Brooklyn-based artist Juan Fontanive creates spectacular motorized flip-books. He manually illustrates and paints each “frame” of his sculptural animations on paper and proceeds to install them in his kinetic boxes that sequentially flip through to simulate motion, just like a film projector except without light.
By salvaging mechanical parts from clocks and bicycles, the artist is able to construct individual containers for his mechanized animations. Fontanive’s objective with his motorized machines is to create a visual sense of motion that is more physical than digital. One of his works states: “Responding to the lack of movement found in our current electronics age, he is interested in actual movement in relation to virtual. His machines long to free images; they combine to form a medium in themselves exploring the vividness of living things.”
Some of Fontanive’s most visually striking subjects in his kinetic machines are various types of birds. He imitates their flying gestures through a sequence of hand-drawn illustrations. The sound of the repetitively shuffling papers even seem to mimic the flapping of a bird’s wings. Check out the video, below, to see one of the artist’s machines in motion.
