Roxana Neacșu
Welcome to my world.
My story begins in Arnhem, as a Graphic Design student, enrolled in ArtEZ,
University of the Arts.
I invite you, guest, into my journey as I navigate through the numerous possibilities of telling
a story.
I am looking forward to creating more, as there are many, as of yet, untold tales that are waiting out there.
@rox.m.design
roxana.neacsumi@gmail.com
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Imagine you were living in the 1920s, US, the Jazz Age, or the Great Prohibition Era, when the production, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages was outlawed. This is my take on Harry Low's mansion, an infamous rum-runner of the age, who used to run with Al Capone. This is a place with a rich history, having exchanged a few owners since its inauguration. I have a keen interest for stop motion animation and set-building. I have delved into it in the past, as part of projects from previous years while studying at ArtEZ. I had never attempted building an entire set on my own. I decided, therefore, to take this incredible mansion as my starting point and try reconstructing it in my own way. The aim of this project is to familiarize myself with building techniques, materials, “aging” materials (making them appear old and worn, giving them specific textures, making the house feel alive, real). I mainly used foam board for the structure, wooden floorboards, outside bricks, wood for the objects (table, piano and stool) and acrylic sheets (for the windows). I also tried 3d modeling and printing for the staircase, which gives the house a bit of a fantasy, surreal, element, as it is not quite grounded in reality. I decided to build the house in a way that is quite timeless, so that it could potentially be used in telling a diverse set of stories, set at different points in time, across different types of worlds.
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This stop-motion animation video is a reenactment of Haruki Murakami's short story, "The Ice Man", from the book containing his short story collection titled "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman". I used the text of the story in order to create the environments, and generated the randomized spacing within certain pre-established ranges between words and rows using basil.js, which created ideal backdrops for my characters. In the story, an unnamed woman meets the Ice Man, a strange individual, followed by frost. She falls in love with him, but her family scorns her for it. They decide to continue their relationship despite all this. She eventually becomes pregnant and they take a trip to the South Pole. The second part of the story represents their emotional separation, as he becomes more and more immersed into the background, into the iciness of the South Pole, and she is left alone to wait for the birth of her child. I used the song "Ladyfingers" by Herb Alpert. As the story reaches its final stage, the song begins again, but it's slowed down and sounds a bit eerie, in order to illustrate the change in the Ice Man's attitide towards the woman and his coldness, once they reach the South Pole, his suppsoed homeland.
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This is the tale of a woman lost in grief. Follow Sarah, our protagonist, as she goes through the stages of anger, who is processing the loss of her child. She goes to a temple and pleads with the Gods to return her loved one back to her. Her plea for her child's return to life is rejected, therefore she must take the long, hard road towards acceptance. This project was created in collaboration with Balint Korka and Jonas Riemersma.
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Our current era, the Anthropocene, is about to be marked by the plastic-filled sedimentary layer, which is being deposited on our planet’s surface at an alrming rate. The plastiglomerate is a new type of rock that emerged due to the pollution in the marine environment. It is a combination of molten plastic litter, organic or inorganic composite materials, such as sand and seashells. My research consists of a speculative solution to this. I imagine a future where we would take the already existing material, the plastiglomerate, and use it in our infrastructure. We would use it as a building material, slowly cleaning up the sea and ocean seabeds, while eliminating all kinds of future plstic pollution. It would not only serve as a useful material, but also as a monument of humanity’s long and damaging history with the excessive use of plastics.
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We live in a society obsessed with beauty standards, following them until there is no individuality anymore, until everything starts to look mass-produced, plastic. It is a glimpse into a society obsessed with reaching perfection. I created the doll heads in order to showcase the tendency towards achieving the same impossible standards of perfection.
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This is a short story of a late night conversation under the moon, contemplating the vastness of the universe, created with Balint Korka. It is a reenactment of a memory we once shared. The project's aim is to represent this story in simple ways, vague human shapes, a light bulb that resembles the moon and the illusion of a playground swing. We investigated the simplest ways to convey the feeling of the experience, creating a cozy, warm atmosphere, in the midst of an empty, dark space.
