I’m not sure how Antarctica will end up.
All depends on what goes on in the rest of the world in the future, and the people in it, and it might even depend on whats happening in our solar system.
Bron
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On 13/12/2007, Bronwyn Burles wrote:
feel like a game of ping pong doodles?
I wonder if you or I could start a little flash sketch of nothing in particular sometime, and do just 10 or 20 frames, then send it off to the other person, then back and forth again and again adding 10 or 20 more frames each, leaving off from what the last frame of the other person’s bit was – what do you think we’d end up with? A mess, or something cool?
The tea cup got me thinking.
Maybe your pieces could be based on your antarctic travels, and my pieces based on whatever your pieces bring to mind. As I don’t have antarctic experiences of my own, but I have an imagination. Of sorts.
Take care,
Bb xx
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On 13/12/2007, Lisa Roberts
Been thinking Bron,
Here’s what I’d love to do:
Play animation pingong with you to extend Balancing Time:
If our aim is to connect people with the changes happening in Antarctica – within the bounds of our knowledge – then images and
feelings about these will inevitably come out in our improvised ‘dance’.
We will bounce ideas and feeling off each other, and whoever else wants to play.
But we can begin.
What do you think?
Attached is the .fla file for Balancing Time as it stands today.
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Sounds very do-able! And I think whatever it turns out to be it will definitely belong. Just reading your journal connects me with Antarctica – I don’t hear much about the place otherwise. Thoughts of Antarctica have created the existing animation so anything that is spurred on by it will surely be linked to the changes in Antarctica.
We don’t know how this animation will end up – and I’m not sure how Antarctica will end up.
All depends on what goes on in the rest of the world in the future, and the people in it, and it might even depend on whats happening in our solar system.
If it changes before the weekend just send the FLA again, not sure if i will have time tonight to do anything to it, but will look over the file.
Cheers,
Bron
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Hi again Bron,
It sounds like you have connected with the idea I’m attempting perfectly.
Do you mind if I include what we’ve just written on the site, here?
I like the immediacy of this on-line work, and thinking.
Cheers,
Lisa
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Sure Lisa no problem – pop it up 🙂
How much evidence do we need to see?
Last I was riding home from COFA after seeing the end of year student show (wonderful).
I saw some white plastic cups poked into cyclone fences in a park…arranged to make words.
I was riding pretty fast, but I saw:
I DONT KNOW
PERHAPS
POSSIBLY
MAYBE
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We live in an age of uncertainty.
Even the scientists don’t know what’s going to happen to Antarctica exactly, or the exact global effects of its changes.
We are connecting more, however, with the fact that how we live influences the changes.
How much evidence do we need to see before we change how we live?
I think the evidence is there already, but along with this evidence has to come some definite instruction on what we need to do. And strong enforcement of those instructions.
Its nice to think that people on a whole will want to enforce change for the better in their own ways, and many do, but every day I become more aware of how many non-thinkers are out there. If you weigh up the number of Thinkers Vs the Non-Thinkers out there … it isn’t pretty.
We have already changed things by how we have lived, without trying. It has been a change for the worse.
We have the capacity change things for the better just as effectively, but it won’t be nearly as easy as doing nothing.
Enforcement …
Tradition provide a consensus agreement that it is good to keep doing what has always always been done – even acts of violence against others and the environment.
Again I am reminded of a car sticker – or poster ( I can’t remember which):
If you always do what you’ve always done
You’ll always get what you’ve always got
…or something along those lines.
Traditional academic arts – prevalent always in various forms through history – mirror this world view.
Their role has been to uphold the party line.
‘Outsider’ artist traditionally resorts to alternative methods such as chance, stream of consciousness, automatic art and writing, Happenings, in retaliation to this, until they too are absorbed into the system.
The Impressionists, Surrealists, Dadaists and futurists provide recent past examples.
They engaged with the immediate present – through conscious and unconscious perceptions.
Their work, now safely in the past, is welcomed by the establishment.
The movement improvisation of Andrew Morrish provides a contemporary example, and (traditionally) it struggles to survive within the established arts system.
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I’m aware as I write this that I am defining art as that which loves to be incognito, falling into the same trap as anyone else defining it.
We expose our training and experience.
As a teenager my father gave me the book, The Necessity of Art”, by Max Ernst, a Marxist arts writer who proposed the purpose of art was political challenge. The role of the artist was to be an outsider. That book had a profound influence in forming my prejudice.
Formal research offers opportunities recognize this and listen to other views.
Simon’s challenging questions are part of this. And his questions expose his own prejudices. We both learn.
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In his article, Improvisational Movement – a personal perspective (Proximity, Vol.3 edition 3)
Andrew provides an insight into his process:
This is a process practiced we can practice as we animate.
