Art In Animation: Modern Times

Modern Times by Chris Coleman is art innovating the conceptual medium of animation. It is also transforming the conceptual experience of this art form. Through the manipulation of space and ambiance of jarring themes his animations evoke a trance like reaction in a viewer. The animations use familiar images such as the car on the road we see in the beginning. An arrow is projected from the vehicle, tracing a path into a starry sky encased in a rectangular space, toying with the concept of space.

There are “pull backs” out of scenes while the almost camera crane like perspective zooms in on another subject, changing the idea intended for the viewer’s experience. Coleman intentionally uses the well known images of people from safety instructions, the dramatized “in the event of an emergency” posters we see in restaurants, the pamphlets we see in airplanes with the awkwardly calm people crashing to their doom.

Colman’s characters, probably copied from actual safety illustrations, convey the contrived mechanistic behaviors humans are expected to behave in, capturing it in a dark yet slightly comical light. We continue to shift out of a scene and rotate to another all within what seems like a specific area in a vast whiteness. The concept of “boundaries” are intentionally jabbed at here as the viewers perspective seems to soar freely around ongoing yet separate actions.

Coleman displays faceless families before cookie cutter homes nauseatingly generated repeatedly. Then faceless brown families are repeatedly generated in a line until they are halted by an interjecting concrete and barbed wire wall followed by homes catching fire. Coleman is clearly illustrating the bias based constructions in society intended to create barriers between people. These concepts interwoven in Coleman’s stylistic animations come together creating a compelling viewer experience. I am including the general audience here, which I am a part of; and I believe this is the general reaction, one only recently evoked by a Flash animation.