Animatronic Beginnings and Comeback

At a certain time before the late 90’s, practical effects were used frequently in film production, but as soon as Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) was introduced into the media, it forever changed how special effects were incorporated. As CGI allowed for more creative freedom in designing landscapes or characters,  there has been a steady decline in the use of practical effects, such as puppets, stop-motion, and animatronics.

Animatronics on one hand weren’t established until the 17^th century in Pre-Industrial Revolution France. The first animatronics were made as miniature characters built within an advanced clock. When every hour struck, the characters would be animated by gears connected to time-keeping devices (as said in the Stan Winston School of Character Arts webpage).

 Modern animatronics weren't established until 1961 by Walt Disney when developing animated characters as entertainment for his films and theme parks. An animatronic of President Abraham Lincoln was accounted as the first functional human audio-animatronic developed for his theme park. 

Ironically, the Disney company would later return to using practical effects when obtaining the Star Wars licence from Lucasfilms. Videos on their YouTube channel go in further depth of how their fictional characters and creatures were animated using advanced remote-controlled skeletal framed technology to make their creations look as believable as possible, as shown in this video starting from 2;10 to 4;03, Thankfully there is still an appreciation and advancement in practical animatronics used to this day. 

The Preforming Artists

Performance is now a major subject for media, now that many artists began experimenting with film, visual art later translated to theater, audio, and video. Robert Rauschenberg was one of the earliest proponents of intermingling art and technology together, with the help from other artists, the presented Homage a New York in 1960. 

I took some inspiration to look into some of Rauschenberg's work, this video reveals his work in paintings, he was in some respects a painter and a sculptor. He would then work with John Cage and Merce Cunningham to work on his multimedia projects such as Variations V.

Duchamp's Arrival

While continuing the introduction from movement to fluxus, I am then brought to a familiar name, that being Marcel Duchamp. I remember Duchamp as an artist that was known for his work in the dada sub-movement during the postmodernism era. One of his most famous works in that era was a urinal piece titled Fountain, which became a controversial piece as it was often rejected by the committee, regardless that it had every right to be displayed as he paid the fee to do so.

But this time we see more of his work revolving around contemporary art, such as the Optical disc in 1925, and The Large Glass (the Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Even) of 1915.

Motion was not out of the discussion yet, as artists who studied fluxus worked into new creative ways for film and video. Andy Warhol, who was another big name in the art community, known for his famous works in pop art, also took interest in film as he performed Kiss in 1963, and Eat in 1964.

The Art of Scanography

It’s incredible to discover how far one artist can go to prefect a new and unusual technique. Scanned art is a media I've rarely ever heard of until just recently in class when proposing a project that resolves around scanning objects. At first I would have figured one couldn't do much with scanners aside of placing objects on the top panel, but that all changed when the artist Maggie Taylor was brought up as an example. By my astonishment, her work oddly resembles more of classical paintings more so than a collage of scanned images merged together with the help of editing programs. I would have never believed it had if some stranger told me these images were taken from a scanner. 

These are all samples of Maggie Taylor's work, more can be seen on her webpage through this link. 

Self-Portrait and its meaning

The story behind my self-portrait showcases the mystery of what’s behind the mask, behind what I may appear to myself and others, a hidden figure encased in what is merely an image just for show. Notice how the illustrated portrait is notably darker in color and in theme in contrast to me peering through the door. The olive green color is prominent through the image, as homage to the similar colors of the walls in my house. The dark colors, including the unusual black eyes and messy hair add a grim theme to the portrait, as it represents my serious and dull side as I go about my everyday business through school, work, and other places that are out of my element. The photo of me is set to contrast to the illustrated image. I can be seen wearing a much more colorful shirt with patterns including the Fleur-de-lis on the shoulder. In a strange way I point upward as an unusual way of symbolizing “upward,” which is meant to further emphasize a more uplifting theme with the photo. Lastly, a lighting effect was added through the crack of the door, this was done to signify the joyfulness that is stored within oneself.

Code switching was the idea behind the image, a term I picked up back in Cultural Anthropology. It is the practice of alternating between two or more languages or behaviors in conversation, depending on the change of environment of the individual.

Moving Forward

Continuing the chapter, it further discusses the concepts of movement explored by artists as a new form of media in art. Film of the Avant –Grade Cinema was first developed by Thomas Edison with his assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson when experimenting with a phonograph that made images move in an animated fashion. This leads to the works of the director Georges Méliès, a great innovator of his time, directing multiple silent short films, including his most famous work: Le Voyage dans la Lune, which since then has been praised as a spectacle sensation. This was the beginning of what would be the dawn of cinema. After that time, Sergei Einstein was known to use various technological methods in filming his work, such as the The Battleship Potemkin of 1925. Moving through the 1920s, film and photography go hand-in-foot, as both mediums explore the concepts of movement.