The Weather
For the past few years, I've slowly been working on a project called The Weather. The conceptual center of the project is the Weather Man and the movements of his body.
We humans have clear-cut, constructed, demolished, depleted, mined, polluted and A-bombed ourselves into a new (they argue) geological epoch, thus muddying the role of the Weather Man. He no longer just reports the weather as a science-based guess culled from historic data and current conditions. As the be-suited white Weather Man (a proxy for the white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy [bell hooks] and the havoc it has wreaked on the planet), he IS the weather. The gods can no longer punish us with weather from the heavens, for we punish ourselves with the super storms, bomb cyclones and category fives of our own making.
From this perspective, the gestural dance of the white man standing in front of a green screen, exists in unsteady symbolic territory. No longer just the charming, reassuring guide to the weekend, we must also see the Weather Man as the colonizing and consuming global white hegemony that industrialized and militarized us into a new climatic reality. But, just as important, we must also see this Weather Man as an overly made-up, gesticulating and smiling buffoon who points at imaginary things in his imaginary, green-screen world.
The Weather, Vol. 1 was a bit of a test, a proof of concept. Working in a green screen studio, I reenacted some of the Weather Man's classic gestures and riffed on some movements that might mark the weather reports of a climate-changed world. Additionally, I created two CMYK screen prints incorporating my ideas on the relationship between cartoon imagery, 3D modeling, climate disasters, and televised reportage.
The Weather, Vol. 2 is a focused study of one component of the Weather Man’s movement: his hands. This project considers the hands of art (as in Yvonne Rainier’s Hand Movie, Richard Serra’s Hand Catching Lead, etc.), of entertainment (as in Bollywood hand choreography, Jazz hands, magician sleight-of-hand), of communication (as in sign language, gang signs, hand gestures), of technology (as in touch-screen navigation and disembodied VR hands), of religion (as in the Hand of Benediction, orans posture and folded hands), and of politics (as inthe handshake, the “Clinton Thumb,” and the raised fist) in the execution of one 2-minute animation.
The final product, the 2-minute animation, will be short. It will be abstract. It will be “about” the weather only in that its title is The Weather, Vol. 2. Mostly, it will be about a relationship between two things (the hands) located in one indeterminate space (green screen studio) and what happens to that relationship when conditions change.
We humans have clear-cut, constructed, demolished, depleted, mined, polluted and A-bombed ourselves into a new (they argue) geological epoch, thus muddying the role of the Weather Man. He no longer just reports the weather as a science-based guess culled from historic data and current conditions. As the be-suited white Weather Man (a proxy for the white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy [bell hooks] and the havoc it has wreaked on the planet), he IS the weather. The gods can no longer punish us with weather from the heavens, for we punish ourselves with the super storms, bomb cyclones and category fives of our own making.
From this perspective, the gestural dance of the white man standing in front of a green screen, exists in unsteady symbolic territory. No longer just the charming, reassuring guide to the weekend, we must also see the Weather Man as the colonizing and consuming global white hegemony that industrialized and militarized us into a new climatic reality. But, just as important, we must also see this Weather Man as an overly made-up, gesticulating and smiling buffoon who points at imaginary things in his imaginary, green-screen world.
The Weather, Vol. 1 was a bit of a test, a proof of concept. Working in a green screen studio, I reenacted some of the Weather Man's classic gestures and riffed on some movements that might mark the weather reports of a climate-changed world. Additionally, I created two CMYK screen prints incorporating my ideas on the relationship between cartoon imagery, 3D modeling, climate disasters, and televised reportage.
The Weather, Vol. 2 is a focused study of one component of the Weather Man’s movement: his hands. This project considers the hands of art (as in Yvonne Rainier’s Hand Movie, Richard Serra’s Hand Catching Lead, etc.), of entertainment (as in Bollywood hand choreography, Jazz hands, magician sleight-of-hand), of communication (as in sign language, gang signs, hand gestures), of technology (as in touch-screen navigation and disembodied VR hands), of religion (as in the Hand of Benediction, orans posture and folded hands), and of politics (as inthe handshake, the “Clinton Thumb,” and the raised fist) in the execution of one 2-minute animation.
