Cryptozoology, the study of unknown, hidden, or mystery animals is a marginal scientific discipline operating outside of traditional zoological practice. Believing firmly in things that are not supposed to exist, cryptozoologists counter dominant ideologies with alternative theories and new taxonomic models. The Bigfoot, shuffling by in Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin’s
home movie from October 20th 1967, is Cryptozoology’s most moving image.
Over the years, skeptics and believers alike have poured over the Patterson-Gimlin filmstrip in attempts to understand the hairy homonid. Experts from both camps have broken down the sequence into discrete parts in hopes of either exposing the hoax or proving the existence of Bigfoot as a living animal. From animals to animation (that other illusion)-- unknown, hidden and mysterious experiences are engaging because they activate and agitate the human capacity for wonder and curiosity
The Bigfoot experience begins and is sustained as data: rumor, report, filmic capture, reproduced images, video capture, digitized images, and so on. Communication and participation in this network is as fundamental to the cryptozoological encounter, as technology is crucial to suspend disbelief in moving image experiences. The actual living, breathing thing is an [optical] allusion. These entities are facilitated by cultural and technological apparatuses.
In deconstructing the animal’s movement, the proto-cinematic motion studies of
Eadward Muybridge come to mind.
From animals to animation, movement is broken down, the wonderment surrounding both phenomena, both illusions, is halted. Returned to science, removed from fiction, a serious attempt to wrangle in the anomalous, smooth over glitches and return to business as usual.
Rather than breaking down and halting the cryptozoological pursuit, what might emerge from a breaking up? Break-up occurs in communication, a signal is interrupted by noise. Supposing there are Bigfeet in our midst, what sorts of animations exist outside of traditional practice? Animation rules screen-based technocultural experience--from computer desktops to web sites, billboards, special fx and entertainment. What remains to be seen?
What is the potential "thing that isn't supposed to exist" in terms of animation? One animator's
perspective on the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage brings a stamp of authority regarding anomalous movement. Beyond moving images convincingly showing an anomalous animal, what about anomalous animation revealing previously imperceptible moving image art? All this and more will be approached in the upcoming events at
Rererato gallery in portland and
LumpWest gallery in eugene:
The Crypto-Zoetropical Pursuit and other adventures into the technocultural unknown!. To be held on the 40th anniversary weekend of that most famous filmic Bigfoot's inauguration into the cultural imagination!
