Visual Darwinism

This project considers humans as both shaped by and embedded within the ecosystems they inhabit.

25 July. Interested in re-working this digital animation, on paper: the whole sequence drawn on 1 sheet, so the lines stay marked on the support and document the time lapse.

Metamorphosis and materiality in animation. The « residu » - ghost lines on paper as a result of the animation work?

Réflection on Time. Each frame is created and destroyed, and replaced by a new one. The Ephemeral, The Cyclic.

The resulting image. The résidu? A physical testimony of the shooting of the film.

The movement and the transformation are recorded on the material.

Interested in the ghost lines, that create the movement. The invisible forces?

The present frame is built through the accumulation of layers (the past).

What about using this process (layers of movement) to create larger scale artworks in my painting practice?

The process of creation is also cyclic. From clay elements, to painting, to drawing, to animation, to clay sculpture, to painting again…?

HOW TO PRESENT ALL THE FRAGMENTS AS A WHOLE? Installation?

I realize that the medium of animation becomes a starting point. It’s not a finished piece—it’s an evolving world. It expands. One short sequence can spiral into an installation, a projection, a loop, there is also the sound. It stretches into time, into space. It’s elastic. It becomes matter. And once it’s alive, you can’t help but follow where it wants to go.

GHOST VERSION. ?

Materiality in animation : Blurring the lines between painting and animation. Static vs Dynamic art.
Matter (physical), vs Digital. Organic = alive = animated.
MONTAGE, reordering the frame to create new meaning.

Influence of Maya Deren :

Maya Deren’s “An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film” uses the word “anagram” not in the literal sense—of rearranging letters to form new words—but as a conceptual metaphor. She describes the essay as “a reshuffling of concepts, not a linear argument.” It’s a structure that resists chronology or hierarchy. Instead, it operates like a constellation—form, art, and film orbit one another, each shaping and reshaping the meaning of the others.

This nonlinear, rhythmic approach mirrors Deren’s experimental filmmaking practice, where repetition, transformation, and ritual replace traditional narrative. Her films are often described as poetic structures, where movement (especially of the body and the camera) and the passage of time are more expressive than dialogue or plot.

Notes following the individual tutorial with Despina:

Expand the work, The scale of the work. Texts, voice, sound?
Create a fictional universe (space installation, multidisciplinary) where the laws of physics are different, the entity becomes the landscape, the landscape becomes the entity.
See work by Tai Shani, Danielle Brathwaite, Anthea Hamilton, Paul McCarthy.
Use my body (materiality) matter, and become part of the work, EMBODY THE WORK. > Maya Deren :
My body in mutation, Metamorphosis ? Costume?? Props?? Becoming a plant and keep working on the final piece my hands made of leaves and stems…? Video.
Film an empty landscape and then me in movement through out the frame, altering my appearance. Becoming the landscape.
Create a 3D virtual space (fictional world) and insert the animation, sound, drawing, 3D scanned sculptures, texts.
Work on the final sequence, faded version vs sharp version.
Montage?

Visual Darwinism

ALEXANDRA LEVASSEUR