Explorations in stop motion

“Will there be singing in the dark times?
Yes, there will be singing about the dark times.”

— Brecht

We’ve carved out a space to make stop motion in iso. Working on these means we can make use of all the offcuts, scraps, and the reverse side of failed drawings and prints. Working on these means we can explore how to make our work move. And it lifts our spirits.

“For the rain it raineth every day.”

A rainy Wednesday lead to a rainy afternoon moving collage, with sound recorded on the front verandah.

It was followed by Saturday’s green, with sound recorded in a hedge at Versailles.

We made these to share with you on instagram (hence the black pillars in the below vimeos), in the hope of lifting your spirits too.

Inspired by this new avenue, work has since begun on the pieces for our next collage of moving parts. It will feature the “shy tussock-dweller” (as described by Conservation Volunteers Australia), the Eastern barred bandicoot.

Tentatively titled, Eastern barred bandicoot (Perameles gunnii) — hope in the dark, we’re planning to create a 10-minute stop-motion animation of a watercolour and pen drawing on paper to nestle beneath this line.

Our antagonist bandicoot highlights the disappearance of our natural world due to land clearing, species extinctions, and the climate change emergency. We hope it will inspire conservation efforts, and highlight some of our precious native biodiversity and the pressures they face. Several drawings of the bandicoot and its habitat will form thousands of frames which will make the final piece.

This time, the bandicoot’s habitat will be composed of watercolours which will be created live over the course of the stop-motion. Each frame will capture a tiny movement of the bandicoot and a subtle shift in the watercolour; the grassland will move in the breeze; the sky will change from the afternoon light to the gloaming; and finally, the sun will set. (In the header above, the beginning of a night sky.)

With visual art spaces are closed, our traditional avenues to exhibit are currently unavailable to us. So, too, are the conservation volunteer projects that we had planned to take part in, from replanting and weeding habitat to construction of nest boxes. With fence repair days and the like, organised through Conservation Volunteers Australia, cancelled due to Covid-19, not only has how we exhibit our work disappeared, the very things we research and take part in to inform our work has also disappeared.

Our urgent need to care for the environment so it can again care for us and we can avoid the worst effects of the climate emergency, is now paused. We need to be at home and isolated when we also need to be part of conservation efforts that save and protect, while making work inspired by this action. This project is our way to do this. The recovery efforts for the Eastern barred bandicoot have insured their population numbers are increasing. Their success story shows us that through positive action and combined efforts, great things can be achieved.