“The
Necessities of Life”
The idea for this animation started with a love of design from the 1930’s
and 1940’s. I tinkered with old shortwave radios as a kid and admired
the fact that they also functioned as pieces of fine furniture. Great care
was taken to make these objects more than simply functional by building
them larger than necessary, covering them with exotic hardwood veneers and
including lighted dials or other gadgetry. They were important cultural
and informational centerpieces prior to the advent of television.
The premise for the narrative came from the discovery of "motion capture"
files depicting men performing ritualistic incantations. I felt it would
be interesting to have a figure perform these rituals in front of a very
large radio that functions as a symbol for cultural needs. As a promoter
of the humanities, I lament the fact that so much emphasis is placed on
physical need and comfort, while the equally important human requirement
of culture is often discounted. Though basic needs must come first, we often
ignore the distinctly human pursuits of philosophy, art, music, religion
and the other “finer things” in life.
This conflict is portrayed as a sort of contest where the man in front of
the radio competes with another man in front of an equally large refrigerator,
in this case representing the physical necessity of food preservation. I
modeled the refrigerator after a 1940’s General Electric model and
decided the form also paralleled the shape of the radio. Both objects are
simple, monolithic icons that are worthy of our admiration.
The environment for the competition is based on recurring dreams of very
large interior spaces. The floor and walls are covered in coded letters
and numbers that resulted from an accident when I inadvertently opened an
application in a text editor to find hundreds of pages of mysterious computer
code. I did a screen capture of one page and threw away the other four megabytes
of text. It now serves as conceptual wallpaper.
The viewer is informed at the beginning by starting inside the heads of
the two men. One instance represents abstractions of culture by incorporating
public domain movies depicting people singing, dancing, reading, swimming,
drawing and similar pursuits. The physical need counterpart is represented
with clips of fireplaces, eating, grooming, and so on. The soundtrack to
these segments was derived from an activity during a Thanksgiving get-together
where my family was recorded reciting scripted words from each category.
Because the sound quality was poor, the audio editing added an unplanned
tone that was then purposely exaggerated.
The climax of the competition comes with a crack of thunder and the "downpour"
of a thousand small houses. Houses are like human containers that serve
to represent both sides of this question. This event was also a sleight
of hand used to remove the two competitors from the scene. The simple frame
house is the same made for a work eleven years ago. I appreciate continuity
in a way that images and objects become reliable “old friends.”
The Last Step (1999)
The camera slowly moves to one of the buried houses. Through an Internet
sound effects site, I purchased a recording of a rural evening to help with
this transition. I will always remember the fact that it was recorded in
Australia and included the faint sound of a dog barking far in the distance.
I wondered whose dog it was and what it looked like. It’s funny how
insiignificant things can stick with us.
Inside the living room of the buried house and within a decidedly more intimate
domestic space we now find a single figure representing an amalgamation
of the physical requirements and cultural needs characters. He reads a newspaper
called the “Daily Median” which is loosely based on the New
York Times. I spent about a week editing articles and composing the newspaper
so that one side represents “physical needs” and the other side
represents “culture.” It goes by in an instant and I suppose
it will never be noticed. That’s OK.
The final shot returns to the head of the seated man where we once again
see the tiny books (“Basic Needs”, “Modern Culture”)
that comprise his face. The computer was able to generate 6,000 individually
animated books that define a prescribed head contour. I was not able to
keep them from intersecting with each other due to my technical limitations.
I asked my wife if that bothered her and it didn’t, so I decided it
was OK.
I started this project in May of 2009 and finished in January of 2010. It’s
pretty hard to remain objective about something that took so long. I’m
anxious to get it out in front of people and find out what it means to someone
else.
Duration:
• 5 minutes, 2 secondsVideo:
• 720 x 480, 16:9 anamorphic, 30fps
Software:
• 3DS Max 2009, Mental Ray, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Audacity
Hardware:
• Modeling and Animation: BOXX dual quadcore PC, 2.8 GHz, 8 Gb RAM, nVidia Quadro FX 4600, Samsung 30” and 24” dual displays
• Video and DVD Editing: MAC Powerbook G4