DIGITAL RESIDENCY | FRANKIE ROBERTS

FRANKIE ROBERTS

Frankie Roberts employs magpie tools: bright colours, vivid projections and lulling harmonies, to give an inner monologue to the grime and glamour of contemporary living.

RELEASE #1
STYLING THE NATION

The animation experiment in Frankie’s first release is taken from an old Debenham’s print advert from a 2005 GQ magazine I found and was flicking through… I think a lot about elevating the banal and/or defunct to a status of embarrassed reverence, and the reconfiguration of associative hierarchies.

I was playing around with creating a horror-style heirloom from the advert (which was 5 men standing in an allotment looking slightly empty and bemused, with the tagline “STYLING THE NATION”). I wanted to create a new ecosystem of meaning, importance and emotion from something which was (at best) bin-worthy, recomposing the advert’s defunct purpose into a dreamscape; equal parts dread with serenity/a Gardener’s World fever dream.

RELEASE #2

Words by Frankie: I’m a bit cagey with sharing sound and my making process of it.. not sure if this is because it feels naked and (to me overly) sincere on its own.

It’s both a first and last resort in terms of making for me- sometimes when other processes aren’t working or I feel shut out from myself it’s the last vestige of vibe laxatives when I lack the ability to reason and rationalise. I think the way sound/melody/harmony can undercut justification in its emotive immediacy appeals to me during these lulls, like it’s the only route to get to a certain flow that doesn’t feel intimidating; a revival tactic and a gut shortcut.

So it’s a good building block in that sense, when other things jar too much, making sound or music wordlessly manages to deliver punches that other mediums can flow from. I feel as though it’s hard to escape from the sincerity of sound on its own which I like, so manipulating or exposing elements of that sincerity is part of a process that follows, maybe through visual contrast or something else.

I use loops almost exclusively, there’s something in their repetition and circuit closure that I think creates a particular emotional ecosystem with its own circular ebb and flow.

So here’s a video of me forcing myself through that process. There’s also an mp3 of the recording here if anyone wants to listen without iPhone tinniness.

RELEASE #3

Words by Frankie: The video is an experiment using the sound from the last release as an energetic starting point. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about authenticity within storytelling and the presumed authority a narrator has (or a maker might have), the elasticity of a “true story” and emotive threads that tie it to believability. Also that in the process of cherry picking particular materials, in this case visuals, they are automatically made significant or elevated to a status beyond or their original (flippant) intention, putting them on a velvet cushion inside a constructed world.

In my practice in general I think about the boundaries of language, it being this predictable, sometimes trope-y mesh that holds existence together and therefore experimented with a constructed spoken language, distancing it phonetically from its written form.

RELEASE #4
I WISH I WAS (WIP)

Words by Frankie: I Wish I was (Release #4) is a work in progress snippet at the moment, more coming in future releases… atm I’m playing with conjuring moods alongside trying to learn 3D modelling software more in depth and with more control over the outcome, and experimenting with superimposing extraterrestrial 3D characters on 2D landscapes. I’m hoping it will be a component of a more long-form play with elements of text/spoken word layered between animation and music snacks.

RELEASE #5

Words by Frankie: This release lives in a similar or parallel mood pool to the previous one. I Wish I Was related somewhat to a character wishing for a more human existence beyond its reach, a calm, sweet and pie-in-the-sky kind of longing. This one hints at the prospect of a soothing and even casual apocalypse, a peaceful ominousness. I’m working out at the moment the threads between each release, how each mood might connect with the last and the potential of their universe.

I think there’s a bleakness that has first defeated the characters- maybe this bleakness is generated from their being tethered to human existence in form or language. Their powerlessness in this defeat has developed into a kind of saccharine acceptance and bliss, a strange and synthesised empathy for the human condition that borders on the sociopathic.

RELEASE #6

Words by Frankie: This month’s release is experimental and a work in progress while still figuring out how to master Blender (probably a lifelong project). Softwares with limitless potential for lifelike realism make you think about the boundaries of what you’re synthesising – adding and subtracting lifelikeness and creating intentional “cracks” and so on.

I’m not anywhere near the stage where I can make photorealistic work, assuming that capability exists as its what a lot of tutorials seem to value the most, but I’ve been thinking about the sort of intentional ruptures I’d want to make in the process of creation to take it halfway outside of the existing world and halfway into another. In this context I think the ruptures could reveal a lot about the you-ness of making when sometimes it doesn’t automatically reveal itself, what you choose to destroy and work backwards from as opposed to what you’re adding on.