A play on words of the original art work featured in the piece- “Still Life: Fish” by William Merritt Chase from 1908. The original work was a Vanitas painting which was a style of painting that typically symbolized death and the shortness of life. William Merritt Chase wanted to make "an uninteresting subject so inviting and entertaining by means of fine technique that people will be charmed at the way you've done it.” I found this a funny goal to try to achieve. Why try and make a dead fish a beautiful piece of art to be hung on one’s wall? I decided to try and contrast this idea by taking his work and recreating it into something similar to the animatronic singing fish plaques, such as the “Big Mouth Billy Bass”, that was popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. The singing plaques were to be hung on your wall, similar to a piece of art, but when you push the button it of strips that art aspect away by having it sing silly songs to you. By using animated lip syncing, which I made by creating different mouth positions in photoshop and layering them in Premiere, I could strip the aspect of beauty and art away from Chase’s painting just like the singing fish plaques. Not only does the singing take away from the beauty of the work, it also takes away meaning from the Vanitas style, by resurrecting the dead fish and making them seem alive. I felt the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin (1988), which was also used in the “Big Mouth Billy Bass” plaques, worked perfectly because of the irony of dead fish singing a song about being positive in bad situations, and because I also felt because of the current state of the world at the moment, some people could use the humor as a reminder to be as optimistic as possible in these hard times.
*(The music and artwork in this video is not mine and was used to make a parody in an educational context.)*