Week 4: Assessed Project Introduction

For my assessed task I have to pick one of the following options: 1 Select a poem written by William Blake and devise an animation with sound in response to it. 2      Personal Experience Mapping – construct an animated ʻmapʼ of experiences you have in a day. Although both of these seem interesting, I have chosen option 1 to complete for my assessed task. The reason for this, is because I believe that poetry is a brilliant form of art, and can be open to so many interpretations. Although a poet constructs a poem with his or her own meanings, the reader is able to construct their own thoughts and ideas from it - what seems so little can mean so much. William Blake wrote a vast range of poetry. From A Cradle Song, to A Little Girl Lost and even Ah Sunflower. However out of all of his work, the poem I am choosing to animate is The Fly. The reason I chose The Fly as the focus of my animation, is because I believe that it an example of Blake at his finest. Here is the poem: 'Little fly, Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength and breath, And the want Of thought is death, Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die.

William Blake (1757-1827) P. 1793'

In the first stanza, Blake has an encounter with a fly and brushes it away with his 'thoughtless hand' - he views the fly as less significant to human life. 

However, in the second stanza he contemplates the life of the fly with that of his own - 'Or art not thou, A man like me?'. They are both living creatures and living in the same world - they share more in common than he once thought. 

The third stanza elaborates on this - we're all mortal and we're all going to die someday, so like the fly he lives his life until 'some blind hand, Shall brush [his] wing (sic)', just as he did to the fly in the first stanza. This also hints at a theme of a capitalist world - that no matter how one lives their life, there will always be someone better, or someone above - relating to the relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

Despite this, the fourth stanza offers a possible reason of why human life may be of more importance than that of the fly's. The protagonist realises that, as humans we are able to contemplate life and death, which separates us from unthinking creatures such as the fly. 

In the fifth stanza, he acknowledges the fact that he will succumb to death one day. Despite this, he is still living a happy life, and shares the same ignorance to death as the fly. 

---

I believe that I will be able to incorporate these ideas into my animatic - especially the references to capitalism. This would make an interesting animation, as upon first reading, the poem seems to just be about a fly. However, upon analysis it conveys an ignorant and blissful attitude towards life as a whole, and just like the fly, we should live our lives without too much thought of death or a capitalist world.