EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION RESEARCH:
I started this project by researching some of the experimental animators we discovered in our lectures. I knew quite early from some of the animations we watch in class that I was interested in playing with sound.
Some of my sketchbook research on animators and narrative:
From my research I was started to be interested in experimenting with animating something sensory but also play with sound or animate to sound.
I was particularly inspired by Louis Morton's "Passer Passer".
First Mind map and thoughts:
I had quite a few ideas for this course so to narrow my choices I decided to make the experimentation 'location based' and I chose to animate something to do with Swimming Pools. At the time I used to go to my local Dalry swimm centre twice a week. The experience of being in a swimming pool and this kind of location is extremely sensorial. There is the particular feeling of being in the water, being in a swimming costume instead of clothes, swimming pool showers , the smell of chlorine, as well as the constant sound of echos and hairdryers and of course refractions of light jumping around the room. So this location was perfect to start thinking about what I wanted to experiment with as I wanted to animate a sensory experience and play with sound, and location had both. I went to the pool after deciding I wanted to do a project that included it and tried to figure out what made the space so particular to me. I found that there is, on one hand, environmental stressors, such as, echoes, splashes, cold and heat, hard surfaces, bodies and the struggle to stay above water which can make the space a horribly stressful environment. On the other hand it is in this stress is in contradiction to the calm of the experience of swimming itself, the absence of sound under water, the control of the breath, the tactile experience of water on skin as well as the relaxation of the body in the sauna. I realised for me, that the control of the breath and the concentration of swimming relaxed the body and kind of "trained it" to ignore all the environmental stressors that you could notice when entering the environment.
10x10
during our 10 animations 10 days project, I decided to experiment with different medium I could use for my experimental project. So some of my 10x10 serve as pre-experiments to this project.
I played around with the sound of 'the breath' by animating a nose coming out of water to breath and layering it to increase the sense of anxiousness.
Some of the 10X10 pre-experiments.
RESEARCH PLAN DRAFT 1:
Research question:
Can the sound of the animation of the atmosphere and experience of being in Dalry swimming centre affect the audience’s stress levels?
It’s common knowledge that different environments and their stimulation can affect the stress levels of the person experiencing them. The experience of being in a swimming pool has different affects on the person in it. There is, on one hand, environmental stressors, such as, echoes, splashes, cold and heat, hard surfaces, bodies and the struggle to stay above water, which on the other hand is in contradiction to the calm of the experience of swimming itself, the absence of sound under water, the control of the breath, the tactile experience of water on skin as well as the relaxation of the body in the sauna. On a personal level I’m interested in the environment of the swimming pool because I’ve used swimming to improve my mental health and my chronic health problems.
My intention with these experiments is to see what sound is most effective to increase or decreases the stress levels of the viewer in these animations.
I want to animate the sensory experience of being in the swim center and alter the sound in the different experiments to see which causes the most change in the audiences stress levels.
From doing my 10x10 where I experimented with a lot of different mediums I’ve decided that I want to continue experimenting with clay motion and video collage as well as animating live action. I think the texture is quite important in these experiments because
It will help to communicate the sensory experience and the textures of being at the location.
Experiment 1: The breath.
I did a pre-experiment during the February 10x10 project where I animated to my own breath. A nose would appear from blue plastacine at every inhalation and would disappear again into the clay as it breathes out. The camera pans out and more noses appear as the sound of the breathing layers building the tension of the scene and making the viewer aware of their own breath. I want to do something similar to represent the importance of the breath in this swimming space. But instead of a nose I want whole faces to appear so that the water appears to be breathing I want to edit this animation in 3 different ways. One with the sound of the human breathing, and the second one as I did in my 10x10 with a crescendo of layered sounds. The last edit will be without any sound all.
I will show these animations to 3 groups of people who will rate their stress before and after seeing the animations.
In this experiment I want to see whether layered sounds increases the stress levels of the viewer. This first experiment tests whether the layering and crescendo of sound increases the stress level of the audience and the silent version is there as a control.
Experiment 2: Bodies in sauna.
