~ Animation ~
Portlet by Kathleen Kelley and Sarah Rose Nordgren
Where does the poem end and the dance begin? I don’t usually include the filmmaker’s name in the title, but the collaboration between dance and video artist Kathleen Kelley and poet Sarah Rose Nordgren is so tight here, it’s hard to see how to credit the poem exclusively to Nordgren. In an email, she told me that “the poetry and choreography for this piece were done collaboratively, i.e. they were created simultaneously in response to each other.” The result is pure videopoetry.
Portlet is one of three films from their collaborative project Digitized Figures, which has a dedicated page on Kelley’s website where you can view all three as well as a live rehearsal video. Here’s the description:
Digitized Figures: A Practice of Choreographing Text is a collaborative project in development by poet Sarah Rose Nordgren and choreographer Kathleen Kelley. Set to premiere in 2015, Digitized Figures will create an interactive performance environment that weaves words and images through both digital and analog space to investigate the other face of digital technology: its mirrored relationship to organic and evolutionary impulses.
The final version of this installation will include 3 video projections that surround and react to the viewer, animating poems as living and responsive text. Visitors to the installation will be able to move through each of the projections, changing and redirecting them with their own gestures. In addition to the projections, there will be dancers performing live in the space, providing a geometric embodiment that works contrapuntally to the abstraction of the moving words. The viewers will be able to interact with the dancers using touchscreens that give the dancers qualitative and emotional directions.
I’ve featured poetry-dance videos on this website since its inception; it’s a fascinating genre. With the inclusion of “dancing” text animation and the incorporation of the videos into a live, interactive installation/performance, this project really pushes the genre forward.
High Windows by Philip Larkin
An animation of Larkin’s famous 1974 poem—knowing the date is key to understanding what now seems like a somewhat dated text. And yet this is the first of three films that the Paris-based studio Troublemakers.tv have produced so far for a futuristic poetry-film project called the Poetry Movement, whose creators appear to believe they’re breaking new ground:
The Poetry Movement is the ‘adolescent’ chapter within The Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation. It stands as the next logical step in terms of the way we consume verse and will grow and develop into a creative space that encapsulates the beauty of imagination and inventiveness. Within today’s technology lead landscape now sits a place in which timeless literature can be reborn and set free. The Poetry Movement is a radical and accessible platform for brilliance, creativity and vision.
Acting as if they’ve invented the genre is of course not unique; the folks at Motionpoems too are often guilty of that. But there is definitely something different about the three films produced for the Poetry Movement so far. Watch their adaptations of Plath’s “Death & Co.” and a section of “The Wasteland” and you’ll see what I mean. The idea I guess is to appeal to a generation raised on video games. “High Windows,” literal as it may be, at least does not make me laugh uncontrollably, and treats the poem with respect. Onur Senturk directed. The recitation is by Harold Pinter. (See Vimeo for the rest of the credits.)
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Scalia’s Poetry Slam”
View on Vimeo or at Daily Kos (which includes the text of the found poem).
Scalia’s Poetry Slam
Animation by Mark Flore
2015
For many years I made a living poking fun at people. And why not? There was money to be made and I was good at it. I’m still pretty good at it but now I’m a bit more reluctant to parade my sarcasm and wit for fear of backlash. There are those who misinterpret humor, sarcasm, satire, etc., but as the saying goes, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.
That being said, this week’s (bi-monthly) review is an animation that pokes fun at Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia—as well as the poetry community. The creator Mark Flore takes a political stand and combines it with slam poetry. The result is hilarious.
Scalia’s Poetry Slam is well done, unpretentious and fun. It reminds me of how unassuming animation on TV used to be when I was a kid. Aside from the process being labor intensive (artists would hand-draw every movement), I assume there was a time factor involved as well. The cartoons were created for network television and clients can be demanding. The artists had to get the message across using a minimal amount of movement. This applied to some animation houses but not all (Disney had larger teams and produced multiple projects). Much like the cartoons of yesteryear, this one gets the point across without all the bells and whistles. I like to compare it to the style of humor in a New Yorker cartoon: it’s the old less-is-more theory. The piece relies on simplicity to carry the joke. Scalia’s Poetry Slam does a good job in embracing irony and helps put a smile on one’s face, reminding us not to take ourselves too seriously.
