Nicos Synnos (2022)
Video loop, 2’40”
Animation, Photography, research: Nicos Synnos
Experiments: Nicos Synnos, Christos Georgiou
Digital compositing,
3D modeling and post-production: Christos Georgiou
Stop frame sound capturing,
software development: Charalambos Margaritis
Sound design/mixing: Yiannis Christidis
Text: Frosoulla Kofterou
Lab for Animation Research
The video focuses on the relation of the one and many. In view of the popular aphorism that warns us not to miss “seeing the forest for the trees”, the work is engaged in the reversibility of the suggested polarity. Even though the forest stands for a number of trees it represents the one, the whole, the singular and the universal, while on the other hand, any particular tree stands for the many, and is thus haunted by the diversity of the multiple. A tree is presented through a video projection, and contains all photographic shots accompanied by fragments of the surrounding sounds of the forest recorded at the shooting. Both the photographs and sounds are animated in an experimental manner to create recognizable behaviours or narratives; yet, at times the work abandons certainty and embraces ambiguity. Through a cinematic animation approach of multiple viewing angles, recorded movements, and animated fictional behaviors, the tree reflects the whole by performing its wider all-inclusive self-image, a forest of the one.