I’m going through old CD ROMS, looking at archives of works from the 1990’s.
Back then a friend suggested I should try the Flash animation software for drawing. The software was very basic and had a more limited interface than other drawing programs. I liked the fact that there were limited options. Later versions of Flash became more sophisticated, which I found too complicated. The native platform for Flash is the computer screen and it seemed an interesting tool to draw with at that time as we entered the digital era.
Flash seemed to be a very intuitive interface and as I was already playing around with making a website and had a basic idea of drawing on screen and how links worked, somehow I took to Flash easily. Vector lines meant that the lines and shapes could be scaled infinitely and retain amazingly perfect edges. Flash allowed me to play around with simple drawings that move a bit. They are not quite still and not quite animated, hardly doing anything except wink and wiggle. Later some of these images became large prints and were also painted on canvas.
Most of these drawings were made on my first laptop and were drawn using my finger on the keypad. This meant that I had very little control. Having such constraint meant that I was often surprised with what appeared, and I let the medium do what it wanted. I submitted to the medium. It was a bit like making a thumbnail sketch with a big piece of charcoal on a tiny matchbox to jot down essentials.
Sadie Chandler – Lockdown 2020
Occasional Space 