Time Lapse Series #2 (I-III), 2014

Wet-spun white linen thread and pins on panel
61 x 61 inches each

Time Lapse Series #2 are drawings created from metal pins and white thread. Through a digital and handmade process, Shotz presents various views of three-dimensional computer-generated animated objects in motion through time. Evoking Eadweard Muybridge's early stop-motion imagery, these works utilize technology to freeze individual moments and reveal what is often unseen by the human eye. Like Muybridge, Shotz connects the technological advances of our era to slow down time and capture the elusiveness of natural phenomenon. These stop-motion thread drawings begin as a virtual planar surface or tube that Shotz assigns surface material properties like mass, resistance, and friction. She then places the digital object in a virtual environment with assigned properties such as gravity, air density and wind speed. The last step is capturing stills from the animation—the templates for the thread drawings. By taking a digital image and weaving it out of thread, Shotz utilizes technology but also returns to a handmade, slow tactile process that brings the drawings into real space. Within this involved process, there is a constant play between two and three dimensionality. The virtual template, although flat, is captured from a three-dimensional digital object. Once it becomes the thread drawing, it is lifted off the wall, which allows the shadows made by the threads and pins to create a sense of mass through the use of negative space. 

-excerpt from Derek Eller press release, 2014