Motion Drawings - Justin Simoni

This is a collection of experimental drawings, using Macromedia Flash, Quicktime, and anything within the reach of my grubby little hands.

Another Version of, "Three Versions of Six Life Paths..."

View, Another Version of, "Three Versions of Six Life Paths..." - 12k, Flash 6 required. (6/03)

As the title suggests, this is another version of a piece that I've done, namely a triptich painting. Instead of viewing three canvases painted with oil in a gallery setting, you'll experience an animation of... three "canvases" in a gallery setting with onlookers. I've used this as a supportive prop for the triptich itself - having a computer running the animation besides that painting itself; as well as had the animation available on a CD ROM besides the painting. Along with the CD ROM, I've also presented drawings that follow the same thread of all of this, drawn in ink on printouts of the sourcecode of the animated version of the series.

The original piece itself was basically the same painting rendered three times and deals with the randomness of life, mapping the interactions we make with others, the decisions made within our lives and the udder impossibility of knowing what most of these decisions, etc will amount to. The animation presents an inexhaustable amount of versions of the same basic design of the paintings.

A Dream I Once Had, Again.

View, A Dream I Once Had, Again - 2.5 megs, Quicktime 6 required. (2/27/03)

In this drawing, I'm expressing what a dream feels like; dreams to me are usually fleeting, start very simple, get complex very fast and aren't easy to remember and almost seem muddled... and sometimes are so simple as to seem recurring.

I'm postulating that dreams aren't easy to remember because as when try to remember a dream, we try to visualize an instance of a dream, a face we saw, or a location; but dreams aren't snapshots - they're a flow of information that we usually don't conciously have control over. After viewing, try to "explain" what the painting was. It's very hard, since there is almost no time when the painting stays the same composition; it seems as if it's always plastic and changing.

I also want to postulate that this is how many of our memories are and to help remember past events more clearly, it helps to also remember other instances associated with the memory; such as a smell, or outside temperature. This may be obvious to some; consider a time when you lost your keys. A person trying to aid you may give you the advice to "retrace your steps" - ie: relive the experience.

You can take this same angle when solving problems. For instance, when giving someone directions, we may give people a step by step on what streets to take (literal, in order, left brain stuff) and also give local landmarks, (visual, right brain, sometimes out of order -> "Go left until you see the McDonalds. If you see a Dairy Queen, you went too far, but you can take a left there as well, just make sure to also follow the curved road next to the cornfield...") The power of these directions is tje giving both to someone at the same time. The different strengths and parts of your brain work together to solve the problem of finding where to go.

Dreams are very interesting to an artist, since it's said that the sleep state that you are in right before and right after you wake up is when the mind is, "most free" to problem solve in interesting ways.

This is more of a dance than a drawing... Or... maybe it's both.

The Tragic Snake

The basic concept behind this drawing is the dyadic relationship between life and death. This Mark Rothko-esque tradegy is created by producing a simple flatland world of a square. Inside the square, a line is created. The line is not allowed to occupy the same space twice and the line is not allowed to exit the square (although, it's uncertain if the line knows this). The only real choice the line has is to hopelessly try find its way out and get tangled up with itself (live fast, die young) or, become assimulated into the green square world, by slowly fading (death by old age).

The movement is created randomly. The line knows what moves are valid, and moves within these choices. The line cannot go back. The line does not know which choice is "better" than any other choice. Thus a simple, tragic, metaphor for life is created.

Iteration 1