MAGCD YEAR 2

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/828220789

For the final week I wanted to try a new medium – riso printing.

Printing animation frames on riso and then re-joining them is a beautiful and frequent technique used by artists who work with the medium. For example, the work of Julia Schimautz.

Working on this animation allowed me to step out of my usual workspace and desk set-ups and enter an unfamiliar environment. I felt it increased my interaction with the surroundings and I was able to admire the process more as it was new to me.

This week the writing was able to strike a good balance between social commentary and emotional edge. Through the narration, we get to know more about the character, situate them in a time and place.

I think the questions I was asking myself at this point were –  If we had enough of these snippets from the narrator’s life, would we get a sense of who they are, what they like, what emotions they experience, where they stand socio-economically? Would we understand why they choose the materials they do, the colours they do? Is the narrator even one single person?

The three videos for week 2 shared more emotional stories from the narrator. There was a consistent colour palette across the videos and a set of materials. These were quick exercises in making.

By this time, I was starting to get a sense of the narrator, their memories, their mindset and everyday anecdotes.

I wanted to particularly highlight my hands in the videos and establish a ‘presence’ behind these artworks/ illustrations.

I think my favourite out of this week would be I’m Exhausted as it starts with a scanner noise and that sound is overlapped again and again to convey the frustration of the character. There is only one phrase in the entire video and I felt it would be meaningful to play around with the lengths of the writing.

While The Cliffs is a little more whimsical and may come across as naive, in hindsight – I think it presented an innocence that was essential for its emotional quality.