I am currently undertaking visual and theoretical academic research into connections between opera and video games. The following articles refer to current discourse on this topic of enquiry.
Unlimited Replays
Gibbons William — (William James), —- Author. 1981- Unlimited Replays
Accessed 15.02.20
While reading these articles and paper I am thinking about the bridge between high and low culture (a bridge I have explored in animation). I am interested in how the ‘operatic’ is treated in popular culture in an alien-like concept and yet Opera engages with the most ‘human’ of themes, such as the emotion of death, love, revenge and so on.
In reflecting on this, and in consideration of the Death character I am currently designing, I am thinking that I could represent ‘operatic’ death as alien-like, whereas I Could represent Danse Macabre as more ‘humanised’.
Research into the grim reaper image seems to lead back to the time of the Black Plague (grimly topical style this time) and the depiction of the human skeleton, fear of the unseen and the reaping of souls as sheafs of corn (in an agricultural society)… although reference is made to death as one member of the 4 riders of the apocalypse.
What would Deaths scythe of choice be in an age of computation I wonder?
In our age of apocalypse..