Futurism influence
I'm repeled by many aspects of the futurist manifesto. The aspects of futurism that I want to take influence from are depictions of movement and fragmentation.
Juan Gris, Glass of beer and playing cards
This is a fragmented image of beer and textures and colours that complement eachother, it uses cubist perspective and abstrction to show elements of the scene that would not all be visible from one point. I want to make my annimation influenced by this cubist/futurist fragmentation. The theme of beer in this painting relates to my work, I take inspiration from how to represent a glass of beer from a fragmented perspective.
Giacomo Balla Velocità paesaggio (speed landscape) 1913
Balla used futurism principles to abstract this landscape to show speed (of cars passing) I want to use a futurist style in my animation, and even though the futurist paintings are 2D still painints depicting movement and I'm making an animation that is depicting movement by actually moving, I want to use the futurist ideas of how to abstract the deptiction of movement in 2D, and then extend this to an actual moving animation.
Giacomo Balla La mano del violinista (The hand of the violinist) 1912
Another way that futurism depicts movement is by showing multiple images in one frame, like a multi-exposure photo, or like viewing several frames of an animation at once. I want to use this idea of futurism exposing multiple exposures, and extend it to my animation, to depict how futurists would depict the same thing if they also could have multiple frames.
Marcel Duchamp Nu descendant un Escalier (Nude Descending a Staircase) 1912.
Duchamp's famous painting shows the kind of fragmentation and simultaneous representation of movement that I would like to take influence for in my animation.
I want to draw futurist abstracted fragmented figures for my animation and move different fragments in my animation independantly. I'm not up to knowing how to do this with technical animation skills, but that's what I imagine wanting to do.
I'd want fragmented pictures, and each of the different fragments is animated separately. (a bit like in the nude desending a staircase, but animated - in addition to the abstracted movement caught in every frame.) each frame would be an abstracted depiction of movement. As well as all the frames moving as animation, each still frame is an abstracted represtentation of futurist inspired movement depiction.
Thats what I want to do, but I'm feeling very overwhelmed by not even knowing the first thing about animation. All I can do is try, I might not be able to pull off my idea very well.
Literature
Its interesting to think of a unifying experience of all people living at the same time, the things we experience from being alive at this point in history. Art literature design etc, express the new directions and the new concept of life for this moment in time.
He talks about the way that literature and art opened up new posibilities in modernity. Breaking old conventions and trying out new possibilites. He talks about the sound and rhythm and music of language, which expresses emotional meanings that are more than just the definition of words. He talks about the ways different artists explored the new possibilites.
He talks about disilusionment and art wanting to change society. Art can present its critique of society so that people will listen more.
One of the things that is directly applicable to my piece is his discussion of typography. About creating typography that was 'visual slang' and image as well as words. Apollinaire used poems in picture form to express simultaneously the whole picture and the individual words. This idea for him syncronised space and action into the poem on the page. This is helpful to my thinking about images and animation to think of the images and sound combining in space and time into one whole.
I like the typography pictures that were in the reading. I would like to explore this in my typography for the anmation. (These two samples are by Marinetti)
from Les mots en liberte (1919). about a girl reading a letter from her sweetheart about the horrors of war. All expressed at the same time on the page in typography.
I think this builds on the typography in the reading from handmade graphics. In the literature reading he talked about how technology and mass profuction had killed the quality of craftmanship in typography but that artists had experimented with the new technology rather than letting the new technology take away typography's uniqueness and expressiveness. This reminds me of the handmade graphics because we are now undergoing the same kind of realisation about computers having taken over too much rather than being tools of creativity they can tend to stifle it.
from Les mots en liberte (1919). Typographic rendering of a speech to the troops and the dynamic verbalisation of the route through the battle
I want to experiment with typography. As refreshing communication, and allowing the form of the type to add to the meanig of the words.
I liked reading about the Dadaists, and their use of language as evoking associations, opening up interpretation and fantasy in the listener to be involved in making meaning. This ties in with my animation and sound-scape, which is trying to show the "whole other world" that I hear about working behind the bar. As a listener to people's stories and converstaions I see a side of the world that I don't see anywhere else, even though the bar is a small space of one square metre. I want the viewer of my animation to feel intrigued about the conversations that go on in the bar, and to compare it to their own experiences.
The reading also talks about getting inspiration and insight into society by looking at drawings of people in society but not really with a full awarness of society like children or insane people. I would like to experiment with childlike animation maybe as being an expressive form of art that I would be able to produce for the animation. Childrens drawings also have a magical quaility about the world that they draw that would be useful in conveying the meaning of my piece as being a magical world created by stories and converstaions (and alcohol.) Maybe my piece would be able to comment on the way our society tends to not be able to relate deeply in friendship to each other and rely on the "social lubricant" of alcohol.
He also talks about experiments in art as being important, looking at new ways to express meanig, new ways to challenge society and discover new ways of being and what it means to be alive at this moment in time. Built on the past, but different to the past.
I think I want to produce hand-made type animation that expresses the world of human interaction in the bar, not mass-produced computer-generated.
