BLOCK ANIMATIONS 2011. The block animations are framed and influenced by the technical restrictions of early computer games that had started to make a significant impact on mainstream culture while I was growing up in the late 70s and early 80s. 8-bit processor computers defined the look of these games through blocky pixelated graphics and highly saturated 8-colour palettes. These games created abstracted worlds where simple graphic forms were assigned meaning and value depending on context: it could be a shape that in one game it is read as a tennis ball and assigned physics associated with a ball, in another it is a bullet that the player takes actions to avoid, or in another context could be an item to collect for extra points.

When I make paintings some of the issues closely relating to the experience of playing and developing games emerge; painting has been informed by a digital backdrop where XY screen coordinates come to mind as readily as the verticals and horizontals of a canvas stretcher and the automatic response is to look for CTRL+Z function when a brushstroke fails.

The digital animations take on much of the lexicon of early 8-bit games but are stripped to the point where abstracted objects become simple squares and the palette can be limited to 2-colour. The animations make reference to games but are not interactive and the tight loop accentuates the repetition to the point where the flicker starts to take on the permanency of a static image.

THIS-HERE-NOW 2013. Reflective surfaces in Trisant’s digital works create interrelations between objects in a hermetically sealed computer-generated environment. The scenes adopt presentation and display strategies commonly used in commercial advertising, but these are used to foreground the nature of representation, modern patterns of consumption and the projection of desirability onto consumer goods. Tight loops of repetition are used in these digital animations to exaggerate advertising techniques that place products firmly in consumer’s consciousness. The repetition invokes flux, but rapidly returns to point zero.

CONSUME OR DIE 2014. is a digital work which adopts videogame mechanics in the generation and collection of a succession of power-ups / consumer objects. The digital simulation is presented in auto-play mode where the player-object triggers sweeping movements through the generated space. The sequence runs continuously with accents of repetition layered with random patterns of events in the scene. Speed varies depending on the amount of items consumed. These items are based on the discarded household items depicted in the ‘unswept floor’ genre of mosaic tiles by Sosus of Pergamon, second century BC. The repeating floor pattern is based on a fragment of Roman floor mosaic found in Padua.

https://vimeo.com/112302910

BlockDrawing #04. 2014
The digital simulation makes a connection with the still life genre -particularly Juan Van der Hamen, Desportes and Baugin – in the presentation of objects. There is an emphasis on the interrelation between virtual objects in closed computer-generated environment and a play on repetition, order and randomness.

HIGH FRENZY 2013.
The scene adopts presentation and display strategies commonly used in commercial advertising, but these are used to foreground the nature of representation, modern patterns of consumption and the projection of desirability onto consumer goods. Tight loops of repetition are used in these digital animations to exaggerate advertising techniques that aim to fix products in consumer’s consciousness.

Product Range Repeat #02 2010
Digital Animation