Studio 2 statement of intention - artscapes

Featured image by Ronald Kuang - https://www.instagram.com/p/CCl9xxHD5WE/

For this studio, I want to create a series of animated gif artworks that conveys how it feels to be in isolation from a deeply emotionally charged, visceral and abstract perspective. Something that I want to explore in this project is how visual storytelling through 2D animation can impart, through design and cinema elements, very specific moods that are hard to verbally articulate without experience. Through isolation, in my own experience, I have found that day-to-day life is undulating with emotions and moods that have come about in the bizarre new reality of a socially distanced community. These moods and feelings seem at times contigent and arbitrary, and yet in communicating with others in isolation, these are relatable and unifying feelings that connect us.

The context of this project comes from 2D gif artists such as Ronald Kuang and Rebecca Mock. Both artists are renowned for their specialisations in creating brief, looping and extraordinarily detailed gifs that can be exhibited alone or within a series. Kuang's style is recognisable in its pixel art, vaporwave motifs that are nostalgic for 1980s and 1990s anime. His use of pink and blues in a soft cyberpunk aesthetic, and references to popular anime in his works, has led to a portfolio of adorable, playful vignettes.

Rebecca Mock is a cartoonist and designer, and has created multiple animated artscapes that are restrained in their animation, but this lends itself to creating moments out of time that carry their own mood and feelings.

Additionally, I am inspired to explore anime and manga series of the slice of life genre, as well as further exploring aspect-to-aspect storytelling techniques that are present in these media forms. Something that is significant to me about aspect-to-aspect storytelling in manga is how artists/writers use moments in space without any specific emphasis on time or action to create opportunity for reflection, contemplation or even just stillness. I will look further into this through cartoonist Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics

POTENTIAL IMPACT

I am taking this project as an opportunity to process and articulate the experiences I have had in isolation. This could serve as a reflective documentary piece about how it felt to be in isolation, and be something for people to come back to in years to come and recognise and articulate their reflections on this time in history. Additionally, I want to look at how people were affected so drastically by the emotional and mental impact that isolation had on them - feelings of loneliness, feeling locked down, confused and frustrated getting mixed with moments of contentment, connection and these bizarre opportunities that may have arisen from it.