APD Week 11 - Play and Stillness

By Yuxuan Hu (Estella)

Context:

"One cannot step into the same river once" is a saying of the ancient Greek philosopher Cradylus. In philosophical terms it is a relativistic argument that exaggerates absolute motion and denies the existence of relative stillness.

It amounts to saying that there is no stable state of existence, that things are always in flux, and that there is no time when they are relatively static. Everything changes all the time, and there can be no moment of stillness or stability. It is as if a river, the moment we step into it, becomes a different river, so that we are not stepping into the same river at once. So there is no absolute stillness, all stillness is relative.

Method:

I started by recording about 10 minutes of video of the traffic in front of building100 at the school. By extracting different frames in AE, I created a stationary vehicle in the traffic, as if there was a button to stop time. Although absolute stillness does not exist in real life, it is possible to freeze frames to create a stillness effect through technology.

Response:

US filmmaker Conner Griffith specialises in making absorbing, deeply original digital art from images of the ways we move around in and shape our world. His imaginative animation Auto toys with people and automobiles, walkways and highways, forming an impressionistic and enchanting collage of everyday The artist's imaginative animation.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7oaGaHemM8)

Reflection:

After creating this effect, I was reminded that this technique is actually used in many science fiction films only to highlight the contrast between the dynamic and the static. For example, the raindrops pause in the air and time stops. The protagonist stands still while the scene around him shifts wildly, which can be used to show the protagonist's brainstorming or memory flashbacks. The protagonist is in some apparatus and then the scene around him changes, which might be used to express the jump between runaways. So this contrast of movement could be used in a wider range of scenes.