10th October 2024
Week 2 – Making Sense of the World
Discussion based on extracts from a William Kentridge film, Tide Table – 2003
This is an artist I first looked at in my third year of undergraduate when I first started animating. The constant reworking of the charcoal is fascinating, each scene using the same page rather than 100s of individual frames The origin point was wanting to learn how to animate waves crashing on a beach.
“You can change the drawing as quickly as you can think. It had an equivalence to the speed of thinking.”
The film finds its structure and subject through piecing lots of individual scenes together that would have taken several weeks each.
Louisiana Channel - How We Make Sense of the World
When discussing the work, he uses terms like:
Immanence – existing within, through material things
Provisionality – what it is now, but possibly changed
Accretion – gradual accumulation of layers
Questions – with Dee, Martina, and Betty Leung
What advantages exist in using a material that can change so easily?
You’re less fixed on the process, rather seeing the final complete piece emerging from those constant changes
Discussed AI in animation to speed the process up for deadlines, and how AI was used by activists in Hong Kong by writing segments of code that were put together in a game to then show what was happening there
Speed is something he talks about – both the fast drawing, almost as fast as you can think and also the slowness of making an animation: what are the advantages in working in a fast or slow way?
The speed allows you to not stop and think about what you’re seeing now to get towards that end goal, but the slowness allows you to take in each part and consider your next steps rather than rushing in
Is photography quick or slow? It’s a whole process, it can be fast for commissions, but with edits you can tell so many different stories and that can be never ending. With footage there is not the opportunity to reshoot, but you can edit endlessly
New 3D cameras that allow you to capture a 3D environment and then create a film within that from the editing room
Setting up the camera is slow, shooting is quick, editing/dark room processes are slow again – there are so many variables to try to control that at their core are uncontrollable
In your own making process how do you balance your focus between the process and the final product?
I have a better understanding now that my final product doesn’t need to be this polished, precise thing, and that was very hard to accept.
What could you do with your process to break it up, like chopping up animation and reordering to find another scene inside?
The variables you put in place during the process effect the final product, breaking it down and creating something new
What have you discovered with the making process?
Not limitations, new operating parameters. Accepting that the discoveries in the making process, and the making process itself are just as valid as the final outcome and sometimes more important.
Questions – to think about by yourself
What have you discovered about yourself through your working process? Or – what have you discovered about your working process recently?
That it doesn’t need to be so polished, that the uncertainness of the making process can be just as valid as a polished end product if not more. I don’t have to create my tube map work on illustrator I can do it by hand and the final product can also be by hand.
Password: CSM
“The animated films can be a demonstration of how we make sense of the world, rather than an instruction of what the world means.”
An oversimplification of instructions in the world, rather than the messy confusion where artists thrive.
Questions – with Karen, Roz, and Chelsea
Making sense of the world, how does this work?
Using the therapeutic process of art to help make sense of your internal world, but also the external world around you.
What does he mean – make sense of the world, rather than an instruction of what the world means?
Understanding the world for yourself and forming your own opinions, rather than listening to what you are told about the world and taking that as gospel.
How might this relate to your own art practice?
Figuring out my gender for myself, rather than listening to what I was told. The bravery to think for yourself on such subject matters and go through your own investigative journey to find your truth, rather than what those around you and society believe is the truth and impress on you.
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