I will animate characters sitting in the sauna examining each other’s bodies. (which to me represents the social stressors of being in the swim centre) The characters go in and out of interacting with each other making the space of the sauna feel more or less big. When they are examining each other the space becomes small and the characters fill the room, but when they close their eyes and concentrate on themselves they become smaller in the space forming more distance between each other. I will animate the people in a sauna with claymotion and similar to experiment 1, I will edit one version with the layered sounds of the people in the sauna and edit another with a soundtrack. I'll record the stress levels of each group of viewers before and after they seen each animation.
The first sound is to see (as experiment one) if the natural ‘folly’ sound creates a stress response, and the second experiment is to see whether a soundtrack is more or less stressful than the ‘folly version’. This experiment will also have a silent control.
Experiment 3: Textures and events at Dalry
"Dry skin, wet skin, wet feet on tiles, dead skin, goose bumps, dry wood, plastic, concrete, glass, sky, splash, giggles…" I sat in the swim centre recording the sound and textures I could experience and decided in this experiment to focus on the textures and events that happen in the swimming pool and join them together to create a series of events and textures that describe the sense of place of being in Dalry swim centre.
As the previous experiments, I will do 2 different edited versions with different sounds. I will edit the first one with the folly sounds of the space and one as the silent control test which both.
This experiment is to test whether surprising sound that doesn't correspond to the animation is more or less stressful that the folly sounds that do. This experiment will also have a silent control.
Collecting data:
Once I have made the animation and experimented with its sound, I will show it to 3 different groups and record their change in stress levels from before and after they see the animation. I will record this by getting them to rate their stress on a scale from 0 to 10.
I will record the quantitative data as the increase or decrease of the stress level for each category: 'Layered sound', 'Soundtrack' and 'Other sound'.
IDEAS and Initial storyboards for my experiments:
EXPERIMENT 1
Experiment 1 based on the nose breathing 10X10 animation.
the set up I used to make experiment 1.
I used plasticine and experimented with movement of water and brought this into after effects.
after doing several tests with the plasticine and how to make it move, I did the animation for the first Experiment to the sound of breath and brought it into after effects to add further textures. I wanted the animation to have a video collage and stop motion combination, I'd recently been working like this in my 10x10 and I wanted to further it in. larger project.
I showed my animation to 3 participants, asking them to rate their level of stress on a 10 point scale before they watch the animations, after they watch the animation with no sound and again after they watch the animation with the layered sound.
Results:
My results show that there was no difference in the stress level after watching the animation without sound, meaning the animation itself didn't create a stress response, however 2 of 3 participants rated their stress level to increase after seeing the version edited with sound. These results would concur with my assumption that sound is what can create a stress response in animation.
CORONA VIRUS UPDATE!
Once ECA closed its doors due to corona virus I was very uncertain as to how this project would be finished. I had planned to do everything in stop motion which I wouldn't complete from home and I also didn't have any editing software to make what so ever. I also had to pack up my flat in a very short space of time and move back to my family home in France, so I also didn't have my Lightbox. I took unedited footage of Experiment 1 and all the 10x10s I'd made this semester. So I was definitely going to have to adapt to the change in circumstance, and this project had to be rethought.
After a thinking about this project I decided to change my research question slightly. I was still going to experiment with sound and it's effect on the stress levels of the audience but I had to change the nature of the animation. Due to the fact I couldn't go to a swimming pool and I couldn't do stop motion because I didn't have the materials but also I couldn't make dragon frame work on my computer, I decided to let go of the idea of animating the space of Dalry swim centre.
Instead I spent a few days drawing and thinking of another form of inspiration that I could experiment sound on.
I live in the countryside in France and I often go outside and sit in fields to draw or read a book. And as I did, I realised that even though all the roads are empty, shops closed and everyone seems to feel like nothing is happening, the fields are still buzzing and crawling with life. I then thought about the importance of perspective and whether perspective is just a question of scale? The pandemic has created huge impacts on the way the world is working right now and the feelings of grief, sadness and boredom are overwhelming, but sitting in the field, and noticing spring blooming and the whole systems of insect civilisations living in the grass oblivious to the whole crisis made me want to make an animation about it.
