On Monday we spend the beginning of the class going over the specific brief for the Monochrome project and revising UAL learning outcomes. We looked at Martha Colburn and her practices in the context of the learning outcomes, such as the process of research and gathering themes.
In our sketchbooks we wrote a page of all our initial thoughts for the prompt monochrome. I really enjoy experimental and mixed media styles but I often find conceptualizing difficult. A medium I use often is datamoshing and glitch art, however this project has to be fully analog. This got me thinking about analogue glitching and I thought I could look into methods of using the camera to edit. I noted down Bennet Pimpinella as I had recently discovered his animation using film scratching, and I thought it could be something interesting to try. I also discovered a YouTube channel called YOVOZOL, a video artist focusing on analog glitching and effects. I got really interested in camera feedback as a method to try, however I am still waiting
We also looked at Alison Schulnik, who’s films resonated with me a lot. I’m not sure if it serves what I’m thinking abot for this project, but I found out she was featured in Laura Heit’s Animation Sketchbooks which I have at home so it prompted me to look through again. I marked some artists I’d like to revisit next week.
Chris also showed me Stephen Irwin’s The Black Dog’s Progress and I really liked the collgaged style of the piece.
Finally, we got to doing our own mark making and looked at pattern animation. Chris showed us Chase (2017) by Páraic McGloughlin and I really loved the look of it. Primarily the clip with the oscillating doors, as the textures change but the shape remained consistent. I also enjoyed Max Hattler’s Serial Parallels, I was in awe at how there was not compositing done on the shots, the way the buildings were captured were just that dense and uniform. We did some blind contour drawing with limitations, ie. only ‘seeing’ by touch, lengthening the drawing implement or using our non dominant hand. I tend to use a multicolored lead for sketches and activities like this so I don’t become to precious with my lines, so I did the same for this.
We also did some rubbings and created our own pattern animations from them. I really liked how my first one came out. Due to the paper moving as I was doing the rubbings, I got an offset which when photographed in succession made for very smooth movement. We were also tasked to create a pattern animation for Friday. I didn’t have much time for this, but I focused on photographing the number 6 and seeing the way it morphed as I made my journey to and from work.
On Wednesday we looked at the subject of the Media Landscape. We cut out small squares of newspaper and magazine scans and tried to reinterpret the images. First we wrote down words we associated with each image.
Then we were given 3 different prompts for sorting them. First, we picked five images based on intuition. I picked images that had traces of overlapping paper and misprined textures. Things that highlighted the physicality of the original medium through the scan. The next prompt was to select five tiles to form a random narrative. I gravitated towards abstract textures without text. The first one felt like a progression of darkness to a flash of light back to darkness. The second focused on transversal lines and I imagined almost a traveling line glitch you see on old tapes. The final prompt was to come up with our own method. I decided to sort all my tiles in a snaking pattern from light to dark. This was done by eye and I rearranged them until they felt right.
After messing with the printouts a lot, I remembered how I used to use scanners to make funky images and I really liked the idea of warping things on a scanner. I plan to try something with this approach in my tests next week.
Friday we looked at hand-drawn animation and spent most of the session drawing our own. After looking at some examples of hand-drawn animation and discussing the materiality and effect of textures and inconsistency in lines, leaving the human element of the art within the piece, we were each given a square to trace and animate from there. My mind was still on the topic of scanners so I decided to create something abstractly reminiscent. Since we were to finish these animations next week, my final test for this will be attached on the next post.