Animations 2020

Catalogue / Memoir
Introduction Pictures Objects Animations

ANIMATIONS are made from things I have made and found.

1973----   1988----   1991----   1994----   1995----   1998----   2000----   2001----   2003----   2006----   2007----   2008----   2009----   2010----   2011----   2012----   2013----   2014----   2015----   2016----   2017----   2018----   2019----   2020----   2021----   2022----   2023----   2024----   2025----   2026----  

 

Lunar Time Living Data

Stories are animated and arranged
on Maps to show where they come from,
in a Library organised according to ways minds think, and
in Bodies that express cultural knowledge through languages of art.

2020 Animated touch screen in a suitcase.
Designed with Cat Kutay, Claire Sives and Ken Wilson for Living Dataanimations. Ways minds think identified by Tyson Yunkaporta.

Launched at the Charles Sturt University Seminar and Exhibition, 'Listening in the Anthropocene', with Leanne Lovegrove, a woman of the Worimi, Biripi Nation and Librarian at Eora College, Sydney (currently called Eora TAFE NSW).

Originally designed to travel. Lunar Time now flourishes online. It evolves through interactions between people and so, in this way, may reach more people and inspire them to tell their own stories, chart their own maps, build their own libraries and make their own art.

 

Water story

Drawing in sand combines ways of knowing
from Aboriginal cultural arts and the scientific method.

2020 Video made and presented with Ellery Johnsonat the conference, 'Water Connects Us'.

Scientist Ellery Johnsontells his PhD story in words and sand drawings, that health of natural systems, including people, requires everyone to sustainably manage natural water flows for mutual benefit. Anyone can do these drawings to pass on this knowledge. Just acknowledge and reference Ellery Johnson and this video.

 

Ocean Dance

Global ocean cycles are driven from Antarctica through the Arctic.
Clockwise currents spiral, transform to anticlockwise, and return.

Dance: Lisa Roberts.
Animation: Paul Fletcher
Music: Stephen Taberner

 

White lines trace a journey of global waters as the Southern Ocean currents spiral clockwise and are transformed by complex forces into an anticlockwise movement as they reach the north pole.

This animation combines different responses to the same dance, of water currents flowing from the Southern Ocean to the Arctic. In the Covid-19 pandemic, Paul, Stephen and I each worked from different places. I performed in my living room as I imagined myself moving in the currents. I danced in ultraviolet light, with white paper bands on head, wrists and ankles.

Animator Paul Fletcher responded to the video recording from where he lives near Bendigo, Victoria. He multiplied, layered, coloured, varied and syncopated the tempo of the original gestures. Also a musician, Paul made a track that works as another stand-alone iteration of this piece.

From Lawson, in the Blue Mountains of NSW, musician Stephen Taberner composed the soundscape, "when we wander":

...this music came about very directly... I looked at the images and played what I saw. quite soon there was a sense that was both nomadic and aquatic. so....I filled the sink with water and got to work with some saucepan lids and wine glasses...

 

Voices from the Southern Ocean

Whale: I will come back to regurgitate the lore
Krill: So the land and the sea can know each other.

Living Data installation, Mawson station, Antarctica. Design by Paul Fletcher, Lisa Roberts and Ken Wilson, inspired by the primal forms of the sea urchin and traditional Aboriginal meeting house made of whale bones.
Animation credits

 

This is an old story.
Older than everything.

When the world was new, the lore was created,
and the whale and the serpent looked about
and saw the ocean.

I will look after the land because that is my home,
but who will look after the ocean? said the serpent.

I will look after all the salt water, said the whale,
because the fish and the turtles, the crabs and the weeds,
the coral and the caves all need care.

But you will need to return to the land every now and then,
said the serpent, to bring back your lore.

I will, said the whale. I will beach myself on the sand,
I will come back to the land to regurgitate the lore
so that the lore can be complete
and the land and the sea
can know each other.

Bruce Pascoe 'Whale and Serpent' in 'Salt: Selected Stories and Essays', p.134. Pub. Black Inc. 2019

 

Early ancestors of the whale once walked on land...
These land-dwelling ancestors lived about 50 million years ago.

Katie Pavid, 'When whales walked on four legs' Pub. National History Museum, London, 8 August 2017