OPEN DOOR with SHANTONA

Session 1

And so we begin. Musarat and I (Rozi) are working with a group of girls aged 13-19.

Musarat introduced the project. This will be a combined textile and animation project contributing work to a final exhibition. We are taking the work of Michael Brennand Wood as a starting point. You can see examples of his work here http://brennand-wood.com.

I added that I can see a lot of beautiful and careful detail in this work, and it also has a strong sense of pattern. I can see how these patterns can animate, moving, almost dancing in intricate and intriguing sequences.

I described to the group how animation is the ‘illusion’ of movement, caused by the way your brain receives the information through your eyes.

Using the zoetrope optical toy, we looked at some zoetrope strips that have been created using abstract patterns, and everyone had a go at creating some of their own. 

There is no story, or theme attached to the work at this stage of the project, which allows everyone a freedom to experiment, with shape and colour and pattern.

There were two further activities to explore. The group divided into two and Musarat and I led an activity each. Musarat worked with the participants to create patterns by arranging gems, butterfly-shaped buttons and bottle tops.

The other group used the iPad and stylus, and a painting app to create painted patterns. Each participant took a turn at adding to the pattern and saved the image at the new stage. This sequence should also playback as a movie clip, and animate.

We also used the photo booth app to capture a sequence of photos of the zoetrope strips, using the kaleidoscope effect. This creates amazing abstracted patterns, especially of hennered hands, and blue nailpolish! These photos were uploaded into iStopMotion on the MacBook. The participants only needed showing once, and were uploading more photos to create movie clips without need for guidance.

The groups swapped over so everyone had a chance to try each activity.

Experimenting was rife especially with the various effects on the iPad!

We have yet to decide on a title for the project.

Some suggestions are, Moving Crafts, Crafty Moves, Fabricamation???

We shall see!

 

Rozi & Musarat