Animated paintings - bringing my artwork to life with the addition of video and sound
With the help of a clever app I was able to bring some of my paintings to life in my exhibition ‘Equivocal’ at Muse Art Gallery in Havelock North. Take a look below to see what I mean - it’s much easier to show you than it is to describe with words!
(Turn on the sound!) This is my original shaped painting / wall sculpture Folly 2019 coming to life using the Artivive app. The sound was recorded by me - it's what I hear when I am painting. The footage of flowing water was taken by me at Hamurana Springs near Rotorua, New Zealand. Four million litres of pure fresh water bubbles up from the rock there every hour! Its a magical place.
Apologies for the vertical video that probably looks small on your screen - this is my first time uploading a video to YouTube and my website - I now know that a landscape format is better, but as this painting has now sold I can’t take another video! You’ll find the same problem further down this page too - sorry, I’ll do better next time because these little videos really annoy me!
The free app for viewing these animations is called Artivive (see www.artivive.com to learn more). As a person viewing the artwork you just download the free Artivive app onto your device, then point it at an Artivive enabled artwork - and it miraculously comes to life in front of your eyes. It’s great fun! I love how it adds a whole new dimension to a piece of art, with moving images as well as sound.
I made videos for four of my artworks at Muse. The one below was a collaboration with my friend JP Yepez, an Equadorian artist who lives in Wellington, NZ (you can find JP on Instagram @jpyepez, and at his website here). He used fancy computer coding to animate my painting called Void - I don’t fully understand how he did it, but it’s very clever!
This video shows my painting Void coming to life using the Artivive App. . . Turn on the sound! The animation was created by JP Yepez (https://www.jpyepez.com/) using clever computer programming. Soundtrack is via freesound.org, and created by the user andymanister and Abbie Mills. Painting by me.
Here is another one I made, for a painting called Mental Blocks. This time I made the video myself, and then made a soundtrack for it using Garageband.
Finally, this one was for a small shaped painting / wall sculpture called Hamlet. The soundtrack was made using royalty free sound effects from a free video creation app.
This is ‘Hamlet’ coming to life.
I hope you enjoy these animated paintings as much as I enjoyed making them! I’ve found that Artivive animations work with a printed image of my paintings as well as with the originals, so I’m considering producing some limited edition prints of some of my Artivive enabled paintings.
If you are interested in having a go yourself at creating an Artivive project I’m thinking I could write a brief tutorial explaining how I made mine - there are all sorts of ways to do it, mine was just one way that worked for me. Get in touch if you think I should post a tutorial here on my blog. And if you have any questions feel free to flick me an email or send me a message on Instagram.
