This is the product of Caleb Wood being asked to create an animation for Prove Gallery in Duluth, Minnesota. However instead of creating a short animated film, Caleb drew this 'stream of consciousness' animation straight on to the studio walls. I think this shows Wood's sense of humour, as an animator he gives the viewers a still image, it is the viewer that has to animate it by moving downwards. By doing this he is uniquely involving the viewer in the creation of the animation, I think he may be trying to explore the relationship between artist and viewer, without an audience to interpret the work, art would cease to have meaning. Although they share this mutual need for one another, so often is work misinterpreted, an artist will produce work impassioned with one idea but a viewer may interpret it completely differently. This contradiction in the relationship between artist and viewer is interesting and beautiful because it leads to expanding ideas and new thoughts. I think this idea communicates well through the audience being an integral part of the artistic process, it allows them to have ultimate control; they could start anywhere they liked or they could 'watch' it backwards. Including the viewers in this way also leads to more expansion of the drawn ideas and freer interpretation.
Caleb Wood describes it as a 'continuous vertical freehand digression' and the word 'digression' interests me the most. The idea that something is coming away from the original meaning, the lines and shapes morph and pull away from each other but interestingly it starts and ends with the same shape, two crossed lines. But between those two same shapes, it changes through a multitude of variations; fish, feathers, monsters, hearts, smileys, bird. The transformations seem random and are only connected by their continual falling movement. Watching the film is mesmerising but also quite disorientating because if you stare for too long you feel like your falling with the shape. This feeling makes me think of dreams where you are falling which can be scary but also feel liberating. This dreamlike feeling is further developed with the transformations, the character has this magic quality of changing forms just like in dreams where fantastical changes and impossibilities are accepted easily. When we are awake we think too realistically which sometimes stumps creative development, but in dreams nothing feels implausible. I think Wood is trying to explore this idea by showing how much variation can be created between two crosses when we trust in our innate inhibited creativity.
His tumblr is pretty cool too:
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