Hertzfeldt and brandt from Noel Johnson
Noel Johnson
New Media in Context
Joseph Delappe
13 December 2016
Absurdist
Artists
We will be comparing and contrasting animator Don
Hertzfeldt and internet artist Thorne Brandt, choosing to focus on the motifs
represented throughout their works. One work from each artist will then be
analyzed in greater detail revealing these motifs and how they intermingle the
two artists.
Don Hertzfeldt is an animation artist well known for his
cynical surrealism depicted through stick figure characters. His features have
won two Academy Awards as well as the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury prize
for short films twice. Hertzfeldt’s style and technique, although still
incredibly unique, draws from more analogue traditions. All Hertzfeldt’s
animations are hand drawn and photographed using antique 35mm cameras. He
creates his special affects through things like experimental photography,
including things like over-exposures, and warped lighting. However, Hertzfeldt
is not opposed to utilizing more digital formats to create his works. For
example, his newest science fiction feature “World of Tomorrow” is a digitally
rendered animation, while still utilizing his stick figure aesthetic.
Thorne Brandt is an internet artist that specializes in
utilizing web domains, social media, and gifs as a medium. He is, however, best
known for his gif artworks, such as “Gif Connoisseur”, a Tumblr blog in which
he acquires gifs from around the internet and photoshops his very own
connoisseur character in front of them – and elderly man, dressed in fine
attire, facing the gif, contemplating the gif as if it were a piece of art
hanging within a traditional gallery space.
Primary differences between these two artists lies within
their utilized techniques. Don Hertzfeldt creates his story using more analog
aesthetics – a stylistic choice that can still be detected by the audience even
within his more digitally oriented works. Thorne Brandt, in contrast, has a
very clearly “modern” and more internet- based aesthetic dominating his
stylistic choices. These differences in technique and style also greatly
effects the differences in how they portray their similar messages. Don
Hertzfeldt, being an animator and storyteller, gives a more definite narrative
to his pieces, whereas Thorne Brandt’s reliance more -so on the art of the
internet, an already difficult to follow platform as is, leads to his artworks
have a far less defined narrative that is much more open to audience
interpretation.
The
commonalities between these two artists, I find, stems much farther beyond
their absurdist content and ability to push what is thought as “high” art as
opposed to “low” art. Although they do have these things in common, they also
possess a similar set of deeper meanings when you scrape away the upper layers
of their artworks. Within the two pieces I chose to analyze from these artists
there are common underlying motifs of uncertainty, subjective perception of
time and realities, and ontological actuality (a philosophical idea focusing on
the ideas of existence and humanity). Hertzfeldt shows these ideas through a
science fiction situation while Brandt shows the presence of these ideas in our
everyday existence.
The
piece I decided to analyze for Thorne Brandt is “A.G.O.D”. The acronym “A.G.O.D”
stands for “Animated Gif Of the Day”. It is a short, 5-minute video in which Brandt,
every day since its creation, layers a new gif into its composition. These gifs
range from self-created to found gifs, some of which include sound that is
layered in as well. This piece, on a surface level, captures Brandt’s overwhelming
absurdity and maximalist style to represent the entropy of life within our fast
moving, instant messaging, like and re-like, constant upload society. However,
this piece does touch on the motifs that tie our two artists together as well.
The aspect of uncertainty is present because, not only does the piece literally
change from day to day, but also will change from viewing to viewing for the audience.
This is due to the overwhelming nature of the piece, making it impossible for
the audience to take in every detail of it. This represents the uncertainty of
life and its everchanging, organic nature. Tied into this uncertainty in the
concept of ontological actuality as well. The pieces ever changing, organic
nature and aspects of uncertainty attribute to a contemplative mood encircling
humanity and human existence – or more so, the lack thereof. The motif of
subjective perception of time and reality is also introduced by the overwhelming
tone of “A.G.O.D”. This is shown, very similarly to uncertainty, by the
changing of experience every time it is viewed, showing that your reality of
this piece is subjective to both what day you view it and what information your
brain decides to pick out from the clusters of sound and imagery.
The
piece I decided to analyze from Don Hertzfeldt was his most recent feature short
film, “World of Tomorrow”. Within this narrative, a third-generation adult
clone of the main character, Emily, communicates with a four-year-old “Emily
Prime” (the original, non-clone version of Emily). Clone Emily then takes Emily
Prime on a journey through time to show Emily Prime her (Clone Emily’s)
memories. Throughout this journey, Emily Clone introduces a few things I would
like to focus on. This includes the consciousness cubes and the clone David as
an art installation. These two scenes in particular, best highlight the aforementioned
motifs. The consciousness cubes, as described in the film, is a technology in
the future that allows those who cannot be cloned to have their consciousness
uploaded into a cube in which allows them to continue to “exist”. This idea
ties heavily into subjective perception as well as ontological actuality. This
idea that is questioning the importance of the body versus the importance of
the consciousness ties into how we perceive and, on a deeper level, how we
perceive our existence. It brings into question how we perceive the world,
gather information, and learn without a body, and whether both body and mind
are truly necessary to be considered existing. This same idea is heavily
present within the art museum scene. Within this scene, it is described that a
clone boy named David exists solely within a test tube in an art museum. He is
alive biologically and grows, but without a brain. This makes him nothing but a
body. This brings into question the same concepts of existence and perception.
On the opposite end of the spectrum to the consciousness cubes, David “exists”
only as a body without consciousness. Is one more validated than the other in
terms of existence or are they both lacking true, total existence without their
balancing counterparts? In terms of uncertainty, the entirety of the narrative
plays with this idea. One of the things we consider most uncertain is the
future. However, this rule is broken when Clone Emily travels through time to
show Emily Prime moments from the future. However, this action itself is
possibly discredited and poked fun at, as Emily Prime is at such a young age
that she does not have the ability to be certain about any of the moments that
she will likely forget. This then reintroduces the idea of uncertainty that was
previously lost to us.
Bibliography
Brandt, Thorne. "The
Gif Connoisseur." Blog post. The Gif Connoisseur. N.p., n.d. Web. 12
Dec. 2016.
<http://thegifconnoisseur.tumblr.com/>.
Brandt, Thorne.
"Pizza Dog." Pizza Dog. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.
<http://pizzadog.org/>.
Brandt, Thorne.
"Thorne Brandt." The Fountainhead. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.
<http://www.fountainheadresidency.com/thorne-brandt/>.
"Don
Hertzfeldt." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Hertzfeldt>.
Sims, David. "World
of Tomorrow and the Copy-Pasted Brain." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media
Company, 21 Jan. 2016. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.
<http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/world-of-tomorrow-and-the-
copy-pasted-brain/425016/>.
Bramesco, Charles.
"Animator Don Hertzfeldt on Not Trusting Happy People." The Dissolve.
Pitchfork Media Inc., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.
<https://thedissolve.com/features/interview/980-animator-don-hertzfeldt-on-not-trusting-
happy-peop/>.
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