Hello my wide eyed friends. It’s that time of the week again, time for your bi-weekly slice of twisted animation with Eyes Open Wide.
This video begins with a set of unexplained tentacles creeping across the ground until they reach a stack of TV’s in front of a lone arm chair. Suddenly the TV’s spring to life and show a single eye staring out from the screens at the chair in front of it. The “life form” stretches out and replicates a human form sitting on the chair. The tentacles then hand the form a remote just as a deer runs past the screens and is deconstructed in an explosion of colours and shapes… the deer makes its way out of the screens light and runs off unscathed.
This is the point in the video where you realize that it is based in a zoo, or a park of some sort, as the screens scan the surroundings with their lights and reveal a variety of animal life. This seems to fascinate the life form and it breaks forward carrying the screens with it while moving on large tangled tentacles it attempts to show the animals caricatures of themselves but as they are not interested the screen in a rage angrily collects all the animals and deconstructs them all into a massive swirling mix of morphing colours and shapes. The life force goes onto create more advanced human structures out of this trippy swirling mess and the cycle begins.
One of the reasons I love animation like this so much is the ability for people to take their own representation and meaning from it. While watching it I came up with mine:
Life is shapes, colours and the attributes of definition, something that can only be measured by the last depiction of itself and the memory of its previous forms. The scariest thing about mistaking the stimuli of visual aesthetics is the possibility of actuality in the sense that the craziness happening around you is not just a misconception but instead a direct representation of your world.
The Music Scene is an instrumental hip hop album by producer Blockhead. Released in November 2009 on Ninja Tune, it is Blockhead’s fourth solo album. The song is good, but there is a much better version of this video on youtube under the name Trippy Animation which has a Dubstep track that works so much better with this animation in my opinion.
This video is directed an animated by Anthony F. Schepperd someone that, if you have been following this column, you will have heard me talk about before (see previous review). He is a fantastic animator, a personal favourite of mine and, as I said last time, I am sure this is not the last time you will here about him in this series.
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Don’t fall off the world… and when you’re through to the other side, remember to keep your Eyes open Wide!
