I
am out of town, travelling. Now, I am in Istanbul with my husband’s family but last week I was in Tokat visiting my mother and sisters. Me and my sister have started working on a new stop motion project. My sister Asuman is a graphic artist and she has been making some great “ebru” over the last year. “Ebru” is an old islamic art. Basically, it is an art form where you first paint over a tray of water and then dip a paper and get the painting. Asuman describes ebru as “the dance of colors over water” Last month, she came up with a great scenario for a stop motion film where she would be using her ebru to make set pieces. So, we have got the ball rolling. Asuman is going to build the set, puppets, .. storyboard and send me. I will be making the animation, shooting. Here is the blog site of this film: http://invasionfilm.blogspot.com I invite you to visit this blog and send us your comments as we proceed.
I also tried making ebru while I was in Tokat. Here are some pics. This was my first ebru and totally novice. I really liked doing it a lot. I wish I had couple more lifes to try all these different art forms. Stay tuned!
By the way, I have redesigned my blog. It now looks totally different. I hope you like the new look!.
19 replies on “Another Film Project – The Invasion”
God, Yaz that’s gorgeous! Your project with Asuman sounds amazing.
On the new blog, fyi, the “C” in Chronos is cut off? I’m viewing it in Firefox on a Mac. The puppet looks great though…
Ooopps.. “C” is cut off?? How about the content below the header? Can you see both sides completely? Thanks for lettiing me know. Let me fix that problem.
Thank you for your comment about the new project. Asuman and me are both very exicited about this. I am going to be waiting until she finishes set.
Seems to be fixed now? I now get all of the title on the left, all the way to the green overprint on the right, and have booth bands of scrabble marks top and bottom.
Love the quote underneath about time being for slaves.
Thanks Shelley. I am on pc and it seemed fine on all IE and Firefox. Mac reads the codes different and I was not able to check it here. I changed the header after your comment. Great to hear you see all of it now. Thanks.
Yes, I love it too.. time was made for slaves. Am I a slave too? Are you a slave too? How a human being can free herself? I also like this quote another way… human being is a slave of time.
I struggle with time very much. There’s so much I want to do that takes so much time to do. It’s made worse by my sense that time doesn’t even really exist! So that makes me fighting against something every minute that isn’t even there!
I’ve decided that there are certain things that come with existing in a physical plane, as opposed to one of imagination or spirituality, that we as ethereal beings have to simply pretend are needed. That means I have to eat food, release food, drink water, release water, sleep many hours, and cooperate with the physical reality of space, time, and motion.
I fight all of these thing regularly but it isn’t smart given that I am in fact on Earth. How about you?
Wait does this mean you’re doing two films now? Yowza! I really envy those with art backgrounds… everything they touch just seems wonderful 🙂 But it’s nice that you gals are posting the process for lurking students like myself to learn from! Also really like the title banner – very cool looking. Working with family on art projects is really neat – it epoxy-glues the sibling bond tight and you get to egg each other on to keep moving forward. All looks like very exciting stuff Yaz keep updating regularly!
Shelley, yes same here… there is so much I want to do that takes so much time to do. I feel the same.. I fight with all of the things that comes with being in a physical plane. However I do believe that the time exists. It starts when we are born and stops when we die. In between these two points, there is “time” keeping us chained. Time never stops.. never moves faster or never moves slower.. It is always there keeping us under control. There are times I want it to fly by but it does not. And there are times I really want it stop by it does not. It is me who always need to arrange everything according to it; time.
I do understand what you mean by saying that time does not even exists. If you take it another way; time is totally something made up by human being.
I am making this film aroud this quote and I have explained the idea behind my film above. You know, In Greek mythology, Chronos is the god of time. He is the one who ate all of his children except Zeus. Zeus later caught Chronos but did not kill him. He instead restricted Chronos and our “time” comes from this myth. Different sources tells this myth differently but this is the one I like most.. I will prepare a detailed post about this later and post under story category. In my film, chronos comes from Greek mythology and Tree of Life & kush comes from old Turkish Shamans.
Tony, yep, two films now 🙂 My sister is working on all set design, puppets (puppet like characters), storyboard, etc… I will only shoot the film. Great to hear you like ebru. She wanted to combine stop motion with ebru on that blog site. So, trying to post details about the process of ebru too.
I have been working with my sister on some graphic design projects for many years now. It is really great to work with family on art projects. I know that you work with your father on your projects. That must be amazing too.
Thank you for following up!
Oh God, that myth is so exciting. I love it. I have always loved Greek/ancient myths that personify aspects of life. This one in particular is so interesting and gripping. What a wonderful film this will be!
