Eigenzeit – Experimental arrangements of analog animation and their intrinsic artistic value examined in the context of historical photographic processes

Digitization has profoundly changed all artistic fields but especially the processes of animation. Judith Andó's research project is a deliberate counterpoint to this and explores new forms of animation explicitly with old visual techniques.

Project start:
2017
Project completion:
2018

With her project "Eigenzeit" Judith Andó tests the possibilities and limits of historical imaging processes of early photographic history for the creation of moving images and animations. For this purpose, she also being a professional film restorer examines early unique processes, such as the collodion wet plate (glass plate photography) as well as modern variations of other historical techniques, collected under the term "alternative" photography techniques. Her artistic investigation of historical image technologies not only cites the history of photography, but also wants to archive and animate historical image-making processes. The uniqueness of historical photographic aesthetics is to be explored for its applicability as an artistic means in today's animation processes. For her, the focus is on the genuine intrinsic value of artistic expression in analog space. Artistic work in real rather than digital space is at the center of her investigation. Haptics as a sensual element of artistic work is consciously contrasted with working on the untouchable surfaces of the digital and examined for its genuine intrinsic value in the artistic process. Just as Andó will compare analog and digital processes, she wants to juxtapose scientific and artistic research associatively by focussing on the sujet of "plant motifs". In Andó's research laboratory, the plants are therefore carefully sought material and important metaphor at the same time: They stand for the living cycle, as well as for chance and deviation in the artistic research process - apart from the norms and rules of logarithms or science. On the one hand Andó wants to fathom the intrinsic value of artistic research throughout the process. On the other hand she also wants to make it tangible in the final product. Her imaging process records the progression of real (growth) motion through time-lapse. This is a contrary method compared to the synthetic generation of motion commonly used in animation. She does not, however, dispense with classical animation techniques, but uses various methods to intentionally construct the artistic process as a space where animation, film and photography come together, in order to experience their respective genuine peculiarities. In her experiment she makes the artistic process and the significance of accidental "peripheral phenomena" to an artistic strategy, an object of research.

"Eigenzeit" uses artistic processes to explore the following opposites as well as possibilities of their compatibility:

  • Randomness and planning
  • Acceleration and efficiency
  • (Alchemy)/chemistry/science and aesthetics/art
  • Photo (single image) + film (moving image) = animation
  • Transience and eternity
  • Analog and digital work

Project lead: Judith Andó