Animate objects was an exhibition in ’98 that consisted of three sets of three groups of diagrammatic-style drawings, each group of drawings was organized into a progressively moving set of frames then filmed on to Super 8 film. Sound was included in the installation – the noise of each tool working, as the film played the sound started.

The installation grew from a series of drawings of tools, a subject that I’ve found myself interested in throughout the time I’ve been creating art.

Animated drawings
These drawings needed a semi-practical purpose. I wanted to use the process of drawing to describe the objects, but I also wanted to describe the complete physical object in as complete a way as possible, not only its physical appearance but its movement, its gait.

Orthographic projection.
Three Tools were drawn in this way – side views, Front views and Top views (the number of drawn views varied according to the size of the tool), for example; G-clamp sides view 24 cells and G-clamp 44 cells. The images were drawn on to heavy tracing paper and then stuck on to paper sheets with Selotape. This technique produced a very rough and ready effect, the resulting sheet seemed more like an object than a set of drawings. These drawings were used to create Animate Objects – The Super8 film installation.

This was a solo exhibition in North London. 3 sets of 3 projectors were organised in such a way as to create 3 installations of animated orthographic projection with sound effects which were appropriate to each tool’s function.
The image to the right represents three of the projections of the animated drawings of three tools (g-clamp, hand drill and shoe stretcher).

The three views were side view, top view and front view. Each projector projected a single animated view of each of the tools via looped lengths of Super 8 film, each of the films was accompanied by the sound of each of the tools working; creating a cacophony of squeaking sounds

Animation exhibition cells
These are three examples of cells used to create animations of the Animate objects exhibition.
The cells were hand drawn using black felt tip pens on thick tracing paper. The cells were exhibited at the show, they were sellotaped to large sheets of paper and secured to the walls.

See an example of the orthographic projection set-up here >>