grieving and rituals for grieving in contemporary culture, contemporary relations and attitudes towards death, and notions of "a fake world in relation to a real world." I think your exploration of the differences between a child and adult's grieving process and opportunities is commendable as is your goal of creating a movie "to represent the reality of how important things may be lost due to our lack of understanding.If you are interested in pursuing the relation of real and virtual

The Old Cat and the Young BoyThe Old Cat and the Young Boy was created based upon the death of my cat of 20 years and a conversation I had with my son about the death of this cat. We talked about the passing of the cat in a very direct way and his innocent questioning and understanding of the situation lead to the creation of this piece. I began by drawing pictures of the cat with my son and telling stories about the cat to him. In my movie I wanted to show a simple loving relationship between my two characters based upon the real and virtual interpretation of how I observed the relationship between the cat and my son.

The Old Cat and the Young Boy evolved into an installation piece projecting filmed images showing movement of dolls onto white constructed box created to resemble recognizable objects. The objects are items from our culture and they give the notion of a fake world in relation to the real world. The story that is projected explains the relationship between two characters - a cat and a boy. They are dependent on each other for love, companionship and their daily routine of interaction. The idea of what an authentic childhood is and how it is portrayed is a focal point for the creation of this piece. Multiple projections work together to create an experience that is muffled and viewable from many angles. The First projection introduces the boy and his playful young personality. The second projection introduces the old cat and the relationship between the cat and boy. The third projection shows the cat not returning home after being outside and the young boy becoming worried. The forth projection is the ending of the movie and to the dismay of the boy, the death of the cat. This is the boy’s first experience of death and by finding his friend lying dead on the ground he is devastated. The story ends abruptly with the boy’s reaction, displaying his utter realization of knowing that his physical relationship with the cat is over between them.

The movies are projected onto boxes that distort the moving images to communicate a complex relationship between the actual characters in the movie and the objects that distort them. The characters lead the viewer around the installation by leaving one area and entering another. The alteration of the movie on the objects illustrate the idea of how reality is distorted through history, culture, and media to transgress an idea that is not fully true but believable in a way that can alter the thinking of what is right and wrong or true and false. The objects represent different tropes in society that are socially accepted as popular culture items which are recognizable to different audience on multiple levels of desire or revulsion. Each object is representational and accessible allowing it to suggest interpretation on multiple levels of ambiguity.

The story is broken into four different projections with each projection focusing on a specific important moment in time between the cat and the boy. The reason for the partition of the film into four sections was to clearly separate the different fragments of the story. The placement of the objects on which the movies are projected allow for a unique interaction between the movement of the characters as they maneuver around and over the layering of objects, coming in and out of the shadows or distorted by the angle of the object. The movies are mapped out to allow the characters to be projected on certain objects at specific times to tell the story and insinuate relation between the object being projected and the object being projected on. The innuendo created may be abstract or specific.

The objects, which are being projected on, are boxes that function in a few ways; as real boxes that can be used for storage, as objects that distort the images of the movie, as forms that imply based upon shape and object being projected onto them. The boxes used are diverse in size, shapes and objectives. Pedestals used by artists for placing objects of significance upon are the largest objects projected upon, shifting the idea of how an artist uses a pedestal, receiving images of light instead of having an object placed upon it as a symbol stating this is art adore it. The next largest object projected on is a rhombus house, distorted by the angles of how it is made to create an allusion of real but fake. The reason of the rhombus shaped home was to signify the deformation of the idea of a perfect or ideal home. Two oversized McDonald Happy Meal Boxes are used to represent not only commodity and capitalism that is overabundant in our society but they also insinuate cat-carrying cases. Two boxes that represent figures, which may also be interpreted as crosses or robots, act as receivers of projected images of the boy entering and leaving the movies. A small wall with an open door that was used in the actual filming of the movie situates itself calmly as a receptor of the third movie in which the boy realizes that the cat has disappeared. The last object is a white picket fence adding to the idea of a perfect house and implies that fence is not always the initiative of safety. These objects painted white and used as receptors, help to create a false reality that is disjointed and incomplete representing the notions created to construct ideas and images as truths.

The Old Cat and the Young Boy is filmed mainly using green screens. Green screen or Chroma key compositing is a special effect post-production technique for compositing two images or video streams together based on color hues. The technique has been used heavily in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video, particularly in motion pictures. The green screen in The Old Cat and the Young Boy is left green without compositing another image behind it to allow the subject to represent a reality that is not altered but has the possibility to be altered. The choice to keep the background green relies heavily on the idea that life has many possibilities that can be affected by many different circumstances.

Shawn Kerns Cleveland Ingenuity 2013 Installation of “The Old Cat and the Young Boy”