Samuel Adler Sonata for Unaccompanied Flute, recorded by Bonita Boyd, with slow animation

Описание: This is a slow stop motion animation created for Samuel Adler's Sonata for Unaccompanied Flute, recorded by Bonita Boyd for Vox Classics. It was made for a program hosted by the New York Flute Club in 2021.

The Sonata draws from the story of the Irish king Brian Boru, and the animation was designed to weave together the shoreline and landscape of Clontarf with typographic elements from the Book of Armagh and the Book of Leinster, which record both some of the agreements that brought Brian Boru to power, and the story of his defeat at Clontarf.

Whooper swans were also a source for imagery, since their migration routes can parallel the sea-routes taken by the Vikings who defeated Brian Boru. As I painted, I came to see these swans as almost mythical creatures whose movement peacefully foreshadowed the arc of Brian Boru's life; They felt reminiscent of the sense of post-anxious rest and satisfaction that accompanies the march variations in third movement of Adler's Sonata. In some ways the shapes of surviving Viking ships from the 10th and 11th century echo both the arcing necks of swans and the calligraphy in the book of Leinster, so these forms are woven together in the animation in ways that were inspired by the weaving lines of sound in the Sonata.

The imagery was created with a combination of watercolor, pastel, acrylic, and digital manipulation.