User:Quinten swagerman/steve/whathowwhy

One Page Flip

One Page Flip is a flip book – a little book which, when held in the left hand and flipped through with the right, shows an animation. The cover is white and on it it says in bold, black, capital letters:

ONE
PAGE
FLIP

The book has 75 pages. On them: a thin black line-drawn animation of two hands flipping an empty flip book. One page is being flipped. In other words: within the span of flipping 75 pages, one page flips in the flip book within the flip book.

I took a photograph of my hands holding a flip book, then traced the photograph, creating a line-drawing. Next I animated the movement of one page flipping and added some slight movements to the hands holding the flip book. I exported the frames of the animation, printed them, cut them out and bound them together.

While working on another flip book the idea popped up. From this point on I could not help myself.

Blip Listening

Blip Listening is a series of animations based on field recordings, to be seen on smartphones at the location where the sound was recorded. The animations are short, from 30 seconds to one minute and 30 seconds, and visualize one sound element from the recording in a minimal and abstract manner. For example: a white bar on a black background visualizes the bleep of a cash register in a supermarket.

At places in Rotterdam - bus stops, zebra crossings, supermarkets, metro stations - translucent stickers are placed. On the sticker: a QR-code and one or more shapes. When the QR-code is scanned, the animation launches. The shapes on the sticker are now seen moving on the screen, visualizing one element from the field recording. This field recording might blend with the sounds of the environment, as an echo from the near past, particularly when the viewer/listener is wearing headphones and his volume isn't set too high.

The shapes were chosen intuitively. Listening to the recordings, I picked out one sound element and scribbled down shapes that I associated with it. The ones that seemed to fit best, I animated.

The animations came forth out of an interest in experiencing places through sound. During idle moments – lying on my back in a park or sitting on the balcony - I sometimes found myself listening intensely, trying to hear as much as possible. The world unfolds in a different way when listening. Dziga Vertov puts it like this:

"One day in the spring of 1918… returning from a train station. There lingered in my ears the sights and rumble of the departing train… someone's swearing… a kiss… someone's exclamation… laughter, a whistle, the ringing of the station bell, the puffing of the locomotive… whispers, cries, farewells… And thoughts while walking. I must get a piece of equipment that won't describe, but will record, photograph these sounds."

I wanted to create tiny reminders of the sounds surrounding us, and tried to point to this mode of listening that's not primarily practical (as in: the sound of a car warning you that it is about to pass, the alarm clock waking you up, someone's voice asking you if you feel like having pancakes for dinner).