Shared Visual Experiences and Thinking Through Art is the abbreviation for SVETTA Art Club for NHS staff working at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation Trust.
I have developed a new understanding of how creativity works for me. First of all, it connects to the process within the project structure. The discipline helped to follow the routine and to avoid unnecessary overthinking of the task.
My artist’s response to the intense creative environment with the delivery of an inspirational video every week started to shift towards the video animation. I found the rhythmic coordination between the intensity of the project and the fast speed of the video animation. I was told by one of the project mentors that the artist’s response will come naturally after immersing in the project for few weeks. It happened after a few disappointing attempts in creating a static artwork.
The colorful environment of participants’ artworks replaced the missing in-person and physical connection with the group. Online atmosphere left in memory the bright light of the presenting room, computer screen with many faces, and distant working tables. These elements are part of the strange COVID19 times when physical experiences of the art workshop environment replaced by reconstructed images of guessing spaces by our minds. Existed excitement of immersed creative process lasts only an hour. From my side, it includes attributes of my room and missing physical touch of participants’ artworks. I mean that there are no real work dimensions, no real shapes, forms, colors, or textures. We are ‘creatively guessing’ all the time, and this is what makes the brain tired during all virtual collaborations. When I hit the button ‘End meeting for all’ the TOO SILENT SILENCE surrounds again every object and corner of the studio.
On the side of participants who wait for my instructions exists uncertainty whether they understand what this art workshop is about. However, I found that missing guidance sometimes brings new creative ideas and participants explore their skills and ideas independently away from the teacher’s eyes.
The connection with animation came from endless possibilities which can be explored during the stop motion processes similar to open options that lie in front of participants in online workshops. The fluid movement of animation absorbs the viewer and offers a few readings of screen moovements similar to a free reading of my distant instructions. This is what makes me excited about the idea of temporality of a moving screen. Even if there is an option to play the animation again it is somehow slipping all the time from the screen by providing addiction up to a certain point. The philosopher Ricciotto Canudo said that “Velocity possesses the potential for a great series of combinations, of interlocking activities, combining to create a spectacle that is a series of visions and images tied together in vibrant agglomeration, similar to a living organism.”
Here a few images from studies for animation.
