Q&A with Van Sowerwine, new media artist

Van, where did the idea for the monkey journey come from for your stop-motion, interactive installation You Were In My Dream?

Our piece is loosely based on evolution and transformation. The monkey journey is just one of many metamorphoses in the work. We’ve also used rabbits and wolves, birds and snakes, the kinds of iconic animals that inhabit fairy tales and storybooks.

Can you explain what “the illusion of control ... soon unravels” means in relation to the viewer/participant in You Were In My Dream?

You can choose what path to take in the work but it doesn’t always lead to the outcomes you might like! The dream becomes more of a nightmare and you can only escape by walking away.

What’s the main difference between creating a stand-alone work, like one of your animations, and an interactive work?

An interactive is so much more work! We’ve shot 14 minutes of animation, which you’ll only see all of if you watch the work for a long time. We’ve also worked with a carpenter to build a custom booth, and a programmer to create the interactive side of it. In many ways it would have been so much easier to just make a film. But of course it’s such an immersive experience for the viewer.

Do you find it easier to work alone or with others?

I need to work with others – I’m not very good at working alone. Isobel Knowles and I have collaborated on the work and we’ve also had a lot of help from a carpenter, programmer and sound designer. Large interactive projects are a bit like films – very hard to make alone.

You’ve worked a lot with dolls. What do you see in them that you want to share with other people?

There’s something I love about their blank faces — I want to tell the story behind the plastic mask.

I find dolls a bit creepy. Do you find they inspire other particular emotions in people and do you play on these feelings, and a sense perhaps of childhood, in your work?

On the one hand I do like the associations people have with dolls, in particular that sense of childhood, but I also hope that viewers can get absorbed in the doll-like character and forget that they’re looking at a doll or puppet. I find a lot of dolls really creepy too, but I generally don’t use those in my work.

How long does it take to produce a minute of a film like Clara?

Clara is seven minutes long and we had a 10 week shoot, shooting six days a week and 15 hour days. So that averages out to one second every 2.5 hours which doesn’t seem so bad, but I’m used to it!

Tell me about how you sourced the materials for the set, fabrics, etc. Was it hard to find things to scale?

Everything in Clara was custom made – all the sets and furniture were built by hand so we didn’t have to find much to scale. We just used standard lightweight fabric, for example. Everything is a copy of a real item – Clara’s clothes, for example, are a copy of an outfit I saw at a store and the kitchen benches were modelled on those at a friend’s house. I took a lot of photographs that the modelmaker and dressmaker worked with.

You shot Clara on Super 16mm. Why choose that format?

I had never shot on film before and at the time couldn’t find software that let us work easily with a digital still camera. I love the way film looks and wanted to try using it. But we shot You Were In My Dream on a digital SLR and it’s so much easier and cheaper and still looks beautiful. I’d probably shoot any future film on digital.

Although in some of the clips I’ve seen, the character movement seems primitive. The excerpt from Clara I watched displayed a fluid, human movement. Could you comment on that, how you achieved it?

Isobel Knowles with whom I collaborated on You Were In My Dream is an incredible animator. She animated Clara and it was similar to how a director and an actor collaborate; I’d talk about the emotions and feelings I wanted to convey and she would make Clara move to express that. Isobel also animated You Were In My Dream and the movement she’s created is amazing – we’ve got all sorts of animals in the work and they all move in an incredibly life-like manner.

Experience Van’s work: vansowerwine.com

You Were In My Dream is part of Experimenta Utopia Now International Biennial Of Media Art at Black Box, Arts Centre, February 12 – March 14, 2010.

Pictured: An image from You Were In My Dream.

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