The Lure of the New, Cognition Institute annual conference Symposium 2: Imagery, Dance and Creativity
20 March 2013, Central Methodist Hall, Plymouth
2.00pm - 4.00pm
As Yet Unseen: using my notebook as a storyboardAbstract
My presentation is a critical reflection, from a practice-based perspective as an artist film-maker, which explores the choreography, performance, and mediation of creative movement in animation, using my own experimental moving image artworks as case studies.
By its nature, the technique of animation requires the performer-animator to be immersed in a minimum of two space-time experiences simultaneously: during making, the frame-by-frame performance of stopped moments is overlaid with a kinaesthetic mind-image of the illusion of continuous motion that will be perceived by the audience from the completed animation on the screen. Thus, as something original is given visual form in the world as a linear sequence of still images, the animator is aware simultaneously of its eventual synthesized realization ‘in motion’.
In my paper I examine the creative processes and drawing strategies used to encode animated performance from mind to screen, illustrated with examples drawn from my practice-based research. I will focus particularly on the role of the storyboard, a communication device which uses two dimensional graphic notation. Widely used in animation to map key moments of action and modes of thinking in a performed ‘narrative’, the storyboard functions as both choreographic pre-visualizer and as a documentary record of enactment.
Dream with Plymouth University: I took this pic of my fellow presenters getting set up for our symposium during the lunch break on Wednesday afternoon. My first visit to the Central Methodist Hall, which was designed like a cinema.