Lucy Raven- Animation Exhibit

Lucy Ravens: China Town Animation

After attending Lucy Ravens lecture on her history and her animation displayed in the Nevada Museum of art, I went and watched her animation play. Having just gone to her lecture and having seen the entire behind the scenes photography and work put into the piece, I had a predetermined bias coming into it. I felt with all of the work put into the piece and all of the time spent traveling and the emotions put into the animation that it was going to be phenomenal, a recreation of the process of one of our most vital resources in the electronic age, copper wire.

As I walked into her gallery space at the Nevada Museum of Art, I went straight to the viewing area. The viewing area is a few modern benches sitting in a screened off room, with white and red images, playing to the China Town theme. Her animation was an repeat, as is transitioned through different sequences of photographs of both her journey and the journey of the copper product as it transitions from dirt, to refined dirt, to Vancouver to be transported, then packaged on a ship and sent to China where the copper is smelted and turned to wire which then is transported to a hydroelectric plant in China. The whole time ambient noises to add to the aesthetic feel, like you are there experiencing each one of these snapshots in time. The room, the colors, the projections, the sounds all adds to how elaborate this process is. A good denotation, an essential production of a valuable resource and the transformation the copper industry has gone through.

Regrettably, the way in which the animation was put together was almost sickening, literally. The stop frame animation was a great idea to explain the process in an artsy way, without using video. Her previous hand drawn animations where fantastic as they pulled you through the emotions of the dust bowl of the 1930’s. But, the manner in which this was captured, freehand photography, without a stand and some of the time while on moving objects made me sick to my stomach. The images were often blurry and laced with jolting camera angles, it couldn’t pull the viewer in. It was hard to sit through more than five or ten minutes of the twenty seven minute piece without feeling ill. The greatest part about the whole viewing process was getting to see the pictures of the grand size of the operations it takes to make such a seemingly simple wire. This left me wanting more, simply because she had put so much work into capturing this process.

At that time I stood up to walk around the gallery space to look at the other photographs and notes and other object she included to explain the history and the magnitude of this project. That was when it clicked in my head. This piece did not have as much to do with the artistic visualization or creation of the copper process as much as it has a message and a meaning behind it. A message to me showing how much we take for granted our society where everything is provided to us, but what really happens, what waste is really created, what companies are really doing to get that wire in my hands. This animation was not about the artsy photography and it didn’t matter that it was hard to watch. It was the magnitude, the whole process and explanation of the copper process that was the art. To get something small one must understand the steps it takes to simply get that one object, and that is why I respect and enjoyed her art.

Questions: I want to know why did you choose to sequence and scroll through the pictures so fast, why not do more of a slideshow with the ambient noises to make it easier to view from the audience’s perspective? Out of the 65,000 different pictures you took, why did you only choose 7000 and what made those 7000 pictures make the cut, and to continue now that it is done would you have changed your images and if yes, why?