As with any artistic medium, the history of animation has been intrinsically tied to technology. New inventions have repeatedly opened new possibilities for making moving images. The magic lantern (1659) allowed images to be projected, phenakistiscope (1833) made fluid loops of drawn images possible, zoetrope (1866), and even the flip book (1868), helped lead up to the first film-based and hand-drawn animations in the early 20th century.
Today artists have all of those strategies available to them, as well as those made possible by computers, tablets, and applications for rendering movement in both 2D and 3D. Drawing upon this rich history, the artists in On the Move offer a small sampling of what is being practiced today. Artists included in the exhibition are Lilli Carré, Jake Fried, Lauren Gregory, Amy Lockhart, Richard McGuire, and Jim Trainor.
This exhibition marks the re-opening of the SBMA’s Project Room as a new exhibition space dedicated to new media, animation, sound, etc. On the Move is the first of many exciting exhibitions to come!
image: Jake Fried, still image from Night Vision, 2015, hand-drawn animation with ink and white-out.