Wow Yaz, the blog looks fantastic!!! You took a long *time* between posts, but as always it was very well worth it!!
Aw, but now you had to go and start talking all philosophically about time (Shelley is the culprit actually… ). Now I gotta share my rather unorthodox view of time I guess….
I think what people think of as time is really nothing but an abstract invention, made by people to help them organize themselves and get things done efficiently. Well, I guess it depends on exactly what you mean by the word “time”. Let me explain:
I think what really exists (what we invented the concept of time to measure) is events… movement in the physical world. Such as the earth spinning. making the sun seem to go up and down, or the seasons changing. These are events that occur with regularity, so at some point in our ancient heritage some smart caveman realized we can be more efficient by realizing that these events will occur again and again with regularity, and rather than those poor dumb neanderthals who always got caught with their loincloths down (figuratively speaking) when winter set in, he and his tribe could move to warmer climates, or have food stockpiled. So somebody came up with the rather brilliant idea of creating charts and graphs (clocks, calendars) to measure the duration between events, or to put it another way to track the movement of the earth.
And it’s so effective, that we now can think in terms of seconds, minutes, months and centuries. These are simply measuring tools like inches, millimeters, and kilometers, which help us to manipulate the world around us more efficiently.
So, in one sense, I say *time* is simply an abstract human invention… though of course there is movement in the physical universe, and this “time” is real and cannot be changed. Incidentally, those people who insist on believing that time can be reversed (time machines) are thinking about the abstract concept…. a clock can be made to run backwards, or a filmstrip as well (which I think is what many people imagine when they think of time running backwards… evidence of the unsuspected power entertainment has to influence the way we think and behave).
My thoughts on the possibility of a time machine (not that anybody asked)…. no way! To make *TIME* run backwards, you would have to somehow make the entire universe move in reverse… and how the heck do ya do that??!!!!
Ok, getting too deep into the philosophy here 😉
Mike, great to hear you like our new project with my sister. Thank you for your comments!!
Ok, “time”!!! When I think of time as a measuring tool; yes, I agree. It is only an abstract invention. Seconds, minutes, hours, years, centuries,.. everything is made up by human and not real . Just some tools to organize our lifes. But here, in my film I take time in a different way. There is an interval between our birth and death.. My life on the earth started when I was born and will finish when I die. ( I believe reincarnation too but lets not talk about the life before the birth and after death now 🙂 ) So, it is “time” which make us grow up. We get older every “second” passes by. And eventually we die when our “time” is up here in this life. Here I take time as a fateful power eating our lifes bite by bite… There is no way to escape from him in this life. Time only stops when are died. This is something beyond measuring tools we invented. Even if we did not measure time, it would still exist. So, “time was made for slaves” and “we are all slaves of time”. Chronos.. the god of time who was imprisoned by his son Zeus but could not be killed. We use seconds, minutes, years, months to control Chronos but he is actually the one controlling us.
In this sense, there is no way for a “time machine”. We can not reverse it, we can not accelerate or slow down.
Shelley, thanks for being culprit and bringing this up here 🙂 I was thinking to write about this at some point in this blog before my film is finished. And Mike, thanks for getting deep into philosophy here.
My other sister is a litterateur. I was preparing an article about the philosophy behind my film.. time, tree of life, bird who keeps the door between this life and the after life,.. But she told me to not to post it here on my blog. She said that it would better to leave it to people who watches the film. But I wanted to post something less detailed. So, it has started here with the “invasion” post.
Mike, as an another note… yes there is a lot of “time” between my posts 🙁 I really want to concentrate on what I am doing here but there is always something stopping me lately. I am dealing with some serious health problems in family. Things are going better and hopefully I will be working hard in August and posting more often. Thanks for the support!
Yay! An interesting discussion! I like Yaz’s Chronos myth because it makes poetry out of our “experience” with it’s story of God imprisoning him. His life = our time.> And of course, Kush being a personification of guardian between realities is fabulously appealing to me. My project has elements of mythic origins and embodied ideas on several levels as well.
Mike’s thoughts on time are also interesting. The only thing I’m not sure of is whether the movement of the Universe (which I love his thinking of time as being) does really exist outside of our measurements. Mike seems to think it does, as perhaps an organic process. But I’m wondering if, in a spiritual reality at least, maybe there is none, only the eternal Now.
But then again, if we are speaking of the physical experience it does seem to be real, even beyond our belief that it is.
Oh, and I agree with your sister, Yaz that overall your film’s audience will get their own meanings from the piece. But at the same time, perhaps a little explanation about what it means to you would enhance the appreciation as well.
Shelley, I love the mythic elements in your film too. Especially Rana… coming from satyrs guess.
When I try looking at the big picture, I see that we are all mythological characters and we are actually making the mythology itself. Everything in the universe repeats itself in different forms. It is an eternal cycle. In this sense, “time” is an abstract concept used to express certain parts of the cycle. There is a beginning and an end for everything but there is a “before” and “after” for all too. So, just changing forms in the eternal cycle.
Ok… I wish this discussion was in Turkish. Sometimes, I really have hard time to write what I think. Sorry if I am unclear.
Ah, so you’re referring to the personal time we each have as individuals…. where as my thoughts were more about universal time as a constant. Yes, so the time you describe is like the grains of sand in our own hourglass, running out at a rate that cannot be changed. This is the kind of time we each have to deal with if we want to create something (especially something as complex and time-consuming as animated films!!)… trying to make good use of every day as it slips away from us forever. I do think about personal time in that way…. in fact I sometimes tell people “years are going by one after the other, and will continue to…. when a few more have gone, what do you hope to have accomplished?” … and it makes me glad that I’ve prepared myself by studying the particular arts I have (drawing, painting, sculpture, writing, cinematography) and that they happen to combine into the right skills needed to make stopmotion!!
But there personal time, while in one sense it keeps ticking away unceasingly like clockwork, is also subject to our moods…. we say “this day is taking forever” if we’re impatient, or “wow, the time really flew by” when we’re having fun.
Shelley, I think you’re referring to spiritual time, which I perceive as an eternal now.
Well ok, maybe we shouldn’t talk too much about these ideas while you’re working on this film Yaz, we don’t want your ideas to change suddenly!! But I doubt that will happen.
Don’t feel bad at all about long intervals between posts… there’s no rule that says you have to post frequently! Post when you feel you should, or when you can. Your time is personal, for you to use as you see fit… it’s the only freedom we have with time….
ok got it.
life = grains of sand
time = measurement of the grains
reality = now
How’s that, guys?
By the way, Yaz. I can’t imagine having a discussion like this in another language, I can barely keep up in the one I know. I so admire people like you that can truly speak more than one language.
Mike, yes, you have explained it perfect. Like the grains of sand in our own hourglass, running out at a rate that cannot be changed. And Shelley I love what you wrote:
life = grains of sand
time = measurement of the grains
reality = now
There is a poem I like a lot by a famous Turkish poet named A. Hamdi Tanpinar. Your quote reminded me of that poem. Here is a part of it:
———-
Crumb’s of Time
We are all crumb’s of time
Time’s flies
Flapping wings silently on the dusty windows of the days
And the ones who does not need their own shadows
In this brightness…
As if we lived inside black, ebony rocks
Black, ebony cavities
As if we never saw each other
We never met
Earth closed herself to us like this.
What is the use of remembering past
In these gardens with a feeble light,
When the circle of time
closing down over us
In this vain night
….
I saw time
through the tumbled down columns
of an ancient palace.
There were purple grapes on her forehead
and was as beautiful as the gods.
Inside the rock where she was born like a baby bird
waiting to flap to start flying
I saw time
while she was floping in my hands
….
We at the end of a road which was ended long ago,
dont know in the silent night
what do the ones do who left and did not come back
who waited bootless!
We are the dispersed crumb’s of time
on the naked land of the moon.
————
I like how he took “time” as “life” and “crumb’s of time” as death here.
[My first attemp to translate a turkish poem to english 🙂 I hope it makes sense.. ]
Mike, yes, time; we each have to deal with if we want to create something… trying to make good use of every day as it slips away from us forever.
Here is something very personal. I will post about this when it is “time” but let me mention now: 2,5 years ago I lost my father… a month after I gave birth to my daughter. The last time I saw him, he was going back to town he was living -after visiting us to see my daughter- to plant some trees in his garden. He said he needed to use those sunny days in the middle of winter. He planted those trees and “left” 2 weeks after that… Time started for my daughter and ended for my father… I decided to make a stop motion film after making some cotton dolls for my daughter but the film tells the story of this big BOOM in my life. I will dedicate this film to my father when it is finished.
Like Shakespeare says there is not any power can protect us from time’s scythe. Better to do something related to LIFE, something ART before our time is up or our belowed one’s time is up!
Wow, Yaz. Thank you for sharing those stories and the poem. I can see why all of this means so much to you now. It’s coming from a very deep place in your soul.
A beautiful soul.
Shelley, thank you for being with me !!! It means a lot to me more than I can explain…