Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/329964
24 THIS WEEK CULTURE | TV | FILM CINEMA LISTINGS FOOD | WHAT'S ON THIS WEEK What inspired you to embark on this project, and in this particular format? For as long as I can remember, Re- becca and I were always coming up with stories and planning to turn them into projects – such as games and comics – though they never re- ally got past the sketching phase. Being just two people with no programming knowledge to make a game or funds to print and distrib- ute our comic, we were limited in our options. It was still fun to just plan stories together. We both kept on getting better and faster at drawing and we thought for a long while about starting a webcomic since it's the best format to start out with. It doesn't require any funds to make, but even that re- quires so much work and prepara- tion to maintain it properly. At some point last year during school, I had an assignment where I had to make something interactive. It was around this time that me and Becky where working on this sci-fi story (eventually becoming Elis Blitz) and whenever I can I find ways to merge personal projects with school assignments and kill two birds with one stone. Around that time I also came across a cer- tain comic online – 'Space Mon- sters Space Ships' – that used this technique called 'parallax scroll- ing', i.e., when you move the mouse across the screen and the layers move at different speeds. This gave me the idea to make a similar comic with the story we were working on. In a few weeks I released my motion comic called 'Stadium Love'. I really liked my final product and I enjoyed experimenting with the medium. I showcased the comic at Malta Comic Con and the response we got was so positive – people were really impressed with this for- mat. The encouragement that we got from the people Malta Comic Con gave us the idea that the future of our project lies with more exper- imentation like the parallax comic. I also had my dissertation project coming up so I thought it would be a good chance to further expand on the story we had going on and keep experimenting with the medium. What can you say about the visual aspect of Elis Blitz is set in? What were some of your key inspirations as you set about working on it? Elis Blitz is a sci-fi story set 500 years in the future. Rebecca and I are really big fans of this genre. We had a lot of fun coming up with what humans would dress like in the future and how they'd style their hair and anything along those lines. We're also really big fans of sci-fi games like Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Re- public and we think you can see a The brief for your exhibition suggests that there is a strong conceptual element to it. Were there specific ideas you wanted to tackle a priori, or did they occur to you as you were working on the sculptures themselves? Most of my artwork is conceptual and this exhibition will be a continuation of the style that I've been practicing over the past few years (i.e., bricolage). I'm not interested in creating work without a strong concept, and I'm not trying to say that I'm not interested in other art forms that are not conceptual. However as a human being, I want to give meaning to my life, to what I create and how I create it and why I need to create. All works start off with an a priori concept, but I do change certain aspects of the narrative as I go along. If I see that something doesn't deem fit – be it from the material aspect or concept – I feel obliged to change it, because I would be cheating myself. If I suddenly re- alise that there is a weak point in an argu- ment, I would have to change it because one should always focus on truth and honesty with oneself and other people. So the whole process is like unfolding implicit and explicit meanings where explicit is the obvious basic form of the sculpture and theme, while the implicit are the symbols that enhance the overall form and meaning. How does your process usually pan out, when you're putting these pieces together? With regards to my mixed media sculpture, I always tend to start from the subject matter I want to explore. Through research, the sub- ject then throws you into a wider field, hopefully coming to a deeper understanding of the central idea: as mentioned, by creating a dialogue between my current thoughts, read- ing, understanding and criticising these ideas. Then I try to find out how I'm going to portray the subject in a symbolic narrative structure. I start choosing the materials and This is Blitz! Bits and pieces Keen to try out something new with their art training while indulging their geeky sci-fi inclinations, writer-artist team Rebecca Portelli and Fleur Sciortino set out to work on 'The Elis Blitz' – a web-only 'motion comic' blending in traditional comic book storytelling methods with a video-game interface. TEODOR RELJIC spoke to Sciortino about the project – whose first episode was released on May 20 – which also doubles up as her MCAST dissertation submission Mixed-media sculptor John Paul Azzopardi speaks to TEODOR RELJIC about his upcoming exhibition Bri·co·lage at Il-Hagar, Heart of Gozo, St George's Square, Victoria