Refraction

“Refraction” is a motion art piece that plays with light and color to create the effect of lens distortions on geometric patterns. Amorphous shapes gradually melt and change, revealing different intricacies over time.

Creating “Refraction”, I explored larger scene movement, independent of the grid-like structure of my previous long-form motion pieces. Instead of focusing on many small interactions between elements, “Refraction” is driven by the distortion effect applied to the entire scene. The interplay of colors on both sides of the lensing is a very tangible experience to me; the push and pull between them is one of my favorite things to watch.

Something I try to create with my motion work is an element of colorful surprise. The palettes have been fairly consistent in my recent works, but their application has been very different. A newly-explored depth in “Refraction” displays emergent lights and shadows, which shine and fade to reveal different lattices in the background.

My recent motion works loop in dynamic ways, without a specific start and stop point. Starting with “Divergence”, I began developing something I call ‘asymmetric looping’. I take a few parameters that comprise visual elements and attempt to loop between a range of values. The effect is a series of sub-loops emerging within a larger chaotic loop, which synchronize over time. This behavior encourages focus on some of the discrepancies in the shorter loops within the much longer perfect loop.