Intro to Charlotte Rampling: a Study


With animated texts it is way too easy to get lost in animation and forget text. The old expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" takes on a whole new meaning in a form where written text competes for the attention of the viewer...or is it the reader? Indeed, shall I use the term viewer/reader or reader/viewer? I prefer the latter because, so far as the way the human mind is wired, we tend to let words guide our path of thought, even if imagery impacts us more viscerally. In this regard, Charlotte Rampling: a Study visually pays tribute to actress Charlotte Rampling, on whom I first developed a crush many years ago when I was a teenager. Meanwhile, verbally the piece comes to grips with those early sexual feelings of mine. Herein the animated text form functions as a sort of surreal two-way mirror with imagery reflecting outwardly and text reflecting inwardly.

Charlotte Rampling: a Study is a fragmented animated text, broken down into 7 animations, varying in duration from 1 minute and 3 seconds (21 images) to 1 minute and 39 seconds (33 images), before looping. The last animation differs rhythmically from the first 6 in that while imagery remains on screen for mostly 3 second intervals, text zooms past at a .5 second clip. Even though it lasts only 1 minute and 24 seconds, this final animation contains 168 frames, and so, lacking a high-speed Internet connection, may take time to load.


View Charlotte Rampling: a Study