Trestle Mask- Exploration for a Final Piece


Today we began to explore ideas for our final mask piece. We first created a mind map in order to consider the stimulus for our piece.

We decided to first look at the use of music as a stimulus, using the more complex trestle masks. We started by warming up with the masks, looking at the different facial expressions and creating ideas for the feeling behind the mask as well as its possible counter mask. Experimenting with technical aspects, we also looked at how tilting the masks up and down under lighting can change our thoughts of its expression. So for example, a happy mask tilted upwards expresses that happiness, but by tilting it down, the shadow of the lights makes it a more sinister smile.

After this we took turns, choosing a particular mask and entering the stage to different kinds of music. It was interesting to see how the different styles of music, some of which were rhythmic and some of which were more ballads, impacted on the way we moved whilst wearing the masks and the emotions that we tried to create through this music.

We then explored with creating small scenes to this music. We found whilst doing this that it was important to begin with an action or task and to add character attributes and emotion to it, otherwise we found it became too complex. We chose the task of looking at photographs at a table. By playing sad music behind this, it created a sense of nostalgia. But then by placing a particular character mask in front of this which wasn’t a sad character mask, it became more realistic- rather than simply sad there was a sense of tiredness about this particular character and also the sense that the memories themselves were happy. 

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