Act 28

Putting Us Back Together Again–Cyber-Flip-Doll

I am stoked with this weeks act. I am really happy with it because it fulfills one of the goals I set for 52 Acts which is to use conventional items or programs in a way which they were not directly intended. To creatively misuse technology.

Something I have found through doing this project is that it is actually very hard to misuse Web 2.0 applications–because they are user driven and openly participatory it is really hard to push boundaries that are intentionally flexible to start with.

This week I have revisited the animoto photo slide show maker that I used in Act 26 with the intent of using it to create something outside the boundaries of a short movie presentation–A cyber-flip-doll. She was inspired by my childhood memories of mix ‘n’ match books with pictures of dolls that came sliced in four sections, and by changing the single fragments you could ‘dress’ the doll with different hair/top/pant/shoe combinations (heh, like this one for example–’cause those disney princesses are sooo different it must be hilarious to mix those up!).

This work is a combination of four animoto shorts–heads, torso, hips and legs–made from the Frankenstein’s daughter CC images I collected and treated (credits here), stacked on top of each other in their relative positions to form an animated electronic version of the classic flip book. To complement the images I created a soundtrack using garage band samples, which I then separated into four parts and assigned to different body parts. The animoto shorts are set to autostart–so depending on your internet speed you may get the soundtrack all together or you may find it is more like music in the round. After they have played through once you can restart each video at the time of your choosing creating your own unique soundtrack and doll combination.

Thanks again to all the people who put their work out there for creative commons use, this work is licensed attribution non-commercial share alike.