“Eclosion” is performed by the Atlantic Guitar Quartet on their debut, self titled album. In 2011, with support from the Presser Foundation and the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, I was commissioned to make a corresponding video.
In working with stop motion format, I’ve found the mind combines contrasting images, colors and texture in strange ways. This piece is a bit difficult to watch with so many abrupt transitions but it corresponds to the most hectic and challenging track in the Quartet’s performance.
This was largely inspired by silhouettes of people in front of the diorama’s at the Natural History Museum. The scene is arranged much like a TV in a dark room, instead these diorama’s are like an illuminated portal with people viewing in the foreground. Animals that were once living a hundred years ago- shot, stuffed and preserved. I like how the animals face and expression are clear and vivid while people are all anonymous and scattered.
It’s like the animals are staring at the viewer back through time in an overpopulated world, with crowds and madness we’ve all created.
The dear says:
“there was a time before highways”
The wolf says:
“Deer humans, was it all worth it?”
The bear says:
“one on one, pound for pound- I could fuck you up”
The buffalo says:
“I used to roam freely before you committed the largest genocide of mammals in known history”
