Turbulence: In A League Of It's Own Quicktime (636k)
The fourth offering from this Odyssey library, the first Prize Winner of Images du Future, Turbulence by Jon McCormack, stands in a league of it's own. It succeeds where Cyberscape failed in that it offers great depth behind it's showmanship. If the imagery is often ambiguous, it's meaning, somehow, is not. It excites us on a primal level that we understand intuitively. Even as McCormack offers us insight into the human/divine condition, he honors its mystery.

The entire video is rife with provocative imagery. A mere example is that of alien-looking fixtures, opening and spinning, transporting us to an existential field of universal thought processes. Through the marriage of the artistry to the sound track, we are connected with human energy fields receptive to enlightened sonar systems in space.

Each segment of Turbulence, and the additional two shorts, ENS and TISA , has a fluidity that sails easily from concept to concept, titillating our thought processes even as it regales us with glorious imagery and music. Photographic images are fused into the piece, and the music and soundtrack are truly integral to both the images and the intent. "Outside knowledge begotten in earnest," the voice-over intones, and we believe her.

The ending of Turbulence, a desert regeneration that sounds dry even as it promulgates remarkable creation, displays a desperation of energy, an urgent need to be born. A metaphor, perhaps, for the dreams of it's author.

Computer Animation Classics. 27 films by various artists, 55 minutes.
Computer Animation Showcase. 21 films by various artists, 46 minutes.
Cyberscape by Beny Tchaicovsky, 45 minutes.
Turbulence by Jon McCormack, 30 minutes.

All four titles are available for $14.98 each from Sony Music Video.

Judith Cockman, a Canadian currently living in Los Angeles, is a playwright, award-winning documentary writer, actor and journalist. She has written about animation for The Toronto Star, Kidscreen Magazine and SPLAT!, a behind-the-scenes-type television series about the world of animation.