I'm also reading A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: with A Theory of Meaning by jakob von uexkull which also inspired me.
"We must therefore imagine all the animals that animate Nature around us, be they beetles, gnats, or dragonflies who populate a meadow, as having a soap bubble around them, closed on all sides, which closes off their visual space and in which everything visible for the subject is also enclosed. Each bubble shelters other places, and in each are also found the directional planes of effective space, which give a solid scaffolding to space. The birds that flutter about, (...) all remain permanently enclosed in the bubble that encloses their space. Only when we can vividly imagine this fact will we recognise in our own world the bubble that encloses each and every one of us on all side."
New visual ideas:
Ideas/storyboards:
shadows:
Recording shadows:
After doing some drawings and recording some footage of meadows and nature, I decided to use the environment of the meadow to complete my remaining experiments; on the ability of animation and sound to manipulate the stress response in the audience. I decided to keep my animation of the sound of breath in the environment of the swimming pool as my first experiment.
RESEARCH PLAN:
Research question:
What sound in animation affects the audience’s stress levels the most? And can animation create this reaction on its own?
From my research I started to be interested in sensory animation but especially experimenting with sound and its effect on the audience. I was particularly inspired by Louis Morton's "Passer Passer" in which he depicts the feeling of a city by animating to the sounds that are in it.
It is common knowledge that different environments and their stimulation can affect the stress levels of the person experiencing them, this is why on this course I have decided to animate different environments that have different environmental stressors, and experiment with their sound to see what kind of sound is most effective in creating a stress response for the viewer similar to the stressful environment animated. But on a secondary note, I would like to see whether it is the animation itself that can change the stress levels of the audience or whether sound is essential in doing so, and of course in this case what sound?
I will animate different scenes which contain a level of stress, such as the experience of being in a swimming pool and the environmental stressors that are in this area.
I chose this location for one of my experiments because on one hand, there are environmental stressors, such as, echoes, splashes, cold and heat, hard surfaces, bodies and the struggle to stay above water, and on the other hand these stressors are in contradiction with the calm of the experience of swimming itself, the absence of sound underwater, the control of the breath, the tactile experience of water on skin as well as the relaxation of the body in the sauna.
Secondly, I am also interested in animating the environment of the meadow which also contains environmental stressors. If you look at it on a large scale it is a very calm and relaxing location with its grass blowing in the wind and its views. But if you look at it closer, on a macro level, there are entire ecosystems and organisms living at a whole different speed, in places you can't even see, and there is so much more beneath the surface. Looking at the location of the meadow from a different perspective can be a stressful experience for the viewer.
My predictions for the results of these experiments are that; sound is essential in creating a stress response in animation and because music and soundtracks have an emotive quality, they would be more effective in creating a stress response for the viewer.
I decided from doing my 10x10, where I experimented with a lot of different mediums, that I wanted to continue experimenting with video collage, mixing stop motion animation and live action. I think texture is quite important in these experiments because
It will help to communicate the sensory experience which I think will play a part in communicating a stressful or non stressful situation to the viewer.
Experiment 1: The breath.
I did a pre-experiment during the February 10x10 project where I animated to my own breath. A nose would appear from blue plasticine at every inhalation and would disappear again into it as it breathes out. The camera pans out and more noses appear as the sound of the breathing layers,building the tension of the scene and making the viewer aware of their own breath. I want to do something similar to represent the importance of the breath in this swimming space. But instead of a nose I want whole faces to appear so that the water appears to be breathing. I want to edit this animation with the sound of the human breathing as I did in my 10x10 with a crescendo of layered sounds. I will also do an edit without any sound as a control test to see whether the 'stress response' is due to the animation or the sound and the animation.
I will show these animations to a group of people (my family) who will rate their stress before and after seeing the animations.
This first experiment tests whether the layering and crescendo of sound increases the stress level of the audience.
Experiment 2: Shadow grass.
This is the first experiment of 2 in which the animation is based on the location of ‘The meadow’, visually I like the shadows that grass and foliage make on different textures such as wall, tile, paper and even on grass, so I want to use this in this animation. For this experiment I actually want to start with a track of music a friend made which I think is very emotive and I think it could alter the stress level of the viewer.
