Written Paper on Project Process

    Name:    Sharon Moise

    Tutor:        Ewan Atkinson

    Course:    New\Contemporary Media



According to Answers.com “ Ideological control is a concept introduced by the Marxists. It means to control someone not physically, but mentally, in a subtle, sub-conscious manner.  You are not aware you are ideologically controlled, as it is everything that surrounds you. The only way to prevent this form of ideological control would be a complete communist revolution. ”Whites during the time of slavery had the notion that they were the supreme being and Blacks came somewhere between them and animals.  The idea of this was inculcated into their minds from generation to generation and hardly anyone dared to say otherwise.

In my first piece ‘Secret Message’ this white man despite what he was taught, was overwhelmed with confusion about his feelings. He could not let anyone know his real take on slavery, however he had to say it in some way to relieve his mind. He did so by writing and tossing it overboard in the form a message in a bottle. This piece is an installation of a bottle that is found near the coastline with the message still in tact although it was from the 1700’s and a tree growing from it displaying what people generally think about ideological control.

I aged the paper after printing the message onto it and placed it into a bottle. After picking the perfect branch to grow out of the bottle in the form of a cork, I drew leaves in Adobe Illustrator and printed different colours of them. I had people write what they thought about ideological control on them and placed them on the branch. Majority of the islands were colonized by the British hence the colours of the British flag were painted on the branch and bottle.


Ideological control was shown by how the people of the same race were manipulated to be against each other. Division would come if a man is called to beat his brother. There was also division between field slaves and domestic slaves. Today we still experience some of this kind of discrimination from our own people because emancipation was never abolished in our minds. The next project therefore is an animation called ‘Abolition of Slavery by Law but Totally alive in Minds’.
When I first started this project the story board was about a slave being whipped by another black slave. The person doing the whipping then at some point looks into the great house where a domestic slave closes the curtains. A transition from closing the curtains was done where a door would be open in present day right after the hand closes the curtain. The scene after was about a black receptionist being more polite to the white customer than the black customer.

I started my animation by making a few sketches

based on what I was thinking each scene should look like. I then scanned and imported the photos to Adobe Illustrator. There, I moved around nodes to make different movements. After some research, I started using the animation software Toon Boom where I adjusted each frame to show movement manually. After further reading I learnt how to break down one image into sections and how to rotate body parts using angles. From there, I was able to skip frames and the program simulated the in-betweens. I started having difficulty with the natural movements of the body since I had no reference. I then resorted to shooting videos. I was then able to import the video as frames via Photoshop and then export them as individual files. Actions were then created using droplets in photoshop to convert each file the way I wanted it to look. After cleaning up over two hundred frames each of various videos; I exported each scene as a movie and then organized them in the iMovie program. It was noted that some parts especially the ending were not very clear and it was suggested by my tutor that I concentrate on the whipping scene.

As I went back to the drawing board I discovered the program Pencil on my computer. I drew in there and added a few images that I had worked on previously and it all came together in the end.

In conclusion, ideological control is a concept that affects everyone despite their race. Which ever part of the spectrum one may be it does not seem to evade us. Being aware of the biases and idiosyncrasies is the first step to making change that will make us better individuals.