The final product, the 2-minute animation, will be short. It will be abstract. It will be “about” the weather only in that its title is The Weather, Vol. 2. Mostly, it will be about a relationship between two things (the hands) located in one indeterminate space (green screen studio) and what happens to that relationship when conditions change.
credits
Elizabeth Stoner - animation, research
Emily Corazón Nelson Lawrence - video, make-up, concept
Emily Corazón Nelson Lawrence - video, make-up, concept
selections from The Weather, Vol. 2
[A scan of frame 73 of the “dream/drug sequence” in The Weather, Vol. 2. A pink cartoon hand, absent a body, appears mid-spin in this drawing. It pivots on its index finger. Its thumb and pinky, like arms, extend out from the palm, offering balance. The hand gives us its backside, which very much resembles a butt. This pose, and about 30 others in this sequence, are borrowed from Disney’s Aladdin (1992). The background is green construction paper. The number 73 is hand-drawn in black ink in the top right corner. Two hand-drawn registration marks occupy two other corners. Moments of sheen around the hand reveal how the paint slightly warped the clear sheet of celluloid. ]
[This is a section of the “dream/drug sequence” within The Weather, Vol. 2. In this short loop, a pink hand performs a quick shuffle step, pirouettes, then walks along the edges of the frame. During that first portion, the background is green. As its walk continues, more disembodied hands join the hand and the animation switches to light blue contour lines on a white background. As the hands fill the screen, they run out of room and blob into each other. The section ends with a nearly-full screen and abruptly loops back to the pink, dancing hand. The “Elephants on Parade” sequence from Disney’s Dumbo (1941) inspired many of the decisions in this sequence.]
[A 13-second looping video that demonstrates the process for creating some of the animation in The Weather, Vol. 2. The first section shows two wobbly 3D-animated tubes superimposed over two arms waving up and down. The text in this section reads "source material: video footage + 3D animation." The next section switches to the previous motion traced with black contour lines. The effect reads as cartoon animation. The text in this section reads "rotoscoping: 'inked' lines." Finally, pink and auburn color is added to the arms and there is a green, textured backdrop. The text reads "rotoscoping: full-color 'cel'" and "The Weather, Vol. 2 animation test #1."]
selections from The Weather, Vol. 1
[A photograph of a 4-color screen print called Lightning Striking Again from 2018. A 4-color print, also called a process or CMYK print, splits the four color channels of an image into four unique images, enabling full-color images. In this image, two rubbery pink arms reach in from the right. A photographic image of lightning striking at night over the Washington D.C. skyline, which appears to be printed on fabric, drapes over the bottom arm. At the bottom of the image, a cartoon lightning bolt smiles. The arms and fabric were modeled and rendered in a 3D modeling software called Blender. The lightning bolt was created in Adobe Photoshop. At the bottom right, the print is signed “Avery Lawrence, 2018” in pencil. At the bottom right, the pencil script reads “Lightning Striking Again, 1/2 + 2 AP” and includes a little drawing of a lightning bolt.]
[A photograph of a 4-color screen print called Sundowning from 2018. Two rubbery pink arms reach in from the right. A pillow printed with a sunset image droops over the bottom arm. The hand on the top arm, situated in front of the pillow, holds a pose of presentation. On the left, a cartoon rain cloud spills large, cyan raindrops. The cloud smiles. The arms and fabric were modeled and rendered in a 3D modeling software called Blender. The lightning bolt was created in Adobe Photoshop. At the bottom right, the print is signed “Avery Lawrence, 2018” in pencil. At the bottom right, the pencil script reads “Sundowning, 1/2 + 2 AP” and includes a little drawing of a rain cloud.]
[This image shows one stage in the screen-printing process of Lightning Striking Again. The prints on paper are arranged in a two-by-two grid on a metal drying rack. The yellow, magenta, and black color channels have been printed on three of the four paper sheets. The last paper has only the yellow and magenta channels. Registration marks are visible in the bottom right of each print.]
[This image shows one stage in the screen-printing process of Sundowning. The prints on paper are arranged in a two-by-two grid on a metal drying rack. The yellow, cyan, and black color channels have been printed on one of the four paper sheets. The other papers have only the cyan and black channels printed. Registration marks are visible in the bottom right of each print.]
comments Avery Lawrence
Los Angeles, CA
48m ago
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Emily Lawrence
New Orleans, LA
30m ago
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1 REPLY
Beckett Lawrence
Bryn Mawr, PA
15m ago
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.