Creating Medieval GIFs

Dr Eleanor Dare, Data Schools Convenor; Research Associate; Affiliated Lecturer; Former Methods Fellow at Cambridge Digital Humanities

This workshop will engage participants with drawing and animating medieval and contemporary visual cultures. It will lead to the creation of animated GIFs, and along the way we will learn something new about our diverse understandings of intelligence (and its perceived absence) as well as long-standing relationships to wider historical, animal and material forces.

We will create GIFs to form part of a collective animated atlas of medieval and modern depictions of smartness (and its visual antithesis), and also to ask how our senses and ‘smartness’ are depicted in medieval imagery and what are the significant differences from our contemporary systems of visual representation.

The workshop is part of Dr Eleanor Dare’s bursary for the Medieval Ideas Creative Lab, which Eleanor will explain.

The drawings we create and make into GIFs will playfully draw upon significant tensions and novelties in the way we visually conceive of intelligence between the Middle Ages and now in the 2020s.

Participants will be invited to learn about and respond to images of intelligence (and its absence), from medieval churls, scholars and fighting snails to contemporary images of human and artificial forms of intelligence. The project will involve drawing from collections within Cambridge’s museums, religious buildings, Colleges and archives. No previous experience of animation or medieval imagery is required, nor specialist drawing skill or equipment. Curiosity and an appetite for creative exploration are crucial.

We will draw with pencils, pens and paper (provided) and use free animation software on our mobile phones (we will also build DIY camera holders with recycled materials). A mobile phone will be needed for optimal enjoyment of this workshop.

• Hour 1: we will introduce each other and learn about the digital bursary for the Medieval Ideas Creative Lab. We will then explore collections, get inspiration for GIFs and start to sketch ideas.

• Hour 2: we will introduce participants to animation with pens and paper and free stop-motion software. Next, we will build a phone holder, then work on our animations. Break.

• Hour 3: we will complete our animations and then present them to each other.

The workshop is suitable for adults; 16–18-year-olds are also welcome.

For more information, visit the CDH Website.

Events are free and open to all unless otherwise stated.

If you have specific accessibility needs for this event please get in touch. We will do our best to accommodate any requests.

There may be photography at this event.

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