Reading her thesis, Weaving in and out of time, I reflect on my points of connection with Australian artist/animator Caroline Huf:
It was important to start with a process, that was made up of small tasks, and compulsive gestures that were units of labour that could be done every day and build up incrementally. It was also important that these tasks had emerged from play, so that they reflected the idiosyncratic rhythms and dimensions of my body and the materials being used.
(Huf, 2007;15)
At this point I see the 8am timelapse sequence is the ‘spine’ of my thinking. Everything else can be seen in relation to that series, when and if complete. The idea is that the real time taken for the study will be documented, and that the site of study – Sydney Australia – is the vantage point from which the Antarctic landscape changes will be observed.
The ‘idiosyncratic rhythms and dimensions of my body’ are also defining features of my process, drawing on my awareness of these in articulating the figure in the Framnes Fjella Journey.
Huf identifies with the approach of the flaneur following his nose, improvising with materials found along the way. Yet she does not identify with his shunning of the domestic realms, preferring instead to base her main activities in the studio, weaving and animating. The gaze of the flaneur upon the world, she decides, is male. It is also meandering rather than linear.
Our animated sequences are linear. My interactive on-line work will invite meandering, with choices to move between narrative sequences at various points, like a ‘choose your own adventure’ book.
Huf’s Proximity/Plots ( 2005) plays on the word ‘plot’. (A flaneur wanders. He does not plot.)
Turning space into landscape by marking (plotting) the floor with lines, her installation becomes “an environment weaving itself” (2007;28). The language through which she evokes meaning into the space is through drawing, “the repetition of the black and white lines”; objects, “train tickets”; sounds, recordings of birds. This interweaving of abstract language elements in time (sound) and space (drawing, objects), articulates a “physical metaphor for the interrelationship between the environment and humans.”(28) Her language metaphorically aims for the elemental, like that of the natural world. Yet the physical manifestation – gaffer tape, computer cables, screens etc. – are not of this land:
“Like the refugee birds, we colonial invaders attempt to connect to the landscape.” (30)
.
.
As “straight ahead” animators, we compose in the immediacy of the moment. We improvise. Feet walking repeatedly between the artwork and the camera take on dance a ritualistic rhythm. Self consciousness is lost as you become at one with the process. Materials appear to move of their own accord. Shapes in time and space emerge.
One of my great teachers was the Australian sculptor Lenton Parr. He told my class that we will know when the dialogue between ourselves and the work is complete. The work will stand alone. No further intervention will be needed.