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This is a book based on Star Trek. I drew information from a database that contains all instances of the characters of Star Trek: Next Generation speaking to the Enterprise’s (the story’s main ship) computer, whether it be giving orders, or asking for information. The pages’ design is directly inspired from the computer screen in the show. I then Riso printed the book, to give it a bright, raw kind of aspect. I then drew from the database to insert the information of each character speaking. This creates a vague kind of storyline, where the reader can piece together a different kind of story.
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The story draws parallels between the reality of a mundane, repetitive corporate job, and the implications of invisibility with its many different sides and facets, from superheros to ancient tales of invisibility rings. I printed the final publication with black ink on black paper in order to better portray the invisibility, overlooked aspect of the story. The book is thin, simply bound, easy to glance over. But, if you look closer, there's an entire world residing in there.
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This is a project created in collaboration with Joelle de Jong, Balint Korka and Lucas Zuidema. It is an experimental place for free discussion about art, and lives surrounding it.
As a group, we decided to create a rotating system, in which we all get to try out and improve our skills in being hosts, or interviewers, and editors.
We create storylines, completing a puzzle of audio only experience. Our newest season has the theme of "Home". Each team member investigates an aspect of this, in search of the true meaning a home.
"What is home?" This is a question that we ask ourselves, as we try to understand the tangled web of information. Is it a feeling, a place, a warm meal, is it related to people, family, close relationships? Maybe it is all of those things. Maybe it differs from person to person. There is much to explore regarding this topic, which is why we decided to step outside the bounds of ArtEZ and expand our horizons.
We welcome you to our website!
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This project's aim was to create a tense atmosphere by exaggerating 3 base sounds: feet pacing the room, pen clicking and tapping the keyboard. As the tense atmosphere intensifies, so do the sounds, rising to a crescendo of madness. Everything becomes amplified, distorted. I gave the participants a list of instructions. They were not allowed to step outside the confined space. They couldn't speak, or look into each other's eyes. The range of feelings expressed go from a general state of discomfort and tension to a sense of connection, relaxation, and even playfulness in some occasions. The absence of any direct communication led to a complex social dynamic, being connected, and yet isolated from each other. They were following each other’s movements and actions subtly, but, being unable to speak or imitate their peers, they had to find their own ways to express themselves. The experiment resulted in 3 very different group dynamics, in which each one found different ways to interact with the world within the confined space and with each other.
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The promo video and the shorts were a commission for SneakerKit. I worked alongside Joelle de Jong, Clara Chirila-Rus and Ana-Maria Cojocaru to create a promo video for this sneaker company. As the most important aspect of the services the company offers is the fact that people who order get a kit with materials and their chosen patterns and build their own sneakers at home, we decided to showcase the "DIY" aspect very clearly in the videos, conveying how easy it is to build, upon following the instruction manual. I worked on shot compositions, lighting and editing some of the parts for the videos. I also edited the song we chose, to cut some parts out, that were unnecessary and were not a great fit for our videos.
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This video was created using found footage, and it represents a debate between two opposing moral beliefs: Consequentialism v Deontology. I recorded myself debating against someone with an opposing view, represented by a text-to-voice generator. I wrote the script in the style of Raymond Queneau's book "Exercises in Style", the "You Know" style. The idea arose after having listened to the "Philosophise This!" podcast, by Stephen West. The ideas that arise in the video are also raised in the podcast, as well as the examples. My main goal for this project was to bring an audio-only medium, with a small twist re-writing it into the style I randomly chose from "Exercises in Style", into a full-debate form, using imagery from an animated series, "Ping Pong the Animation", in orer to represent the two sides winning or losing arguments.
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This is a website with a myseterious setting. You are welcome to explore and tour the lake house. You must discover the way to navigate yourself, as a guest. There is no pre-established way to roam through it, any way you choose to go is up to you, the guest.
Enter the lake house here.