![]() Maria Quintas IVM Last year I started a project that aimed to celebrate the use of analog practices in a digital-driven time where I challenged myself to do a series of animations without the use of digital tools (link to see). This came in response to my dislike, as an illustrator, of using drawing tablets. At that time, I felt the necessity to accentuate the relation between my practice and my body. Physicality, Space, Movement, and Pre-Film Animation Techniques became keywords for my research and lead me to grow an interest in dance, choreography, and the creation of engines. ("Synchronous Objects" by William Forsythe and the work of Tim Hunkin are some of my favorite findings from that research). I did the animations and a physical support to animate it however I ended up leaving this project on hold. During this DPS year, I have had the chance to run a workshop for kids about screen printing (w/ friend and DPS colleague Matilde Basto) and to do some visuals for a concert for kids - both these experiences got me engaged with experimental learning. I decided to learn more about it and understood how important the free movement of the body and artistic activities are for the development of children. These allow them to explore their creativity without limits and grow their sense of space, self-confidence, self-awareness, etc. It proves how “people absorb a newly acquired skill-set better while doing, engaging their bodies rather than simply observing”. For my SIP, I "unfroze" my previously mentioned project. I tried to incorporate my initial research for it and my interests at that time. However, at a certain point, I realised I was getting lost on my research - I was trying to incorporate a lot of things into one project - doing a lot of research on movement when it is such a broad subject. I had to narrow it down. I decided to focus on free movement as a form of communication. Why do we say we can't dance? - Why do we think we can't dance? - Why do we repress our physical expression? - these are some of the questions that came to my mind. As we grow our learning shifts more and more from experimental to passive, and so does our way of communicating. Our visual and physical language is replaced by verbal language - we start "not knowing how to dance" and "not knowing how to draw". We start to have more norms on how to act - self-express - we become more self-conscious about how we are perceived. I decided that my main aim with my SIP was to incentivise people to explore the experimental side of their language. My SIP will be a publication called "How to do an animation". It will consist of a DIY workshop/ performative exercise where I will give steps on - as the name indicates - how to do an animation. I will be challenging people to dismantle their verbal language through a series of exercises - 1. a game (cross-words style) in which the result will be a word or a set of words/ 2. those will be translated into physical language/ 3. through tracing techniques, the previous results will translate into visual language/ 4. there will be a set to do a phenakistoscope (pre-film animation device), where the visual results will be inserted, and a DIY mechanism on how to rotate. At the moment, I'm doing an internship in a risoprint studio so I plan to print this publication there. I will be printing a series and will ask some friends & family (of different ages and professional fields) to do this DIY workshop to test and see the results and interest. I will then promote the publication to get more people engaged with it. To cover the production cost, I will sell these at a symbolic price of +- 3 pounds. With this project, I plan to start a series of publications that will accompany my research on movement - a subject that I want to keep learning and working about for the next years. I will also aim to get involved in a contemporary dance/ performance collective for interdisciplinary artists (Next Artists Collective). For my dissertation, I will want to continue exploring these subjects - the relation between body and mind, physical language, free movement, and its relation to the creation of movements and communities.
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