In the Dead of Winter We by R.A. Villanueva
Last week when I shared 2 Degrees by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner with animation by Jonathan “jot” Reyes, I mentioned that Reyes has also made a fully animated poem. This is that film, made for the poem “In the Dead of Winter We” by the Filipino American poet R.A. Villanueva, from his book Reliquaria,” which won the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry.
The film was nominated for the 2015 Webby Awards in the Best Online Video: Animation category, and the write-up there reveals some fascinating details, including the fact that Reyes and Villanueva are brothers:
What inspired you most to follow your dreams/vision while working on this project?
There could be no other way than to follow my vision. By definition, the entire project was a dream, it was a vision interpreted. This wasn’t a commercial, not a branding package. There were no clients, no expectations. All the work, all the years my brother put into crafting his lines, I could do no less than put everything I had into it. It was a culmination of every skill I had learned to date, an exhibition of years worth of tutorials with a pure purpose.What made your project stand out in your industry/field and unique from the rest? What obstacles did that present and how did you overcome them?
The was no budget allocated for this animation. It was created in a short amount of time. “In the Dead of Winter We” was completed in one week, worked on only during nights after I came home from my day job, and through one sleepless weekend. There was no money for voice over, so I called my brother and asked him to recite his poem for me as inspiration, not knowing it would be used for this. I actually think that worked out well as the tinny voice and ambient street noise added to the piece. A green blanket hung over my apartment’s front door served as my green screen. Restrictions force us into creativity.When did you first know that this work was going to be something special?
Immediately. It had to be special. It was for my brother. It was intensely personal. It wasn’t just about me and family, it was for them. In our day jobs, we’re often asked to sacrifice personal goals for the sake of buzzwords: product, branding, experience, etc.. Clients strip away meaningful bits as they see fit, as if at a salon. They craft it in their image, in what they want to see. For this, there was no client, no expectation. Whatever I put out there would be my own interpretation, and it could be nothing less for my family. In the end, it became the fusion of my family’s collective creativity.
2 Degrees by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CaZXCNfa04
Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner‘s impassioned poem about climate change in a video from CNN, part of their correspondent John D. Sutter’s two degrees series. It aired in late June. Jonathan “jot” Reyes, the creative director of video development at CNN, included half a minute of motion graphics in a film that otherwise hews closely to the standard TV formula for poetry: shots of the poet alternating with a collage of complementary footage, more or less illustrative of the text. For a dash of irony, you can watch this on the CNN website, where it’s preceded by an automobile ad. But a longer, interactive web feature on Sutter’s visit to the Marshall Islands also includes the video poem (which is the term he uses for it), along with some prefatory text:
During my brief time in the islands, I met people like Angie [Hepisus] who are witnessing climate change and who are trying to do what’s best for themselves and their families. By sharing their stories, they hope the rest of us might listen — might realize our actions have consequences for places we’ll never see, for people we’ll never meet. I also had the pleasure of meeting Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, a young mother and poet who has emerged as one of the country’s pre-eminent storytellers. A teacher at the College of the Marshall Islands, the 27-year-old also studies the oral stories that form the fabric of her nation and culture.
The article continues with two of Jetnil-Kijiner’s stories; click through for those. As Sutter points out, she spoke at the UN last fall, reading a different poem which was also made available as a video.
Incidentally, this isn’t jot Reyes’ first foray into videopoetry. I’ll be sharing another of his creations soon.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “At The Same Moment”
https://vimeo.com/68786837
At The Same Moment
Animation by Ezra Wube
2013
Let me begin by saying that although I appreciate the craft, I am not a poet. That’s why I partnered up with Nicelle Davis and assorted other poets to illustrate books and video poems. I visually interpret their words and manipulate the images to move in sync with the audio, thereby merging the two art forms. This is what video poetry is all about, the combination of visual, audio and time.
At The Same Moment is exactly that. It is a video poem that incorporates time and visual art, yet successfully transcends the absence of words. Again, I am not a poet, but watching this piece I feel as if I can write my own, thus allowing me to shift seamlessly from illustrator to writer and then motion artist.
At The Same Moment consists of stop motion animation paint on a single canvas. Personally I think it takes a lot of guts to paint, photograph and cover the images with new ones. Every image is well done, and they have a beautiful quality to them. It reminds me of the artist/animator William Kentridge who draws an image in charcoal, photographs it and erases it but not completely. He continues to draw over on the same paper, leaving a ghost of his images.
