“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”- Thomas Merton
It is imperative that the COVID-19 outbreak poses high risks to the health and economic sector. As our local governments recommend us to stay at home and avoid crowded places.
It is hard to cope with loneliness and to embrace change; especially when we were so used to previous routines.
It is challenging to break communication with the outside; in lieu, humans search these communications through arts. Expressing our inner selves through music, through poetry, and through art in general. The composition also shows a catharsis that allowed us to finally accept society’s current situation; even though we don’t know if we’ll ever get back to how life used to be. What we do know is that when we can be outside again, we will live more freely than ever and will enjoy even the little things, such as trees, wind, and school.
It is a challenge to stay conscient and sentient since there’s no real difference between one week or another, it is frustrating to feel every day is the same and we don’t know when is this going to stop.
We all love art; therefore, we combine our skills: poetry writing, singing, playing instruments, and editing to create something unique. Something that not only pictures our introspection but our way of escaping these harsh times to have relief. This perspective makes the project something quite personal, yet that anyone could understand or relate to. NASA’s background inspired us. In a certain way, it has been a really important part of our culture and the objective of many children’s aspirations.
Borrebots, tells a story from different angles that everyone could empathize with; hence, it is not only written as a poem. “70 Days of Wandering Around the Moon” was given a voice, a rhythm, and an emotion that it could be transmitted to people through the softness of a female voice. Yellow lyrics and monochromatic videos are used to reflect the melancholy of the voice singing due to quarantine, but also the bright color because there is still hope. We still have a world to love, to rebuild, and to go back to.
To immerse in the topic of isolation even more than basing what we are communicating only in personal experience, we decided to use NASA’s resources and watched the video “Hazards of Human Space Light [...]” that talked about isolation and confinement. It mentions that one risk of being isolated is a decline in mood, which is present through the whole song, as well as the sense of monotony. The article “Social Isolation in Context”, published and written by NASA in 2020, gave us the inspiration to develop a poem in the form of a journal where the narrator writes down everything she feels to release all the sense of loneliness. NASA recommends to its astronauts this method, and even the last stanza is a metaphor of that: the way of living for astronauts is actually an endless quarantine. The final approach indicates us that we all became involuntary astronauts wandering around our mind, that can be compared to the moon.
Adobe software tools were used to produce musical composition; specifically, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Audition. The purpose of the music video was to represent both sides of the poem while using it as our core comparison: spacial missions.
Link of the Premiere Pro project:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NtjsHwajCzlqNcumdOxI7Jae3OKXvhH-/view?usp=sharing
In order to reproduce our final product, we experienced some issues that at the same pace made us learn about software technologies. Borrebots struggled while editing the audio and adjusting the timing. On the other hand, it was intended to have moving lyrics through all the videos; however, the constant movement of the lyrics made it hard to read. As a result, the team looked to have a static text. The core problem of the project is that the poem was written without the idea of turning it into a song, consequently, the entire audio lasted about 4 minutes. Bearing in mind the timing specified we include the chorus. The editing team also struggled with design and composition. Finally, we were able to overcome all these challenges as a team. We are proud of our project because we were able to combine many artistic disciplines to make a more complete product.
NASA. (2020). Social Isolation in Context.
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/social-isolation/in-context
NASA. [NASA Video]. (2018, August 13). Hazards of Human Space Light | Hazard 2: Isolation & Confinement [MP4]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/FPinASEKA_I