ARCHIVE AND ANIMATION
2 piece archive installation, printed shots of draft video work, oil pastel mark making onto paper, 2025
Archive & Animation is a development piece which I have taken my mark making pieces and developed them into small clip animations. The pieces express social contexts of nostalgia, playfullness, ambience but yet also chaos and abstraction. The mark making piece are still of footage of my own unfinished video pieces, the first piece being my own footage work and the second inspired by 80s summer of love acid house raves using found footage. On top of the pieces ive used neon oil pastels to express the colour themes of raving, bright, bold and colourful. Taking inspiration from the prodigys 'out of space music video' and artists like Len Lye through abstract marks and text. With that I then developed my pieces into 2 clip animations alongside ambient electronic music.
A set of 2 video pieces, clip animations, scanned mark making pieces, 24 seconds and 19 seconds, 2025.
Research - Artists
Vinca Petersen - Timeline of a Raver
Vinca Petersens work explores themes of nostalgia, archive and questions why do we collect and keep memories of the past? How we can keep pieces of accidental historical moments Her installations of personal archive of her own rave experiences from the 90s. I was drawn to all the different types of memorabilia but also how she lays out as a 'mindmap' an explosion of memories. Her archives are on large scales intentionally overwhelming the audience which a timeline of memoribillia. This packed and chaotic installation set up is something which I took on towards my Mark Making pieces.
David Hockney - Polaroid Series
Hockneys polaroid series presents themes of scale, nostalgia and personal viewpoint. I was drawn to the scale of Hockneys work and how it becomes a grand piece as a whole. The scale of it seems overwhelming in a good way, seeing imagery on a larger scale as a whole piece or as individual pieces. I wanted to take this idea of scale onto my mark making piece and to test how they would look as a whole piece not just seperate.
Duncan Poulton and Nick Smith - Y2K
- Clips from the animation section of the piece
I Attended Duncan Poultons Artist Talk last Semester and was immediately I was drawn to his work, this semester I looked more into his work, this piece called Y2K which he collaborated with nick smith to create a 60 minute piece. He uses found footage but also has moments of animation, Poulton utilises musicality in this animation, he plays them alongside groovy instrumental music which I could see the animation clips went alongside it and I enjoyed how it all came together and that gave me an idea for my mark making pieces. It made me wonder how I could do that within my work but aswell how could I expand it, experiment more with it.
A colour box - Len lye
Looking into artists who use animation and mark making, I found len lye whos work communicates themes of abstraction, film making and nostalgia, music, shape and form. I watched his piece colour box and I loved watching the film and how there was the classic retro cuts in the tape to change, the marks and lines he created on the film were mesmerising, coudlnt take my eyes off them, I enjoyed how he also switched it up and added in shapes and how he would also used vivid colours but aesthetically pleasing colours. I wanted to take this idea on board towards both my mark making pieces and animation pieces .
Research - Music Videos
The Prodigy - Out of space
Alongside being an influence to my video pieces the prodigys music videos have also influence my abstract mark making pieces specifially 'out of space'. Ive always been drawn to the inverted filters and the abstract marks, as seen in two screenshots, there are moments of fine but harsh lines which in the video they move around chaotically along with the music. Mixing the inverted colours and the mark making, link well with the characteristics of rave culture with it being associated with colour and movement.
Skrillex and Diplo - Where are u now
Looking into more music videos, I remembered a specific music video I loved from my teenage years in 2015. An example of modern day electronic music, the whole music video is based on a stop motion animation by a public workshop for the music video. I enjoyed the ranges of different textures and different styles of mark making. This inspired me to extended my styles if mark making from last semester.
Lost souls of saturn
Lost souls of saturn are a modern day electronic music duo who also use imagery towards their music videos. Looking at their title track for the saatchi excerpt, the video consists of inverted colour footage, it reminds me of the prodigys 90s music videos. Just like the prodigys videos Im drawn to the inverted colours filters, seeing it in a modern day form they are more bold and feel more dreamlike alongside their music which is experimental but calming, the imagery compliments the I wanted to see if I could develop from last semesters animation and start to add more inverted colours into my work and to keep a the calm theme of music choice for the animations.
Process
Examples of my process taking stills screenshots of my video work and adding marks and text which I associate with raves using oil pastels . Marks are inspired by music videos i.e the prodigy out of space and artists such as Len Lye and the colour box. I would also add symbolism such as the smily face symbol, quoting genres and more text i.e ' current gen rave' gives the story behind the imagery and where it originates from and how it compares to the past.
I started to do more and more everyday until It started to cover my studio walls I just saw how immersive it was all becoming and It became an installation itself like David Hockneys polaroid series and how the scale of it was overwhelming, that is how i felt watching my archive grow. I started to grow another archive on the other side of my studio wall, this piece was based off 1989 acid house summer of love and I tooke specific screenshots ot moments of abstract layering.
Instead of using adobe after effects I used the software of Capcut. I wasnt able to get the software on my laptop so I used my phone to edit the animations. I wanted to have fast 0.1 second clips continuously. I was influenced by Duncan Poultons Y2K animation piece and how the speed of the images matched the music. I enjoyed using capcut, I was able to use effects which reminded me of the lost souls of saturn and there inverted colour filters aswell as the prodigy. The different inverted filters would also compliment my designs and I enjoyed how vivid the oil pastel designs would become through some of the filters.
To utilise the element of musicality, I planned for my animations to be played alongside ambient jungle music, I associate ambient jungle music with nostalgia due to the subtle break beats and synths used its quite calming and having my animations over it I thought would compliment it very well. For my first piece I used the modern day ambient jungle tune all worlds by kloke, to me its an old school song in modern day form it truly takes inspiration from old ambient jungle music which is why I used it in my present day animation and then for my late 80s animation I found an old ambient jungle mix on youtube, that song I chose stood out to me, it was calming but still had that up tempo beat which I could already see my animation in my head going along to.