London Underground LEGO animation

Conductor New York Metro

Seeingsound

Final Animation for Seeing Sound

In response to Ryoji Ikeda's 'One Minute', I created an animation documenting the routine of a University student. I attempted to echo the monotony and quietness of the sound by repeating the action of working - a movement that isn't generally fast paced or exciting, but is often done in a very quiet and solitary environment, and enforced this feeling of boredom by showing the figure falling asleep. The brief explosions of sounds are illustrated by scenes that are not as subdued, a party for one (often associated with students) and drinking a shot of coffee, both of which connote explosiveness, energy, and fast paced, powerful actions, and in the case of the party- loud noise. The fact that the sound piece ends in this louder, more violent way, for me, suggested a sense of unrest and something more sinister, and so I played on the feelings of repetition, work and becoming a drone like, leading to the metaphorical image of the human becoming a machine. Binary codes, that not only portray the bionic but are also repetitive, flash in and out of the animation to signify this, increasing their appearances' at the louder intervals to enforce the notion of unsettlement, becoming the final image to end on. The animation was also shot in a 16:9 format which is at current times a very popular format, signifying again the link between technology and human.

One Minute

Ryoji Ikeda - One Minute

Soundwave

Initial ideas

On first receiving the brief I put the sound track on repeat and brainstormed words, emotions, ideas that came to mind. Chinese factory workers came to mind, laboriously repeating the some action in a production line, and then rebellion; a factory plant and some kind of machine malfunction; global warming, the constant flicking of a switch leading to the endangered animals; the beat of the heart speeding up at intervals and eventually leading to a heart attack, these were a mere few, which eventually lead to my idea of the documentation of university life.

I also made some very quick visual studies while listening to the track.

My temporary work station.

Some initial drawings for the global warming idea.

Attempting to add a bit of humour into the piece.

Drawing on ideas of morse code, brail, sheet music, and simply just the movement my hand made that felt like an appropriate response to the music.

one minute tester

one minute tester

one minute tester

coffee tester take 2

Ryoji Ikeda...

...the Japanese composer and sound artist, is fascinated with the niceties of ultrasonics, frequencies and the indispensable elements of sound in relation with human perception and the mathematical dianoia applied to music, time and space. 'One minute' moves from industrial to ambient with puritanical sounds that speed up and briefly deviate into something more explosive and violent, a rush, but is tamed soon enough to return to the pulsing, monotony evoking notions of morse code, binary, stream of data, a "digital pulse" and in turn (for me) unearths connotations of work, the drone of the rat race, and those explosions are that of the brief irregularities, out of routine moments where things are not so consistent.

one minute tester

This is a 'tester' for the Seeing Sound brief, which I have decided will be a visual response to the sound clip entitled "one minute". For me the piece evokes a sense a routine and monotony, steady and consistent for the majority, with brief disruptions of sporadic, untamed, in-cohesive sounds, rendering the piece oxymoronic.

one minute experiment

BAA

I watched the BAA (British Animation Awards) 2007 a few days ago and these are the one's I most enjoyed:

Adjustment by Ian Mackinnon

Life Size Zoetrope Mark Simon Hewis

Something which is true in both animations is the success of mix media use.The combination of 2D, 3D, photography, film and drawings creates an exciting aesthetic that maintains the interest of the audience in a subject that, like a lot of documentary film, may over wise be considered as uninteresting. The viewpoint from which the art is presented is also a contributing factor to this, fighting the norm and being seen through the eyes of the narrator, invading the viewer's space so that they themselves become part of the work; or presented on pages of multiple sketchbooks held by anonymous whilst riding on a Meteorite fairground ride.

Polar bears search for food - David Attenborough - BBC wildlife

The Cove

I've watched this documentary around five times now; its challenging for a film to be able to retain the audience's attention after five viewings, and so very impressive for a documentary to be able to do this. Unsurprisingly it was the Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and Academy Award for best documentary 2009. Ric O'Barry's passion becomes infectious through the screen as he exposes the annual killing of dolphins in a Quasi-National Park at Taiji, Wakayama, in Japan, and he and a crew of activists take on their 'mission impossible' to film and unearth the horrific events that occur in the cove. For me this is a great example of a documentary and really influential in the making of my own.

'When did we lose our voices?' Grace and Rose

Mine, Rose and Harriet's animation

Fahrenheit 9/11

Farhenheit 9/11 is my choice of documentary video. Created by Michael Moore the film looks to expose the truths and conspiracies surrounding 9/11, heavily criticising the American security system, false values and patriotism and of course the stupidity of George W. Bush. Candid interviews with politicians, archived film footage and a running commentary from Moore himself juxtaposes the sombre subject matter, and forces smiles and laughs throughout. For me the film takes on the challenging task of choosing a sobering medium and places it into a new context through use humour, becoming informative and entertaining.