;)
kinetic
Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 4:16AM 
when i was in film school, one early experimental animator who's films were repeatedly referenced was len lye. as a sort of godfather of direct film, he painted and scratched onto film which was then projected, resulting in a unique interplay of rythm, color and movement. a colour box and free radicals in particular continue to be relevant today in their incredibly avant garde aesthetic.
i only realized len lye was kiwi and that he had a very prolific career designing all kinds of interactive art installations after i moved to wellington and happened to catch a lecture about him at the new zealand film archive. his kinetic sculptures can actually be found all over new zealand and are quite remarkable in the way they harness energy and motion. in this way, they appear as natural extensions of his work in film and animation. the above photo is his wind wand sculpture in new plymouth, which inicidentlaly is a great little town to spend a short holiday.
animation, newZealand, sculpture in art, film
Reader Comments (2)
Len Lye... I should be more familiar than I am. I've seen Free Radicals but not much else of his. (Can you believe I've been here nearly seven years and have never even made it to New Plymouth?!?). This sculpture though really reminded me of something I hadn't seen in... wow 12 years. It's a little experiment a small team led by Jan Pinkava did on the day (literally) for the Ottawa Animation Festival in 1998. Of course, it's on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpeC_ex6Bkc
Ottawa's where it all kicked off for me and being exposed to so much work from around the world really opened my eyes. It's what I love about animated shorts - concept - and that it doesn't have to be about toil and sweat and a million drawings and perfect finish - though that's fine too (from memory, pretty sure Pinkava won top prize for the very slick Geri's Game that year). The fact that the guy could, with a bit of vision, come up with this 'just like that'... yep, animated shorts is where creativity is at!
Ottawa's a nice place too and its National Gallery is very impressive - the artist behind the sculpture, whose name I forget, was kindly accommodating of the filmmaker's request to the benefit of all who attended the festival. If you're ever in the city (if you've not been there before) make time to visit...
Matt R
that is a sweet animation. i agree that it's nice to approach animation in a way that seems to be almost the antithesis of what it seems to be- fast and dirty as opposed to laborous and ultra formalized.i want to go to ottawa now!