"Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase "Form is emptiness." That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase "Emptiness is form." One should not think that these are two separate things."
-Yamamoto Tsunetomo
-Yamamoto Tsunetomo
In Taoism, life and death are merely two aspects of reality, the unchanging Tao. Death is simply a transformation from being to non-being, from yang to yin. Taoism teaches that humans ought to accept life and death as complementary aspects of the Tao. Death should be neither feared nor desired. We are basically born out of nothingness and go back to nothingness. This piece explores the “being” of one self and the universe.
In this piece, paint on glass animation with using dark and light style illustrates the opposite nature of life and death and at the same time depicts the harmony between them. The tactile artistic technique that plays with texture handwritten typography is the best fit to fully represent the core of these teachings. The quote is from a book called Hagakure written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, an eighteenth-century samurai, and it is heard as a voice over in Ghost Dog “The Way of The Samurai“, a film directed by Jim Jarmusch in 1999.
Storyboard
Frames
Process
