to eat,when to go the toilet, when to go to work, when to come back, for how long to relax and when it’s time to repeat
it all again.

This is a human condition.

Ahuman bounds themselves in space.
An imperfect cubical to call home.
A place with a lock and key bed kitchen and a bathroom is a home.
Ahuman’s home.

This is Ahuman’s condition.

Ahuman is made up of water, skin and other organs
Ahuman most times covers themselves with all sorts of fabric.
Ahuman functions.
Ahuman stands, sits, stands, jumps, walks,runs and falls.
Ahuman eats to function.
Ahuman sleeps to function.
Ahuman goes to the toilet out of necessity.

Ahuman feels.
Ahuman has emotions.
Ahuman can be sorrowful, dejected, dismal and doleful.
Ahuman can be vexed,tetchy,waspish and raving.
Ahuman can blush, flush, go pink and go red.
Ahuman can be joyful, jolly, beaming and glowing.
Ahuman can be horny, titillated, amorous and lustful.
Ahuman can be petrified, hysterical, fearful and intimidated.

This is the human condition.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF THE VIDEO WORK

THE HUMAN CONDITION

My starting point for the final assignment was to break down what I call “the human condition” into a few categories.

emotional reactions : crying, sweating, blushing, screaming
sexual pleasure
needs : eating, sleeping, going to the toilet
doing/working

The human condition consists of emotional reactions that are visible in the body.
Tears, when crying.
Sweating, when stressed, too warm or after having run.
Blushing, when embarrassed.
Screaming, when scared or angry.
The human condition consists of pleasures, like sexual pleasure.
The human condition consists of needs.
Eat your food, sleep enough,go to the toilet.
The human condition consists of doing and working.

Afterwards I proceeded with writing the script piece by piece. Thinking about the human condition and its representation on and off screen I acknowledge that the complex system of semiotics is very much present.

The human condition consists of agreements, rules, laws and myriads of signs and symbols that are part of commonly agreed significations for specific groups of people. The translation of semiotics and the agreements about their significations can vary in different geographical locations or even groups within the same kilometric range. Semiotics and semantics is how humans learn to navigate in the chaotic world. In the same way, an art piece that is constructed in a way that communication is attempted, rather than just feeling, semiotics and semantics are present to help the purpose of communication.

During my video work I choose to tell you that an amateurish clay figure resembling a stick figure is a human and for the rest of the video we have an agreement that this clay figure is a human. A sign (clay figure) that resembles a sign (drawn stick figure) that signifies towards the “prototype” (the representation of a human). The language aids this process by providing right letter configuration that triggers the brains and enables it to be deceived.

“No other semiotics is more advanced than the study of language as a system that creates meaning. More theories have been elaborated for this sign system than for any other, and no other can look back on such a long and uninterrupted scholarly tradition. For centuries, indeed millenia, language theory, rhetorics, and poetics have been attempting to answer the questions of how, by what means, and according to what rules language generates meaning. This is not surprising since language is the most widespread, common, many-sided, and complex system of human communication; indeed, many theorists have emphasized that this is the precondition for culture in the first place. [..] If we bear in mind that language, owing to its ability to generate infinite meanings, constitutes the most commonly used, most versatile and most complex system system of communication that exists in any culture, then it comes as no surprise that language’s sign system is used in almost all known forms of theater”¹ and film works.

STATING THE OBVIOUS AND ATTEMPTING RECOGNITION OF THE REPRESENTATIONS

The dynamic relationship of semiotics and semantics is utilized to charge meaning into images. If a clay sculpture resembles a real life table,which would therefore probably be a surface supported by approximately four legs, and the language confirms this resemblance by naming the clay sculpture a table then an agreement is made. If the clay sculpture that resembles a table is named by the use of language as something else, for example “lamp”, that’s when the connotations start to get mixed up. Even better, if the aforementioned sculpture is named with a new invented word that is not assigned to anything known, for example “tapreiz”, that’s when the fun begins.

THE USE OF MASKS AS A SIGN

“We understand the actor’s mask to mean that set of signs which denote the character's face and figure. A certain need for clarification is implicit in this definition. For, one may at first be inclined to say, the face and figure are not cultural phenomena; rather, they are determined by nature. Whether someone is tall or short, has a long or short nose or a straight or crooked mouth, is not attributable to culturally specific conceptions and consensus, i.e., is not the result of a communicative process , but of a natural biological process. If the mask denotes face and figure, then it refers to naturally given phenomena and not to cultural facts and processes.
[..]
The meaning of facts of nature , unlike that of cultural facts which are signs by origin, cannot be constituted hermeneutically, but rather has to be grasped through diagnosis. This would suggest that the meaning produced with the sign system “mask” refers only to meanings which can be diagnosed. Wrinkled skin for example can be interpreted as a sign of aging, the bosom as a sign of the female gender.
[..]
On the other hand, we have just shown how external appearance, which, after all, is largely determined by the face and figure, functions as a system of communication. If our explanations in this regard are correct, then the face and figure would have to be interpreted as cultural phenomena–in which case the possibilities for constituting meaning by means of this sign system would be infinitely greater.
Thus, before attempting to analyze the function of the mask as a theatrical sign, we should pursue the question of whether the face and figure can function as variables in communicative process or whether their interpretation is exhausted de facto if subjected to scientific diagnosis”²

STOP MOTION AS A FILM STILL AND STILL FILM

Thinking about what can be considered as a still film of a film still I find stop motion animation to be in a push pull relationship with both sides. Stop motion animation is a concoction of film stills , essentially, as well as photographs which function as a still film, at times, that appears to be moving at other times through the lense of the apparatus and with the helping hand of the maker.

THE GASEOUS STATE OF BEING

In conclusion, I wanted to state that talking about what the gaseous state is and how it can be interpreted through various works, made me think of human existence. Human existence doesn’t cease to expand, enlarge, grow, destroy, conquer, demand, ask and ask again. Humans operate a bit like gas that takes as much space as possible.

“What is an ideal human?
Human mass is complicated. It’s full of billions and billions of energetic human molecules that can collide and possibly interact with each other. Since it's hard to exactly describe a real human, people created the concept of an Ideal human as an approximation that helps us model and predict the behavior of real human mass. The term ideal gas refers to a hypothetical gas composed of molecules which follow a few rules:
Ideal human molecules do not attract or repel each other. The only interaction between ideal human molecules would be an elastic collision upon impact with each other or an elastic collision with the walls of the container.
Ideal human molecules themselves take up no volume. The human mass takes up volume since the molecules expand into a large region of space, but the Ideal human molecules are approximated as point particles that have no volume in and of themselves.”³

Bibliography
¹ The semiotics of Theater, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Indiana University Press,1992, pg.18-20
²The semiotics of Theater, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Indiana University Press,1992, pg.68-69
³ “What is the ideal gas law” , Khan Academy, khanacademy.org, [Science Physics library ThermodynamicsTemperature, kinetic theory, and the ideal gas law]
In the text taken from the Khan Academy webpage I replaced the word “gas” with the word “human” and the word “gases” with “human mass” in order to support my theoretical claim in the paragraph “THE GASEOUS STATE OF BEING”.