Ward Fleming

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Ward Fleming

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Biography


Ward Fleming is a contemporary artist whose interest lies in the continuation and expansion of the technique of pinscreen animation. 

Career outline


Pinscreen animation is a rarely used and extremely intricate technique, developed by Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff in the early 1930s. A perforated board with a million movable steel pins is lit, then each steel pin is pushed forward a certain amount such that it casts a proportional amount of shadow. These varied and controlled shadows great a soft, gradated, chiaroscuro effect. Each frame of a pinscreen animation is created by manipulating pins into soft, shaded images, which are then photographed and run together in sequence (thus, animated). The process is truly unique, and also carries tremendous challenges. As each frame was created, the previous frame was simultaneously destroyed – thus there could be no returning to original frames if one needed to be redone.

In 1976, while at the Art Institute of San Francisco, Ward Fleming designed a pinscreen method which created perforations in paper using nail blocks. After experimenting with different materials and methods of creating the perforations, and inspired to explore the 3D potential of these new pinscreen techniques, Fleming settled on the use of metal pins set in mass-produced metal screens. In 1979, Fleming received a National Endowment for the Arts grant as Artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium inSan Francisco. It was here that he developed a pinscreen table display, an interactive exhibit which allowed visitors to create forms and images in the pinscreen by running their hands across the hanging pins. Fleming then developed a funnel pinscreen whose complex patterns were formed by vibrations, a design which he then incorporated back into the pinscreen table designs. Fleming then installed several such pin-tables in science and children’s museums.

Fleming then created a handheld model of the exhibits, which he would later patent and call the Pinscreen. These screens allow images to be made or erased from either side of the device and have been produced all over the world.

References:


www.pinscreens.net

http://pinscreens.blogspot.ca/

http://exs.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/vibrating-pinscreen/

http://centerforspectrumservices.org/index.php/component/content/article/286-artist-and-inventor-ward-fleming-installs-pinscreen-at-spectrum-services

http://www.goodgrindingmill.com/article/71849.html




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