There is something to be said for painting. For me, good painting is uplifting and bad painting is annoying. This coupled with movement is perhaps how this type of art should be displayed, on a monitor in someone’s home, office, museum, etc. It would be a wonderful alternative to static art.
In the Air by Kate Sweeney
A unique poetry film: a hand-drawn animation of poets’ hands from interview snippets that can also be seen as a remix videopoem. Kate Sweeney explains in the Vimeo description:
Created from short elliptical sequences taken from archived interviews with four Bloodaxe poets. I wanted to isolate the gestures used when explaining the poetic, the abstract thoughts they couldn’t express in words alone. Gesture is communication that is also a kind of drawing in the air.
C.K Williams, in his interview with Ahren Warner, muses that “In a sense the final version of any work of art pretends to be an improvisation; even a painting. First the painter puts down the ground on the canvas or the wood then he puts down another layer of something then he begins to put the blocks in and then the last layer, little brush strokes, that look like improvisation”. The archive offers a window through to all those described layers. It tracks the process of producing a poem, a book and in a way, a poet. Inspired by my research in the archive, the animation includes the smudges, rips, mistakes and corrections, of the paper it was drawn on, revealing and incorporating the process into the final version.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Meek”
Meek
Poem by Harry Martinson
Film by Ana Perez Lopez
Voice by Johnny Carlson
Oloström is a municipality in Sweden where Ana Perez Lopez did an artist-in-residency. Much like any town or area it boasts of generations that chose to stay, thus preserving its culture—unfortunately not without sacrifice. This is the focus of the video poem Meek.
Oloström could be anywhere. I would compare it to Pittsburgh, but I assume it’s much more visually appealing. This is my guess. I would like to think that Lopez is trying to convince us that there is an aspect which is intriguing, even though it has succumbed to the modern age. All in all I think her interpretation of the poem is dead on. It sheds a light on how modernization has made life in Oloström mundane. “But Oloström grew with a factory, a building where everything from pots, bullets and cars can be made.” (A quote from her Vimeo description.)
Ana chose to animate Meek using a cut paper/wood block style. It’s monochromatic, blue and white, scratchy, and the entire look lends itself to simple computer and/or traditional animation. I suppose the sheet music floating in the background is the same we hear in the video poem. It’s a nice design element, but since I don’t read music, for me it remains a mystery. I’ll take her word for it because it is graphically uncomplicated, which reinforces the message, thereby making Meek a very powerful work of art.
Visit Ana Perez Lopez at Vimeo.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter”
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter
Poem by Mark Strand
Film by Scott Wenner
Voice by Don Drive
Recording by Kelly Pieklo
Motionpoems 2013
I love animated videopoems. This appreciation developed while I was growing up watching cartoons with my favorite baby sitter, the television set. Although most animated videopoems cannot be compared to Heckle and Jeckle or Bugs Bunny, they still bring back memories of my formative years, eating Wonder Bread and butter sandwiches. The shows that I watched were filled with sarcasm and also had a dark side. When I look back, one could say that they were for the most part inappropriate and violent. That’s the down side. The up side is that they helped shape my sick sense of humor. Perhaps watching cartoons prepared me for adulthood. It’s sad to think of Tweety Bird as a role model.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter is exactly what I’m talking about in terms of it having a hint of darkness. The design is well done, the timing is perfect and the art is beautifully animated. The first scene involving the graffiti subway is a nice touch. I won’t bother to compare it to When At A Certain Party In NYC. Both are on the same level in terms of excellence. Both are wonderfully executed and although seemingly simple, they’re amazingly complex. Again the animation is flawless and I am still trying to figure out which program Scott Wenner used. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some kind of 3D aspect in After Effects, but that’s a technical question we animators like to ponder.
The poetry is wonderful. The ending is a bit of a surprise, but not really. So many times we expect more from a situation and are left hanging. Although the character is plain in appearance he remains expressive and possesses an amazing amount of emotion. This coupled with the poetry makes this videopoem outstanding.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter tells a story that leaves you dangling. We are experiencing a small yet unsettling trip through limbo, which is perhaps closer to reality than we would like to be. It’s sort of like reading a book and having the last page torn out. I could bring this review full circle and continue to talk about how my childhood was shaped by Walt Disney and Looney Tunes, but hopefully by this point my taste in animation has become a bit more sophisticated.
