Animation commission

Excited to be working on a new commission for Animate Projects, exploring what it means to be human in the context of Covid-19.

My ideas have evolved by thinking about how we’ve become more acutely aware of our bodies during lockdown. It’s become a dangerous place. Everyday things like food, exercise or touch have become big things to negotiate. We’re more emotionally vulnerable – crying unexpectedly, feeling intensely lonely, bored or stressed. Everything is magnified and experienced through body sensations.

The animation will focus upon the internal body, with a bodily soundtrack of heartbeats, breathing, swallowing etc. It will merge analogue drawings inspired by bio-medical imagery with creative coding to animate the drawings in response to the soundtrack data. The coding and data seem particularly relevant for this project because the pandemic is made sense of through data and by using algorithms to model and predict future outbreaks. I’ll be working with creative coder Chris Ball, and the working title for the animation is: ‘In the Same Breath’ Here’s a first drawing