My art analyzes and aims to synthesize the manner in which individuals construct their reality from the materials of culture, experience and innate feeling. Animation is uniquely able to present to us that which we imagine and bring it to life. It enables me to create or translate realities from imaginary or metaphysical states into a material manifestation. I am striving for the realization of dreams that transcend the individuals’ consciousness, to craft the multifaceted world within the mind of the observer. The images I present become the viewer’s own through the act of their passing through the filter of the beholder’s perceptions. My aim is to inflate the state of suspended disbelief, though the generation of distinct emotion, enough to challenge their simulation of reality with the goal of fostering a desire to question the myriad facets of their worlds. This is not to encourage a dismissive attitude; rather it is to expose the fragility of preconceived notions and the insidious propensity of simulacra, which is only the image of what we presume it to be.
Animation is a vehicle for presenting to people material that would otherwise be rejected for failing to fit into the observer’s mental model of reality. Utilizing stop-motion animation, one of my primary media, gives life to physical objects; these real, moving objects seem to possess a fleeting, yet tangible existence, causing a sense of the uncanny. All techniques of animation may foster the uncanny, but it is stop-motion that is most potent, for the objects animated already have a ‘real’ status before they are set into motion, our minds recognize the depicted objects as ‘real,’ but these ‘dead’ objects break our subconscious expectations through their appearance of having life. It is this uncanny relation to reality, that is tangential and fragile, that is a key element of my work. Rather than the classification of objects or dissection of a perceived image, it is an effect of a process of perceiving, a moment of existence that I am attempting to translate.
Animation is a ripe medium for art and dialogue and enables me to create or translate realities from imaginary or metaphysical states into a material manifestation, to elucidate the “floating world.” Through my art, I learn about myself and other people. When someone shares their impressions of my work with me, we both become collaborators in the fabrication and extension of the worlds I present, and perhaps gain insight into our own perceptions. This proves a small measure of the physical effect that worlds of supposed fantasy, the dream-like “floating world,” can have on life in waking reality. How many books, films, or stories told throughout the ages have united people in communal dreams? We surround ourselves in fantasy in one form or another and these dreams float on the periphery of our perceived world, the vivid fragments of daily life. Some of these worlds hurt us and others aid us in defining ourselves and navigating our lives. The physicality of the dreams’ existence is manifested in the dream’s effects on the choices we make. Again, this is the element that I wish to illuminate, the effect of seeing as opposed to the image perceived.
This is the fact that truly requires illumination. Every day, the world of human civilization becomes simultaneously more capable of realizing some of the many communal dreams that exist and at once less able to fulfill other such dreams. Yet it seems we do not understand how to choose from among them. We make our individual model of existence in our minds and live there without noticing how it disturbs or supports those around us. Though we shall always reside in this bubble and cannot enter anyone else’s, the shape we choose to take, the vision we choose to share; that forges the shared dream into reality. This is the extension of the most profound desire of childhood, to make real what we imagine.
I have chosen not to use my name some of the time in my art. This is in an effort to allow my art to be viewed in a manner that removes the cultural specificity that a name implies. Since I still wish to maintain ownership of my work, I have adopted symbols or seals that I use instead or in addition to my name of choice. Though it is also something I am still in the process of implementing. The symbol I have created to represent the concept of this statement is -)]}o{[(-. Hence forth I shall use it to refer to me, in addition to the names of fragmented paradigm, and Corroded Dream Fabricator.
