Conversations: Stop Motion Animation by New Media Art students Jeremy Boyden, Sarah Bylan, Bryleigh Foreman and Isabel Wells

May 20 - September 14, 2024 

SU Art Galleries | Gallery 128 in Conway Hall  

Artist Talk, Workshop, & Closing Reception:    

September 12, 5:30 p.m., Conway 156

New Media Art Professor David Gladden and students Jeremy Boyden, Sarah Bylan, Bryleigh Foreman and Isabel Wells will give a talk and workshop during Sophomore Seminar and the reception will follow.

This New Media Art project was inspired by a question that has occupied religious scholars and philosophers since the Medieval times: “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” This question was hotly debated for centuries and an apocryphal story is told that the defenders of Constantinople were so preoccupied with it that they failed to defend the city against the invading Ottoman Army. “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” has since become a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value. For this project, the students were asked to have a three-hour conversation that would be recorded and then serve as the basis of a stop motion animation. A list of open-ended questions, inspired by the ridiculous “angels dancing on a pin” question, was given to the students to serve as inspiration, but the students were free to deviate from the list and create their own questions. The students then edited the conversation down to a two-minute voice over track that they could then animate.