In this experiment I want to see whether a soundtrack or a piece of music can increase or decrease stress. I will also use a silent control to see whether it is the animation or the music that is creating the stress response. My predictions for the results of this experiment is that the animation and the music will calm the audience.
Experiment 3: Insets in the Meadow
In this experiment I will be showing scenes of a narrative I came up with; about a boy who sits in a meadow and confronts the inhabitants of this meadow. The animation itself will be creepy in form due to its video montage and stop motion combination, but it is the location and situation of the boy confronting the insects of the meadow that is intended to create a stressful scenario.
As with the previous experiments, I will do 2 different edited versions. I will edit the first one with the folly sound that doesn’t correspond to what is happening on screen, to see whether ‘surprising’ sound creates more or less of a stress response in animation. The other version will be a silent control. This experiment is to test whether a surprising sound that doesn't correspond to the animation can create a stress reaction in the audience and the silent version is to see whether the animation on its own can create a stress reaction.
Collecting data:
Once I have made the animations and experimented with their sounds, I will gather quantitative data by showing the animations to a group of people and record what they rate their stress level to be on a 10 point scale before they see any animation. I will then ask them to do the same after they see the silent versions and again after they see the sound versions of the animations.
I will also record qualitative data in the form of any comments on how the animations made them feel. The group will view all three animations; The Breath animation exploring the effect of layered sound, the ‘Shadow Grass’ animation experimenting with the effect of music, and finally the ‘Insects in the Meadow’ narrative which explores the effect of ‘surprise folly’ and disjointed sound.
I will be able to make conclusions about the sound and the animations with the quantitative data by looking at the amount the stress levels have increased or decreased among the audience after viewing either the ‘silent’ or ‘sound’ condition. The qualitative data will also be taken into account when drawing conclusions on the experiments.
EXPERIMENT 2 : Animation based on the shadows I had recorded, moving through the shadows:
My second experiment was inspired by a short melody my friend had made on the guitar. I thought that its tingly irregular and yet repetive nature was very relaxing and evoked a sense of journey. Visually I got interested in the shadows formed by plants and foliage on different materials, so I decided to animate in after effects a walk through grass using these shadows and the piece of music composed by my friend (Xavier Starr), to see whether I could create a relaxing 'experience' for the viewer.
playing with shadows:
Piece of animation without sound:
Results:
The results of Experiment 2 showed that for participant 2; neither the sound or the animation changed their level of stress.
The stress level however decreased in the 'music condition' for participant 3, who also commented that 'the music was good'. and 'it resonated with the grass and made me more relaxed', which confirms my predictions of the music decreasing the audiences stress level.
Participant 1 dipped in stress level at the 'no sound' condition, which could also mean that the animation itself was what was inducing the 'relaxing' effect.
Experiment 3:
After doing the second experiment I was compelled to continue with animating foliage and maybe the insects in it. I did a short loop animation which inspire something bigger.
Ambitiously, I came up with a narrative that I wanted to animate, with the intention of using part of it as an experiment ( In case I didn't have time to complete the whole animation). In this experiment I wanted to see what the effect of using 'unusual sounds' (or sounds that don't necessarily correspond to what is happening on screen) has with the stress response of the audience. The intention being to increase the audience's stress response with some slightly unsettling piece of animation. I also wanted to see whether I could make an animation that created that response in the audience, or wether sound was essential to creating a 'stress response'.
Storyboarding the narrative:
I did not manage to finish the whole narrative for the deadline, but I have several scenes which contain stressful and relaxing scenarios on which I experimented with sound.
Results:
The results of this experiment show that:
The level of stress increased by 1 for participant 2 for both the 'sound' and the 'silent' condition. Which means that sound and animation can both create a stress response in the viewer.
The same response came from participant 3 who also increased by 1 in stress after seeing both conditions.
Participant 1 however had lower stress watching the 'sound' condition, which could either indicate that the animation itself could create a stress response or the sound in the second condition relaxed them, decreasing stress.
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