Futurism in relation to my visual project

The Futuristic movement in art was all about capturing movement and visualising it in the media popular at the time (Paintings, etc.). Birthed by the futurist manifesto written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the futurist movement was striving to embrace the new while letting go of the past. Artists of the time were living in a world of rapid technological advancement, the roars of industry could be heard across Europe and their art reflected that.

Something that always intrigued me about the futurist movement is how movement is captured in a still image. This example by Giacomo Balla shows a dog and its owner that appears to be made up of several instances of the same scene layered onto one another. This use of repetition implies the subject has been caught in motion. For my visual project, I wanted to capture motion is a similar way that the futurists did. While not entirely sure of its practicality at this point, I wanted to recreate the futurist theme of movement in the form of animation, because what is the futuristic movement if not a predecessor of a moving image.

In the process of animation, the animator works in a similar way to how the futurist painters worked. An animator places image after image in a progressive manner to make the scene come to life when viewed in quick succession while the futurists did a similar thing but placed all the images onto one frame, letting us view the range of movement all at one time.  This depiction of a range of movement is what inspired me to use animation as a possible media for my visual project.

In the event that animation is not a possibility due to either time restraints or otherwise, I feel like it is also possible to translate the futurist style in a more direct way via graphic design. Showing a range of movement in something like a poster could give the design a very dynamic feel to it, in the same way that the futurist painting had.

The main thing that I want to take from the futurist movement is their treatment of movement. How image is layered over image to show a range of movements. Whether my chosen media will in fact be animation or something else, my main goal is to portray the theme of movement in the way the futurists did, through repetition.

Reference:

·         Image:[ http://bittleston.com/artists/giacomo_balla/]

·         Wikipedia-2013-wikipedia.org[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism][Last accessed on 16/12/2013]