Faustian imagery

MUSIC 144: FAUST IN ROMANTIC MUSIC, 2005
Programmed in Macromedia Flash 5

Each video explores Faustian themes through different aesthetic lenses. The goal of the project was to re-interpret Goethe's Faust by highlighting thematic continuity across genres. The project is divided into four aesthetic episodes that explore a set of themes and which progress from simple portrayals to increasingly abstract ones. The genres examine include Film Noir, Expressionism, Modern, and Surrealism. Within each video the scenes are divided into character sketches of Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles. In addition, each video is accompanied by several quotes by Goethe that have been reorded to reflect the Faustian themes presented in each video.

The four parts of the video are used as different artistic mediums to show the main themes explored by the video collage, but are unified by their interpretations. These themes include Faust’s isolation and disconnectedness from the world, his consumption of Gretchen, and Mephistohpheles as an inner facet of his mind. These themes, which in this case lead to the demise of both Faust and Gretchen, are also themes that pervade modern society.