A film-maker, a storyteller and a creative director. Sivaraj Pragasm aka moth1 has immersed himself in the creative world from film to music to visual arts. This multifaceted artist has called HCMC his home after leaving Singapore behind and he hasn't looked back since. We are happy to have him share his thoughts on art and the NFT artwork he created inspired by Color Palette #03.
Tell us more about yourself &/or brand
Everyone calls me Siv, but I also go by another name, moth1. The original idea was that Siv will do the things that pay the bills like copywriting or creative direction for advertising campaigns and freelance journalism work, while moth1 does the other cool things like making films or music and quite recently, NFTs. But somewhere over time, these two identities merged and that led to the creation of mothpeople, a company that originally started out as a storytelling collective but now can also take the form of an event organizer, production company, art gallery or brand consultant, depending on who’s asking and what’s required.
The idea of being fluid was probably brought upon out of necessity but what I like to focus on is the art of finding the solution - this is the same principle that applies to mothpeople and myself – we’re always either part of the problem or the solution. The next part is finding the most effective solution so that’s the part where we come in.
The big problem creators always face is financial instability but that’s also part of a cycle because you can’t really build things if you can’t afford the materials in the first place. It was actually that thought process that led to my city.scape project where I used artificial intelligence models to generate 32 cityscapes and then I messed around with them further to create a series, including a virtual gallery and a motion looping video. I did all that with zero programming knowledge and using tools that you can easily find online, most of them for free. My point is, we’re all about affordable innovation because it’s totally possible these days.
Inspiring! Tell us, in your opinion, what is it that Colors could express what words cannot
I think of color as a language, and beyond just a way to communicate, it’s also a stimulant. Some colors provoke your senses in a way that you understand it, even when it’s non-verbal. Like for example, feeling a specific taste in the back of your throat right when you see a particular color flashing in front of you, or even seeing colors appear in your vision when you hear certain sounds, all these are the powerful ways color can affect us, and we could all learn how to use it to express ourselves if words fail us.
Teal and orange is a popular cinematic aesthetic when it comes to replicating the golden hour against the blueness of the sky -- and also generally used to show the difference between warm and cool, good vs evil, old vs new, certainty vs uncertainty. After a while, you begin to realize a lot of films look the same, usually either blue or orange – but these color choices actually shape the overall vibe of the film because color in this case, is also used like a language.
And then when you look at practical examples in everyday life, do you know that in Japan, some of their metro stations along the Yamanote line had blue lights installed because they had enough data to show that it could calm suicidal people down.
From a branding perspective, colors can also help some brands achieve recognition even without mentioning any names. Like for example, you’d already have a brand in mind when I mention ‘red and yellow’, ‘green and white’ or ‘black and gold’, etc. So to me, color is definitely a language by itself.
Thanks for collaborating with MARK YOUR WALL #Connect project! Tell us what Color Palette #03 inspired you to create?
At first glance, maybe because of my film background, I thought of the post-apocalyptic landscape of Mad Max: Fury Road but the other thing that caught my alter-ego was that of a sunset. So I fed some keywords that included ‘sunset’, ‘steampunk’ and a few others to generate one of the 32 pieces for my city.scape project and it led to this image, which I then messed around with even further to create this lovechild of an oil painting and a graphic novel. So that’s the inspiration behind sunset.city
The other thing about sunsets – it symbolizes the end of something, maybe you could call it the beginning of something else, but it could also be the beginning of darkness, of an unknown, or maybe the apocalypse itself but before we descend into any of that, at least we have that 15-20 minutes of what we call the ‘golden hour’, that wonderful moment of shimmering beauty right before everything goes dark.
Amazing work Siv, thanks for sharing with us!
You can learn more about his works here: https://linktr.ee/moth1
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𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 #𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦, #𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 #𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘻𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘸𝘸.𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮
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