when I create an artwork I start
backward I first think what is the
effect I want this artwork to have on
the audience
we can hypnotize the audience with just
a still image using the kid stays in the
picture technique which is basically
creating a parallax on the photograph
and creating spatial dimensionality out
of it you can create subtle nuances in
the still image to create this
three-dimensional effect for me it was a
huge Epiphany because I realized that in
doing this effect on my own images I
could then start to you know create
narrative artworks that then express
what my interests are as an artist I'm
your well example s and I'm a digital
media artist I had for a very long time
in looking for or searching for what my
artistic voice would be and I thought
that I had a very rich arsenal of images
whether they were photographs they were
paintings drawings whatever I had all of
this stuff and for years I hadn't really
known what to do with it
I've been looking for this artistic
voice and after working on the kid stays
in the picture and all sort of came
together
I've always been creative ever since I
was a young child in the area that I
grew up in which was Venice California
on the west side of Los Angeles I
basically really started to you know
make art in the streets by becoming a
graffiti writer I was always carrying a
camera with me and I wound up really
becoming sort of a documentary
photographer and I was also shooting the
entire youth culture that was happening
around me shooting lots and lots of
photographs which ended up staying with
me ever since I got all these shooting
photographs and they always make it back
into my work somehow
when I came to New York after college I
felt into this entire new movement that
was happening which is the advent of
Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and
After Effects and all of these programs
that we now swear by this was early 90s
when all of this was just starting to
come out and I started to literally draw
on the computer and I started to use the
computer exclusively to start making my
work and I got a call one day to see if
I wanted to work on this film which
ultimately became the kid stays in the
picture we had to take an entire
narrative film format and create visuals
and we had to do all of that with stills
the process was creating three different
layers or four different layers and
cutting out the middle ground the
foreground the background and then
repainting in the background behind the
foreground after working on that project
I started to look through my entire body
of work and all of the artworks that I
made and I realized that I could do this
with my photographs I could also do this
with my paintings I could do this with a
lot of different things I already had
sort of lying around the studio using
After Effects I could break up the
spatial Plains create slight movement
and combine traditional media with
digital media that really opened the
doors for me artistically
this is the piece no feeling is final
and in working on an artwork like this I
can even use the parallax 2.5 the effect
you can use that same effect on just a
simple graphic element as well as on
photographs so just by breaking up an
image into several different planes you
suddenly have not only an abundance of
control on the spatial depth but then
you can also have the ability to treat
each layer sort of separately which is
something that we didn't really apply in
the kid stays in the picture and this
piece is a result of taking the
everything I learned and working on that
film and evolving it to where I am now
with this in transmigration is when you
look at the artwork at moments you see
the entire room is filled with one image
and other times there's lots of little
images that make up the bigger picture
all of this is accomplished through
either you know live-action footage or
CGI and also still images what's
possible now was not necessarily so
possible back then so as technology
advances it allows anybody that is using
computers or they're using technology to
create art it opens many doors for them
you
being able to break up a picture and
then animate it and bring it to life
being able to create different layers
those things didn't exist five years
four years before we work on the kid
stays in the picture after working on
that film we we've seen this effect
become ubiquitous I think one of the the
real reasons that is is because it is
something that is accessible to artists
to do technology has gone to the point
now where it allows artists to get more
creative and more inventive with the
ways they're going to do something and
create artworks that are new and change
the way video art is being created