Thoughts are free. Are they? Well, we all think they are, at least they should be. But I wonder to what extent that is still true in a world where surveillance and manipulation are becoming more sophisticated every day.

What do we even mean by freedom of thought? Is it the fact that you can't read a person's thoughts and therefore everyone is free to think whatever they want... without worrying that the thought might be picked up by someone else? At least as long as one does not express it, for example by talking about it?

Probably this is true so far.

But to what extent are our thoughts free and unrestricted? How much are we spied on and manipulated? Our thinking is constantly influenced. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it gives us the opportunity to acquire knowledge and develop as am individual and a society. But at the same time, this can also be abused.

In my painting, the thoughts are represented by butterflies. They flutter freely and unhindered.

You can see it animated here: https://makersplace.com/reinhardschmid/thoughts-are-free-ii-1-of-1-45902

We give a shape to our thoughts by expressing them in some form. And this is where the sister of the freedom of thought comes into play, the freedom of opinion and speech. Not a given everywhere.

This is where the moth comes into the picture.

He too wants to flutter freely like the thoughts represented by the butterflies. Maybe he warns us to be thoughtful. But this could also be a hint, that freedom of expression is not always unlimited.

The whole work is based first of all on a pencil drawing I did a few years ago on glass.

It became this reverse glass painting with a hand made frame. It even has these tiny moveable doors!

As with previous digital works of this kind, the drawing was first edited in Photoshop. New colors and the various elements each on their own layers for later animation.

Here I then also placed the moth on its own layer and chose a different mode to blend the colors and the drawing of the face

I also drew the little butterflies in Photoshop and saved them as their own file for easy import into After Effects later.

Finally, everything was arranged and animated together in Aftereffects. In a final step, a soundtrack was added to the video in Premiere.

You can see it animated at https://makersplace.com/reinhardschmid/thoughts-are-free-ii-1-of-1-45902

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