My mother was eighty earlier this year, which prompted me to create an animated Flash portrait, incorporating three different pictures of her, twenty-one of her most characteristic phrases, and a clacketing noise which is a bit like a typewriter, knitting needles, or out-of-control false teeth.

http://www.edwardpicot.com/mum/

- Edward Picot
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange

I'm immediately struck by, first how interesting this piece was and how quickly it conveyed your mum's personality. Even to me, who has never met her! There is a similarity here to the "Poem Posters" of people like Charles Henri Ford. What did he use to describe them? "Ideas in the Air", I think.

At first glance, the colors, spliced-together sayings and pop culture-like cutups of your mum suggest that this piece is operating under the influence of Andy Warhol, with your mum as the motif.

These sayings are piecing together like cut outs of magazines (like a kidnapper's ransom note) but much more familiar and heartwarming -- an interesting juxtapostion.

Thank you for sharing this!

Interesting that you should think of Warhol. Actually I was thinking more of Cubism, but also of the cubist-inspired collages David Hockney did, using lots and lots of little polaroids to create large images. You're right: there's a pop art feel to the piece, a kind of energetic brightness I suppose.

- Edward