THEME – PLAY & TIME
On this week’s theme of time, I decided to work on a looping animation. I wanted to see how looping animation can evoke a feeling of discomfort instead of getting the audience mesmerized and hypnotised. This idea emerged when I read this week’s reading on looping animation.
METHOD
Initially I was planning to work with gory visuals to amplify the unpleasantness, but I decided to do something more subtle. I chose to use an everyday life setting, and how the repetition evoke depression or a feeling of dissatisfaction. By using looping animation, I was able to show how repetitive and flat the life of the character is. Additionally, I added a small gesture of revealing how the smiling face of the character is just a mask, showing the real expression of the character. The character takes off the mask only at the end of the day only to wears it again the next morning. The longer the cycle goes on, the more tiring the life of the character will seem. This approach is playful in a way it experimented on defying the common perception towards a loop.
CONTEXT
It is a Pleasure to See You Again (2017) by Wies Vander Wal is my main reading for this week. “Only when the duration is relatively short and we can notice the repetition clearly, the loop can become a pleasure. The moment when repetition turns into rhythm, the loop gets mesmerizing. When mesmerized by the loop, like you are caught in the loop, you want the experience to last forever,” (Wal, 2017). This sentence is where my main incentive emerged. What if a loop is used for the contrary? What if the familiarity wakes us up instead of pulling us further into the loop? This is the supporting mindset that I have for my final outcome. Additionally, there has been some practitioners that creates unusual looping animation, some do create slight discomfort due to the content. One of the practitioners is Master Tingus. Another similar approach is one of the Tiktok trends on ‘life after college’ which shows how life repeats on waking up, work, going home, sleep, and goes on again.
REFLECTION
The timing on the animation could have been better. Some activities felt too long while some other needs more time (the sleeping scene for example). Adding different lighting schemes might also be helpful for the audience to understand the day-night cycles. I think that the final outcome does embody my main intention in creating discomfort the longer the loop is played.
REFERENCES
Wies Vander Wal. (2017). It is a Pleasure to See You Again. https://kabk.github.io/go-theses-17-wies-van-der-wal/
Master Tingus
An example on ‘life after college’ video on Tiktok
By Eugenia Cynthiaputri
Email Eugenia Cynthiaputri
Published On: 12/08/2022
