Animating Art History was a Summer School and an Evening Course that took place in 2009, run by The Courtauld Gallery and University of the Arts London . Students explored art history research methods at The Courtauld and moving image processes at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design's BA Graphic Design department. 28 young people took part from 11 different schools and colleges across London.
The EVENING COURSE
10 sessions from February to May 2009
We started by meeting everyone, being introduced to the course and visiting the Gallery as well as both universities – all in one evening! From then on we had art history lectures, did research in The Courtauld Gallery and learnt loads of complex animation techniques at Central Saint Martins. Everyone worked really hard and no one dropped out of the course even though some of us had to travel for ages after a whole day at college.
We also had the chance to study original artists' drawings in The Courtauld's collection and met the photographic artist Marysa Dowling who talked about her work and took fantastic portraits of us all based on her project called ‘The Movement of an Object’. She gave us each two prints to keep which was great.
See Marysa Dowling's photographic portraits
We learnt about the meaning behind portraits from the past up to present and took photos of each other inspired by Marysa Dowling.
See our photographs.
We made stop-frame animations using only twelve digital stills inspired by something in The Courtauld Gallery. We took the photos in the courtyard of Somerset House and used specialist software at Central Saint Martins to animate them.
See some of our stop-frame animations .
We also photographed the architecture of the gallery and looked at how it affects the way people see the art.
See some of the architectural photographs we took.
All this research inspired the animation experiments we did in groups; we tried out lots of different techniques using rostrum cameras, pixilation and Final Cut Pro on the MAC computers. At the end of the course we had a screening event and had to present our work to everyone including the Heads of both universities; we got very good feedback.
See stills from our evening animations.
Watch a short film about our course.
See more photos documenting our course.
Find out more about Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins.