Digitopia by Miwa Matreyek

Digitopia from citrusink on Vimeo.


Focus Questions

Imagery:
Digitopia is a very surreal video that uses many different things meant to symbolize and represent society and its various rituals/practices.
Hands are featured repetitively throughout the film, mostly with the arm, sometimes without.
It also includes various other body parts, heads, eyes, mouths etc.
Lots of people are also shown doing different jobs or actions, being operated on and operating, dancing etc.
A few backgrounds were used throughout: blue sky with mountains, labratory, cityscape.
A lot of the movements or actions were repeated a number of times for each scene.

Overall impression:
Initally the audience may get a slightly disturbed impression from this video. However if the meaning of the video is explored you can began to understand what Miwa Matreyek was trying to portray. The music certainly gave it a calming slightly sad mood which greatly effected the feelings the audience would experience while watching it. This calmed mood was assisted by the fluid movements the hands, people and objects made. Obviously the clip is very surreal which initially would make the audience feel disturbed. The film is about forgetting who you are and being in a dreamy state of mind, just relaxing.. That is most likely why Miwa Matreyek chose the calming music and a surreal theme, as surrealism is based on having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream. 

Visual language cues, sound cues and editing:
The music to this film is a very calming song, not too upbeat and sung in a calming low key voice, this all contributes to the relaxed theme of the video. The visual language in this film is also important: the main colours being blue, white and black, with bits of red, the blue also enhanced the theme as it is a calming colour. There is quite extensive editing of this film as the mountains are hand drawn and the hands and various body parts, laboratories, cities and additions to the body parts would have to be edited in.

The artist has used contrast and colour to emphasis the shapes and objects in the film. For example the red, black and white contrast well with the blue background and so stand out. She has used proportion, scale, repetition and movement to create emphasis on jobs or actions. Miwa Matreyek also uses line to help define the objects in the film.

Interpretation:
This film could be interpreted as trying to portray a relaxing surreal theme, much like a dream. This view could be taken from the calm music, surreal themes and visual language used.
Stephanie Rutherford found this movie quite disturbing, Courtney Palmer agreed with this and added that the music gave her chills.
The intended audience for this film is most likely adults who have artist personalities as it could not often be appreciated by others, such as teens, proven through Stephanies and Courtneys statements as they are both teenagers.
The visual language in this film gives this interpretation as the colour scheme, mostly black white and blue, gives a very calming effect. The rhythm and movement also aided to this interpretation.
The backing music of this short movie helps interpret the film in this way as it has a slow and calming tune, also the voice is very low and soothing tone.