Elevate Talks: Matthias Brown (a.k.a. TraceLoops)
Matthias Brown is an artist living and working in Jersey City who says he lives and works in Brooklyn because nobody hires people who live in New Jersey for creative work. He has a BFA in graphic design and works mostly with animation. He shares his experiments with rotoscoping in quick looped gifs on his widely acclaimed Instagram: @traceloops. For those of you who are unfamiliar with rotoscoping, it is a method where animators trace real footage frame by frame to create live-action animations. We’ve talked with him about his creative process, inspiration and the future.
Can you introduce yourself, please?
My name is Matthias. I’m an animator and other stuff, nice to meet you.
What does TraceLoops mean?
TraceLoops came about when I didn’t know what rotoscoping was and is a literal interpretation of using tracing paper to create looping animations. As I’ve worked more under the moniker, TraceLoops has come to mean more of exploring repetition in different ways and how the previous iteration of that action influences the next one, both how the actual action changes but also the experience.
Can you show us a picture of your workplace?
How would you describe what you do?
I’m primarily an animator but do a lot of things.
Why did you choose rotoscoping to create your animations?
I don’t use solely rotoscoping, but it’s a way to clearly communicate a movement or idea. Recording a video of motion is never perfect and there’s a lot of extraneous information. I went to school for graphic design and I think that influenced my aesthetic in that there’s a desire to communicate an idea as clearly as possible using as little as possible.
How do you think new technologies such as VR, AR and interactive technologies are affecting animation? How do you feel experimenting with them?
I think they are interesting, which is a terribly ambiguous answer. I’ve had fun with VR and AR programs, but I haven’t had an experience that really pushed past being novel. I think VR takes too much equipment and is too invasive as it exists now. AR is fun, but I’ve rarely gone back and played or used an AR program or game. I think both AR and VR are good for one time experiences, but have highly diminishing returns because they are such involved processes.
What inspires you?
Researching the history and mechanics of seemingly mundane things. I like knowing how things work and why they are the way they are, it helps to make art that takes full advantage of the components involved.
What is it like to have 29.2k followers on Instagram? What impact do they have on the content you publish?
It’s nice to put something out there and have an immediate response. Having more followers makes me make make more of an effort to curate content and there’s an element of research and experimentation withhow people respond to what is published, how it’s published, when it’s published, etc.
How do you choose what clients to work for? Is there any type of client you’d decline?
I’m pretty open. I’m more likely to decline work based on the project itself rather than the client. If it feels like it will be poorly managed, if there’s a strong resistance to a contract being used, pushback on budget, or people who want me to use materials they don’t own the copyright to are all bad. I also avoid projects where the client says “do whatever you want” because what I want to do and what they are expecting are never the same thing. Retroactively establishing what a client wants after making something I believe to be good work is defeating and makes me resent the project.
If you had to put together your all-time top 3 favourite projects, what would they be?
Converse Music, it was my first paid project, there was a lot of time budgeted in, helpful feedback and the work that came out of it was not heavily branded.
GhostlyInterstitial for Shigeto “Pulse” this was pretty open and an implementation of an idea I had wanted to try for a while, again, no heavy branding and it’s a project I can showcase with music that is much more thought out and polished than anything I’d create.
Surface Exhibition/Falling Faces — last year I was part of an exhibition with four other artists that was part of an artist residency at Mana Contemporary. It was exciting and fulfilling to work with a group to create an exhibition that was greater than the sum of its parts. Other artists in the group included Sam Cannon, Julian Glander, Thoka Maer and Hayden Zezula (aka Zolloc).
You were invited to the White House to make GIFs, could you tell me a bit more about that experience?
That was when David Karp, founder of Tumblr, was interviewing President Barack Obama about student loans and similar issues. I was visiting my mom and sister in Florida for my sister’s high school graduation when I got an email with the word “URGENT” in the subject line and asking for my social security number, which was suspect, but read more about it and found out that it was legitimate and the social security number request was to do a background check. I booked a flight for a few days later that left at something like 5 AM from Florida to get me to DC by midday, had a backpack full of clothes and went through security at the White House, generally surreal, didn’t help that I was tired. Shook the President’s hand at the end of the event and figured out how to get a train back to the NYC metro area.
Who or what inspires you?
I’m inspired by my friends who work in similar yet dissimilar disciplines. I get lunch with Zolloc pretty often and talk things out. I get inspired by learning how things work as well. I’m very interested in process, both in art and utilitarian practices. People who know me know that sometimes I’ll say a word or idiom and, if no-one knows where it came from or why, then I’ll look it up on the spot.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Realizing that staying motivated isn’t really a thing that happens for anybody, but forcing yourself to make create in the times when motivation and inspiration are limited is what really results in a body of work.
How do you see yourself in 12 months?
I’ve been working more with programming in the past few months. I want to make art toys that are physically interactive using microcomputers. I’ve done two projects so far, but I know there’s so much more I could do with it.
How do you see yourself in 5 years?
I want to have a solo show where I don’t make compromises in how the work is displayed.
Bonus track: Could you recommend any TV series /movie /song /artist /etc?
I’ve been watching Barry on HBO recently. TV series I revisit often are King of the Hill, Home Movies and Strangers With Candy. Movies: Fargo, American Movie and This Is Spinal Tap. Song “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” by Talking Heads, but the live version from Stop Making Sense. Two artists I revisit a lot are Norman McLaren and Shigeo Fukuda.