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As you suggest, ours could be a long animation, that could well end up as gobbldegook.
A way to maintain form (which can suggests meaning) is to work on it as a series of cyclic movement phrases that each have a clear beginning, a middle and end.
White space of about 20 frame can signify its shape.
Our animated phrases can be separate .swf files accessible sequentially by the > button at the top.
What do you say?
I suggest we work work together to complete the first animation as a complete phrase, and then begin another.
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Having said all that, what do you say to simply starting a new one, where we each take turns to make small gestures?
That way, it’s more like a visual dialogue.
Anything can make a gesture.
I’ve been in hospital the last two days – with a suspected heart problem.
I saw the arteries round my heart moving, on a big screen. I didn’t appreciate how much moves beneath the skin – food for thought – and images.
More soon.
Ah, I’d already added a little piece to Balancing Time, before reading these entries.
I do hope your heart is doing ok and it was just a little hickup – I remember being pretty amazed when I saw the veins in my leg traced out with ultrasound. Its strange how quiet our bodies are with so much going on in there.
I will finish this little addition to Balancing Time, and if you’d like to start a separate little ‘gesture’ in the meantime feel free to send it through.
I receive this:
Hi Lisa.
Here is my first 20 frame gesture. Actually, there are two.
One is a metronome counting out 20 frames, not sure if I want it as a
‘gesture’ … but I felt like including it somehow.
The other is my first ‘gesture’.
Open to any ideas for how to use the metronome… both are separate swfs,
editable flash file includes them both.
Cheers,
BB
And:
I’ve noticed lately that the weather where I live is growing more bizarre and unpredictable.
Several days/weeks ago you asked on your journal what the weather was doing where I and everybody else was, and of course the silent question hung as to what influence the changes in Antarctica might be having on our weather elsewhere.
I began by replying that while it was pouring with rain earlier that morning, it was near lunch time and the sun was shining and I looked forward to having lunch in my warm car. Two minutes after posting that response, hail was bouncing into the shed and I resigned myself to lunch in the office, watching the hail bounce off the concrete.
A couple of days after that, while planting some natives in the back yard in the scorching heat, I was just about to drop a new addition into this hole when suddenly, while still scorching hot and the sun was burning my skin, it rained so much I had to go for shelter for 10 minutes.
Tassie has unpredictable weather, but I find it a little More unusual lately when its both hot and raining all at once. That’s tropical weather. Tassie isn’t a tropical place, at least not here in Launceston. But perhaps that isn’t the case anymore.
Today I woke up in a sweat due to the overnight heat, and noticed it was raining again. It didn’t last for long, and it has been a lovely day with no more rain, but once again it feels like a tropical climate, rather than the dry heat that usually kills everything off in summer here. Things are still green this year, and the flowers are all confused.
Many people have commented that bulbs have had two attempts at popping out this year.
So as I saw your snow flakes morph into a shining sun, I felt I had to add some pelting rain.
Hope you’re doing well, attached is the .fla and .swf
Bron
My heart is fine but I still feel strange and will be further examined. Like the extremes in our weather, these changing sensations feel extreme and dramatic!
I spent two days and one night in the Royal Prince Alfred (RPA), after experiencing a curious incident. Having told the story at least ten times to various ambulance and hospital staff, I will simply quote from the RPA Discharge Referral:
I observed with great interest the art of medicine in action.
My heart, as the subject of research, was studied in its relation to my whole body, and immediate environment.
On breathing in, I saw the motion of my arteries propelled by my heart.
I witnessed my connected with the world through my breath.
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Weather in Sydney is shifting between clear and overcast.
Bird sound accelerates in anticipation of rain.
Over the last 10 years or so, birds have been migrating to Sydney from the other side of the Great dividing Range, seeking water and the food that brings. The Ibis was a striking addition to the city’s landscape. A water bird, it has adapted to this landscape easily, foraging with its long beak to in rubbish bins.
As in the precious areas suitable for animal life in Antarctica, where humans could (if their numbers increase) compete with penguins and seals for breeding grounds, our buildings compete with trees. Birds will be struggling to find what they need to survive.
Hi Bron,
My computer is partitioned for Linux and Windows operating systems.
I work on-line in the Linux side, and use many of its free programs – Audacity, the Gimp, Open Office to name a few.
To access your Flash files, I will now enter the Windows side, and be back soon with an animated response.
Your metronome intrigues me, relentlessly driving a set rhythm.
After listening to the brown marsh frogs in our garden this morning, tocking their uneven chorus, I felt like I had to subvert that.
So here is our second collaborative animation, Metronome.
How different are the rhythms of the natural world, from those we impose upon ourselves.