Improvisational Animation
(start at 29m 16s)
During his talk “Inventing on Principle”, Bret Victor showed off a simple animation he singlehandedly created. In the animation, a leaf falls to the ground, then we pan across a painting of an autumn background, and glimpse a rabbit hopping away. It’s a very simple animation. The quality of the painted images and the timing are very nice. However, it is the motion that I find inspirational in the animation. Not because it is complex or amazingly harmonious, but because of how it was made possible.
In the talk, Victor demos the iPad app which he programmed to use as a medium for creating the animation. Rather than having to specify keyframes and tweening functions, the app allows him to conduct the animation through gesture.
What truly inspires me about this piece not the piece itself, it’s that in creating the piece, Victor almost creates a new medium—improvisational animation. It creates so many possibilities for more spontaneous animations created by a broader variety of people.
Note: This probably falls more on the Tinguely side of art being people just doing stuff…
Things that inspire me that don’t quite count as technological art/design, but that I looked at before writing this: