Scenes from The Brave Little Toaster

I think this movie is where my interest in this topic all began. This is part of the reason I chose to do stop motion, because it is a dated technology and it is quite nostalgic of my childhood. When I display my final animations I will have them in 4: 3 TV format, not wide screen, because wide screen is relatively new and I would rather my work sit in the "slightly dated and nostalgic" catergory. I would also probably just use normal old TVs, because a big flat screen would seem out of place as well.

Chest of Drawers

Tony Oursler at Lehmann Maupin, New York (March 2007)

Tony Oursler - Switch, 1996

Tony Oursler

Tony Oursler - Eyes

Set up for crit week

Some test of placing the TV on the ground, without the table, on its back etc

Jan Svankmayer - Picnic with Weissmann (1968)

Jan Svankmayer - Meat Love (1989)

Crit Week feedback - 14/9/09

-Someone thought it was slow to unfold, he noticed the eyes first then became aware of the sound
-The eyes become a little man watchin us
-The noises are unidentifiable, James thought he heard a Friends episode in the mix, but he didn't
-The soundtrack sounded like sitcoms
-Voyeristic experience for the eyes (secretly looking)
-Absence of feeling in the eyes
-David felt like something was missing in the work
-We are looking at the eyes, but the eyes are looking back at us
-A reflction/connection between machine a chair
-Reminiscent of 1970s childrens animation, has that aesthetic, therefore feels grounded in a particular time
-You wait for something to appear/happen, but no closer is offered
-No punchline
-David thought the soundtrack wasn't connecting
-Someone said the canned laughter isn't working (but there is no canned laughter in there)
-Maddie suggested I was over doing the aesthetic with the table and chair
-Like Sean Kerr's work, but more melancholic
-Maybe put the tv on the wall, at eye height instead of on a table
-Sense of estrangement - the insessant voice magnifies this feeling
-The eyes look open, not bored, but staring (David)
-Apprehensive eyes (Maddie)
-Are they needing to play off something?
-David - 'under cooked', not getting connection to soundtrack, not engagin, something is missing
-Maybe instead of the soundtrack being taken from movies, it could be what the tv itself would hear, vacuum cleaner, domestic stuff etc
-Install on a flat screen?
-Have many different screens facing each other
-Make eyes respond to each other
-David - Needs more compelling noise
-Maddie - the chatter vs. the slience of the eyes - background noise & foreground silence = good
-Scripting noise would be prone to problems
-The volume of the noise is useful, if it is very loud it changes the work completely, when its loud the eyes look scared
-Would be useful to test multiple tvs, having conversations
-Doesn't need the rest of the face, eyes only works because they rest of the face is made up from the other parts of the tv
-The tvs could be flat on their backs looking up at us, like tables
-Someone thought the noise was all the channels a tv would hear in its head at once, before you pick what you want to watch then it would only be one channel

Crit week set-up