SYNC OR SWIM STOP-MOTION ANIMATION
Art is full of techniques and processes that we either take for granted or only have a surface-level understanding of. We forget that there is a science to it – that, at some point, someone figured out how to capture an imprint of life, harness waveforms and reproduce them, paint with pixels. It’s super-complex stuff, and its ubiquity tends to result in a severe watering-down of its marvellousness. But we understand that marvellousness at some level – it’s what makes us hold art at arm’s length, label it as too hard or time-consuming or difficult or ‘not my sort of thing’. The thing is, we’ve all been shown how interconnected art is to everything, and how perfect it is as a way to explore even quite complex concepts. Well … those of us who have watched children’s television have been shown it. If you grew up with no TV, then you’re on your own.
I was (and am) a big fan. It is the perfect show, and the best possible approach to education: an acknowledgement that learning should be, at its core, a mixed-media experience. When you think back to , you think of the Muppets bopping around doing things, but there were concepts delivered there that are so ingrained in your brain that they will live there forever. I still can’t count to twelve without my brain emulating the Pointer Sisters’ intonation (and my mind being enveloped in a flurry of pinball visuals). Sometimes they used music, association, metaphor, parody, monsters, humans, anthropomorphism and every possible form of filmmaking – literally everything. For a program like , the message was king and shaped, TED-Ed). It’s a way of approaching content that is often sidelined in education for the usual reasons: space, time and an evaluation of our own skills or what we are comfortable with. But there is another reason: that classic human trait of pigeonholing.
