I am talking in this context of animating in the original sense, of bringing to life, breathing life into (inspiring), a place that is pretty dead. (Global warming can change that. But we may not be around to see Antarctica’s first flower.)
To really know a place you need to see it, hear it, smell it and feel it. And when you can’t connect physically first hand, you can gain some sense of it through the voices of those who have.
When I was very young, the artist William Kelly told me that you need to get to know something if you want to draw it, and at the same time, to draw something is another way to know it.
Sculptor Lenton Parr said that making art is a dialogue you have with the subject, the materials at hand, and the piece you are building. Your artwork is finished when the dialogue is over, and the piece speaks for itself. It has a voice of its own, that can be interpreted in other ways by other people. (These were my teachers at art school.)
My six week voyage (V7 2002) was not enough to know Antarctica. When I was there I drew, and painted, and animated bits, and made some video and sound recordings. I wrote. I asked questions of scientists and other expeditioners, I walked on the rock and ice, and felt the wind and the water of Antarctica. I learned more about what I didn’t know, from listening to the voices of the people who had stayed there, working through the long winters, measuring, and experiencing, the changes in its landscape. And sometimes I’d be told about their life-changing experiences.
And others who have experienced, and responded to Antarctica, as artists, scientists and travelers, can show us different perspectives of the landscape.
.
Antarctica is at the very edge of the world as we know it. It’s landscape represents the very edge of the unknown.
I need to work with personal experiences within my myself, to identify with the changes being measured and experienced there.
How I can do this:
Improvise.
Move, draw, write and animate:
to the sound of my father’s teleprinter (relaying messages from Antarctica)
to the voices of expeditioners (poetic and scientific responses)
to the landscape itself (as remembered)
Nice writing. Very much your own voice. Good to see that you are beginning to focus on the making. It’s time for bucket loads of making.
Best wishes
Simon
Animation is:
Another way of re ordering time.
A molecular view of film.
Putting thought into objects.
Time share on reality.
Not having to say sorry ( not without good lip sync anyway)
It was good talking with you about ways to move through material on the website, as a form of animating.
I want to animate some Journeys – including my present journey, here:
http://www.antarcticanimation.com/content/journey/journey.php
To do this I am collecting symbols gleaned from listening to people who have lived and worked in Antarctica.
We talked about Jung’s dream symbols, and his idea of the universal unconsciious.
Symbols can also be gleaned from looking at some of the scientific data that is coming in, from measuring changes in the landscape – for example, layers of diatom-rich sediment beneath the ice sheets, and of life forms trapped within the ice through eons.
You suggested other ways of interacting, and moving through the material. This Journey screen can be the entry point for animating that data. I can do this using Flash.
There is no shame in working with these journeys as my own.