APD - Week 3 - Play and Time

Note: YouTube embedding is not working for strange reasons so please head to the following link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SREqlLrXcaI

CONTEXT

Last semester, while I was on APD before taking my leave of absence, I made a short 3D animation exploring the concept of clockwise. While I really liked it and felt I achieved a nice result, dissecting the concept literally and indirectly (showing the physical movement and including elements that only work clockwise), this time I decided to explore something more practical experimenting with video, which is not my expertise.

For this exercise, I tried to distance myself from the literal meaning of time and using loops as an aesthetic resource. I thought about time in a broader sense and how we could possibly be able to manipulate it with a simple action, for example, with the push of a button.

The viewer will have many interpretations: what happened between those two different moments? Is it suggesting some sort of passing of the time? That person can skip time or move faster than our normal perception of time? Which could involve taking the current object, placing it somewhere and taking the other object to replace it in the same place and time. It was an accidental but really strong concept that I wanted to explore with this short clip.

METHOD

Exploring the studio, I just started to play and test the idea of throwing objects into the air. One of my first ideas was to complete a full cycle using different frames of different objects, but then I started thinking about the different interpretations the viewers could have if I showed different timeframes in one short moment. After doing some initial tests, I found it visually interesting and then I started to try with different objects.

Editing is the main tool in here. Taking tiktok as an inspiration, the use of simple scene cuts provided the most powerful tool to showcase the concept.

RESPONSE

A short video that includes multiple clips representing a single moment.

REFLECTION

The best result of the exercise was the different interpretations that each viewer had. From a simple “That’s visually interesting” and “I like how things transform on each iteration” to more complex questions like “Is this character able to manipulate time in a sense of like the superhero Flash does, my going really fast?” or “Is this the same timeframe, or it is showing the passing of time while the character is trying to play or trying new things?”. Even for me, rewatching this short clip, I can find even new interpretations of how time is being manipulated in many ways. What happen if the character just snaps his fingers and creates a time portal to move items between time and space? Despite not being a loop, is this showcasing a very same moment in different realities with different objects?

I’m really surprised to say that this concept came from a really rough testing idea, and even with a small iteration, it became its own thing. I think, having so much more time, it would be amazing to experiment with this on platforms like tiktok, trying to present situations where time is involved and the viewer is the one proposing its own interpretation.