Kinetic Drawing Number 7, 2009, 32 min. 32 sec

Kinetic Drawing Number 7 comes out of the process of building a databank of 8 micro-animations ranging from 5 to 40 frames (1 second of video is roughly 30 frames per second) that are based on a digitally processed pen and ink drawing from one of my sketchbooks. Working with a musical scale (F# major), I used an 8 octave system and generated a triangle wave tuned to the frequency of each note in each octave in the animation software used to create the work. The colors I worked with were the primary colors of light and reflective color -- red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black -- seven colors representing seven notes in a musical scale. I created a layer of animation for each octave that was comprised of one of the micro-animations in each color, starting with the lowest notes assigned to the shortest of the micro-animations so that they would produce an underlying beat in the piece. To determine how and when a section would appear or overlap another in the layer, I used a chance operation, rolling dice, to add a sense of randomness and to eliminate any particular bias for a color, or arrangement of sounds. The first roll would determine which section out of seven would be used, the second roll determined the number of dice I would need to decide how many iterations of that section there would be, the third roll was for how many dice I would need to roll to determine the amount of overlap or amount space between each section, and the fourth roll was for the number of times those dice would be rolled. A fifth roll determined whether the next group would overlap the former or vice versa. When each section was completed, I would roll dice to determine how long the next layer would be. When the final composite was generated, I had eight pieces of animation ranging in length between 2:30 min to 10 min, so over the course of the piece, sections are repeated and re-contextualized.

The driving concept behind this work is part technical exploration of a single drawn image processed and presented over time with a larger consideration of a mark in digital space and part aesthetic, phenomenological inquiry that questions fundamental aspects of how we experience the world. I attempt to do so with a minimal amount direct authorship to determine a final product outside of the development and implementation of a somewhat austere system intended to generate a sense of randomness and touching on an idea of nature in the machine. I think a lot about how we experience the world and consider the idea of a rift between the physical, tactile experience of our senses and our drive toward analytical reflexivity. When we think we are experiencing a thing or moment we are really experiencing our thoughts about that with which we are engaged and are therefore not truly engaged at all. My hope is that through the various elements in this piece -- flickering, color, sound, continuous movement and introduction of elements -- that the viewer's analytical perception is broken down and they are able to experience the work in the present moment.





Kinetic Drawing Number 5, 10 minutes, 2009



Kinetic Drawing Number 6, 4 minutes, 2009

Kinetic Drawing Number 6 is the sixth in a series of works that attempt to explore the digital image over time, less as a traditional animation and more like a drawing or painting in motion. It is essentially a processed drawing, beginning with pen on paper and processed by various means into the animated work you see here. I am interested in how we view images and the idea of what a literal image over time outside of a narrative context entails. On one hand, it's about the flash of an image in one frame, relating to notions of after image and considering the idea of the image over time. I am interested in the fine line between the physical act of seeing and the proclivity of the intellect to interfere with that experience Ñ that our analysis or thoughts of what we are seeing actually usurps the act of seeing itself. The goal is to envelope the viewer in the experience of viewing, where they momentarily are drawn out of themselves and into the experience of the work itself (in the vein of Schopenhaur's aesthetics or the Buddhist concept of no self).




Here are some new animations I've uploaded as part of my ongoing series of kinetic drawings. The first one is essentially a composite of all three playing simultaneously (basically as I would play them in an ideal situation in a gallery space). The sound of each piece is intended to go in and out of phase with the other thus all three become a single piece that evolves over time.



New Tongue Animation



Here are a few images from a show called Worker's Holiday featuring the work yielded in an ongoing collaboration between David Staniunas and myself.



Here's a new kinetic drawing I've been working on. This is the latest work where I explore the image over time simply as an image, thinking about it purely as a drawing in motion.



My work was recently accepted into the Drawing Center's Viewing Program. You can view it here.

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