Anchor Name
Stop-frame animation and ASCII generator software, loop
Dimentions variable
Click here to run animation.
Anchor Name is an integral part of the Lacuna project and expresses a fundamental stage in its narrative. Made using ASCII(American Standard Code for Information Interchange), Anchor Name represents an initial conflict performed at the birth of something new. The newly born resists denomination however the universe cannot continue unfolding unless it ceases and becomes a name which holds a specific position. Two summers ago I had a near-death experience when I was in a private estate lake. The lake was 2 miles square. At midnight I was swimming in the lake and I decided to head towards the middle. There were no lights, only moonlight, and I felt as if nothing at all existed underneath me nor above me, it was an absolutely terrifying experience of nothingness. As I reached the middle, I tried to calculate which side was fastest to head back to shore, however all directions seemed the same. I was in the middle, unable to decide which way to go. I decided to continue straight and not head back to where my friends were at a camp fire, just because it felt a tiny bit closer to the shore. Both the blackness of the water and of the sky were causing a strange sense of claustrophobia mixed with a sucking void. I started to swim in panic, desperately trying to leave the water. I presumed it would take me at least 5 to 10 minutes to reach the sand. I was anxious to notice progress in the distance, however I reached a point where I felt that I was continuously in the same spot. There was a slight breeze and water ripples creating a current against my swim. I was despairing more and more and entering a strange set of mind. At this point, it definitely felt over 10 minutes had elapsed and I was still in the same position. Despair and stress were wearing me off at a very fast rate and I was losing concentration. Physically I was pounding over a weakening hope/certainty and reality was gradually dissolving and breaking down into something unknown. I felt as if the ripples were encouraging me to be prepared for a new stage, a stage which would require me to transcend my physical limitations and go beyond. The conflict was increasing and growing into a monstrous battle between a hope to reach the margins and a hope to transcend, to die and be anchored. Water, especially in the form of swimming pools, has been always present in my dreams. They act like adornments in a multiplicity of shapes and designs, sometimes it is even just reference to them. Mostly he has a sense of being surrounded by them, rather than being inside them. They surround my being, my ways. Sometimes they appear as swimming pools inside swimming pools, or with edges not clearly defined. As you can see, I have gained a great interest in this idea of coming from the water or going into it. There are endless mythologies related to this idea, such as Moses being collected from the water. And in Greek mythology of Iliad the opposite occurs when the river god Scamander demands the sacrifice of a person or an animal done by throwing them over board in order to let the rest of the crew continue sailing. Sacrifice at sea can be seen as attributing an 'anchor name' to that location, in exchange of their Self. The Self transforms into a geo-reference. Can this sense of eternal swim seen in Anchor Name conform to a sort of continuum theory for human evolution? Anchor name is a reference which exists at a specific point only. You can be summoned to that point by discovering the meaning of such name. The idea of sacrifice works here as the creation of the anchor name, the links to it are created in the non-place of memory and imagination. Jean-Paul Sartre describes self-consciousness as being non-positional, in that it is not from any location in particular. The eternal swim is a never-ending desire to return to the maternal, a Sebastianian type of Saudade, longing for an undifferentiated state. Dom Sebastiao, sixteenth king of Portugal and the Algarves, also known as the Desejado (the Desired) mysteriously disappeared in the battle of Alcazaquibir (today called Ksar-el-Kebir): Field of the Three Kings, and never returned.
After the defeat at Alcacer Quibir many diligences were made to ransom the imprisoned soldiers. Several soldiers returned to Portugal (and among them was D. Antonio, Prior of Crato), which, added to the uncertainty over Sebastian's fate, led many Portuguese to believe Sebastian survived the battle and would return to claim his throne. This led to Sebastianism: the belief that Sebastian could return at any moment. Politically, there was the belief that Philip was not the rightful heir to the throne. Subsequently there was the appearance, in Portugal, of men fraudulently claiming to be the King. During the time of the Iberian Union, between 1580 and 1640, four different pretenders claimed to be the returned King Sebastian; the last of these pretenders, who was in fact an Italian, was hanged in 1619. In the long term, it led to the development of myths and legends concerning Sebastian, the principle being that he was a great Portuguese patriot, the sleeping king who would return to help Portugal in its darkest hour (similar to the British King Arthur or the German Frederick Barbarossa). He would then be known by symbolic names: O Encoberto (The Hidden One) who would return on a foggy morning to save Portugal; or as O Desejado (The Desired). The legend was vigorously promoted through the massive circulation of popular rhymes (trovas) written by Bandarra. Even as late as the 19th century, Sebastianist peasants in the Brazilian sertao believed that the king would return to help them in their rebellion against the godless Brazilian republic.
Wikipedia.
We can also notice that Dom Sebastiao disappeared in Morocco, on the other side of what was then part of Portugal, the other side of the Mediterranean sea. He might still be swimming back to Portugal, however stuck to an anchor. I want to create a scene which expresses such a situation. I have opted for a simple rotoscoping technique (tracing over video footage) of someone swimming but never moving out of the same spot, shot from above. I am currently playing with masking techniques, were I mask out the swimmer as a silhouette and attribute something else to that space.