Jeff Norman

br0adcast$

br0adcast$ is an animated art film that follows a mysterious orb as it travels and morphs through a surreal virtual landscape, revealing strange organisms, animals, and environments.

“My process involves working intuitively to create assets and scenes without direct influence of storyboards or similar methods of developing ideas. With my attention and thoughts centered on my environment/studio and my media/information diet, I translate these parts of my life through my making process, resulting in assets, scenes, and stories that I stumble upon and interpret as I work. I take these fragments of my life and store them in my digital library, and they serve as vessels of information that reflect my experience of the world.The work comes out of the intersection of intuition and subconscious thought on my experience of contemporary life. By relying on intuition in a technologically-mediated process, I explore a form of biological-digital symbiosis, where the organic spontaneity and expression of the human body and mind co-creates with the algorithmic, procedural logic of digital systems. The outcome in this project is a moment in time in an oddly calm world, with slowly-developing action and transitions. This aesthetic and approach to animation is a response to modern media and its high emphasis on short-form, dynamic, and seductive content, which aims to impose a pre-defined experience upon the viewer for the purpose of attracting the viewer’s attention and patronage.Using non-linear narrative with minimal articulated messaging, I let the interpretation between the viewer and the materials, composition, animation, iconography etc. guide their reading. I take inspiration for materials and aesthetics from the animations of Alexy Préfontaine (a.k.a. aeforia), and I am inspired by the subjects and compositions from the paintings of Konstantin Korobov. Their styles and interventions speak to the beauty of our world, as well as the strange figures and environments that shape our perception of it. I aim to elevate my work to that of their aesthetic and conceptual expression, communicating profound meaning in an elegant way. By working with negative space and subtle colour variation to invite a closer visual attention from the viewer, I mix cinematic and arthouse style with 3d animation to create contemporary art objects that work as standalone animation projects.I combine straight-ahead and pose-to-pose strategies to make transitions and narratives come together from disparate parts, and this process leads me to discovering moments of deep connection between ideas and visual aesthetics. When bridging the various parts, I improvise the connections, capturing the magic of the present moment both as a practice of making and as a product to be shared. My hope is that the viewer could have a similar feeling of embodiment and connection take place as they engage with my work.”