Bacchae
STOP MOTION VIDEO | MFA Thesis Project
Bacchae is the product of a Wintersession animation class—the origins of my foray into motion. Inspired by William Kentridge’s stop motion work, where torn paper comes alive as rough-hewn figures, I tried my hand at the process. I choreographed 45 seconds of rambunctious movement to Come Walk With Me, a boisterous song by the artist M.I.A.. By projecting this video onto the ground and reconstructing my motion with torn pieces of black paper, I built the animation frame by frame, 15 frames for each second. Bacchae references the women followers of the ancient Greek god Dionysus, god of instinctiveness, lack of boundaries, and, naturally, wine. These women were also known maenads, meaning raving ones—cult ritual involved ecstatic frenzy. The unrestrained and aggressive movement of the figure, assembled from torn paper fragments and set against a mosaic-like backdrop, gives nod to this classical allusion. For me, much of stop motion’s magic lies in the way its process, though in many ways meticulous and highly controlled, results in form that exhibits uncanny and unbridled spirit. A Dionysian effect.
Bacchae is the product of a Wintersession animation class—the origins of my foray into motion. Inspired by William Kentridge’s stop motion work, where torn paper comes alive as rough-hewn figures, I tried my hand at the process. I choreographed 45 seconds of rambunctious movement to Come Walk With Me, a boisterous song by the artist M.I.A.. By projecting this video onto the ground and reconstructing my motion with torn pieces of black paper, I built the animation frame by frame, 15 frames for each second. Bacchae references the women followers of the ancient Greek god Dionysus, god of instinctiveness, lack of boundaries, and, naturally, wine. These women were also known maenads, meaning raving ones—cult ritual involved ecstatic frenzy. The unrestrained and aggressive movement of the figure, assembled from torn paper fragments and set against a mosaic-like backdrop, gives nod to this classical allusion. For me, much of stop motion’s magic lies in the way its process, though in many ways meticulous and highly controlled, results in form that exhibits uncanny and unbridled spirit. A Dionysian effect.
Formally and conceptually, this piece is simple—an early and naive effort. (The process itself, though, was certainly not simple. Stop-motion is a laborious process. Due to a miscalculation, the 45 seconds required approximately 650 frames. Each frame took at least one minute to build, often more. After kneeling on the floor for nearly eight hours the first day of animating, I ended up crushing a nerve in my knee which temporarily paralyzed my feet for about a month. Live and learn...) Nonetheless, I look back at this project fondly, a significant moment in my artistic wayfaring.