Be Almost Miraculous
Digital Animation, 2022, 02:34 minute loop
https://vimeo.com/714269291/60629b3ebb
Be Almost Miraculous is about the need for radical imagination and action to reconnect humankind with the environment. The text is depicted in a billowous, fur-covered typeface that tumbles, drifts, and falls down the screen. In the animation, the fur-covered words drift down the screen, seeming to bump up against the viewing surface, come to rest as piles of shaggy, puffed up letter forms, finally deflating and being absorbed into the ground.. It seems to be that each word has its own personality or motivation in the video. "Miraculous" falls fairly stately and straight-forwardly. "Almost" tumbles down, out of control, acting as the hedging qualifier that it is. "Be" crushes down, acting as a commandment to just exist.
The animation was created in collaboration with the software. Each word was assigned a virtual weight, controlling how fast they would fall down the screen and how much tumble they would have. The words start at different heights above the ground plane so that they would arrive on-screen at different times, but not far enough to avoid collisions. From there, the software took over, controlling the speed and the results of the collisions. The bounce against the barrier of the screen surface evokes the technology that is both a cause of climate collapse, and a potential source of connection and restitution.