[Live!: AHoA] Required Assignment 1: World-in-a-Box (Track A) - The Pride of Creation

I call this "The Pride of Creation":

"The Pride of Creation" (2014) by Ricardo Roehe.

I hope viewers can get all the messages on it, but maybe the lighting (and the camera) is not very helpful.


The setting: 
A cardboard box is balanced on the tip of a metal ruler, in the edge of an inclined clipboard. In the other (lower) edge, there are a glue tube, a pencil (at the center) and a pair of scissors. On each side of the clipboard there is lit candle. Everything is on a wooden table.


Interpretations:
I'll write here things that were in my mind while creating this. Please, tell me if you think those are valid for you too.

It is about creators and creation, tools and materials, pride and worship.
One can imagine all those tools are the pride of the artist, but I went further: thinking of the tools as characters in this "story", they were the direct responsibles for the creation (the box, in the center of the altar) and they are the proud ones about it.
It is about creating something better than yourself. Something so perfect it becomes more than an object of pride: it becomes worth worshiping. Such difference between progeny (precise, perfect) and progenitors (weird, shapeless), so different worlds (one completely tridimensional, the others almost flat) might even distance them: the perfection's place is on an altar, everybody else's place is down below.

It is also about symmetry and balance: each thing has its own function and place. Each one is needed to finish the creation:
- The cardboard box is the sublime creation: precisely drawn, cut and glued;
- Glue, scissors and pencil are the creators. The pencil, the most important one, at the center;
- The clipboard is the base for everything: the creation process and also the altar;
- The ruler give measures and direction, but also "rule" the distance between "heavenly" and "mundane";
- The candles give the light for the creation, but also give the fire: the divine element - for the glory, for the worship, for sacrifices, for purification.

And, after all that, it is also a joke, a pun with the tools, its functions, shapes and names. It is about giving them personalities and creating the illusion of life.
The scissors: the strength, a knight in shining armor, with his cutting blades.
The glue: the spirit, white, pure, shaped like a priest or a cleric, with the mission to "bond", to "unite" the masses.
The pencil: the mind, straight, precise, responsible for the design, the thinking, the study.
The ruler: the power, the justice, the "ruler", the one sacred enough to hold the creation.
The box: the "divine creation", the perfection, carefully built, tridimensional, expanding the reality beyond the one from its creators.


Preparation:
It took me a long time to photograph this scene. At first, I tried to balance the pencil on its base, but it was not flat enough (tried to sand it, but couldn't get it right). The idea was also to place the pencil and the box in an angle to create the illusion that the box was balanced on the tip of the pencil (like a champion raising his trophy), but the distance between the objects would be compromised this way. I ended using some clothespins to keep the pen and the scissors standing. The box and the ruler are supported by the wall. But balancing everything, in the right angle and with the right illumination was not easy.



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Submission for the Required Assignment 1: World-in-a-Box (Track A):
class.coursera.org/livearthistory-001/human_grading/view/courses/970641/assessments/14/submissions/1525

Forum thread: class.coursera.org/livearthistory-001/forum/thread?thread_id=5633

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