With the scope of imagination and the possibility of multi-sensory and immersive experience, visual arts in the digital landscape go beyond the periphery. If cinema has the power to influence your emotions and perspectives, animations too have the power to inspire. In our recent talk with Jack Wedge, we explored the nitty-gritty of what may be called the dreamy abstract world of endless stories.

How was your childhood?

Hello Coeval- thank you so much for having me. I grew up about an hour north of NY in a town called Katonah. My family is all artists who work in different mediums, all thinking about things in different ways. This definitely influenced me to start making animation, an art medium I’ve always thought of as an intersection of all art mediums.

What were the things that interested you or made you curious?

I’ve always been interested in characters. I think about what kinds of characters the future will produce, and how environments and their ecological breakdown create stories. One of my biggest goals with animation is to produce places that feel incredibly surreal and emotional, and unpredictable. I create my own commentary via world-building. Nonhuman animal behavior also inspires me a lot. I’ve also been thinking a lot about proportions lately, for example, I was watching a video of a baby monkey walking around, and I thought to myself, "I could take from his proportions, big head, little body, and make him my lead protagonist."

What social or cultural experience did you have? What inspired you to start animating?

The thing that made the biggest impression on me as a young person was watching movies. When I first started learning 3d animation I remember a light bulb going off in my head- realizing that I could be a cinematographer, a set designer, a light designer, an actor all at once. Movies like Bacaurau, 8 ½, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Enter the Void, Stroszek, Notorious, Mindhunter, Mulholland Drive, Wings of Desire, Mind Game, are all big influences.

What programs or processes do you use to create your art?

I started out by just drawing and animating on paper or adobe flash. Lately, I’ve been working with 3d animation using Maya and the unreal game engine. I think creating animation in a game engine gives you a special malleability in your work, stemming from being able to work in an environment that is already rendered, alive, textured, lit up. It gives what you’re doing at the moment more opportunity for mistakes. It illuminates directions that wouldn't ordinarily have been taken if you were rendering out every frame through an ordinary 3d renderer.

Do you have a favorite project of yours? And why?

I think my favorite project of mine is the one I’m working on right now. I’ve been focusing on writing and thinking about longer narrative forms lately. It’s very hard to get a story weird enough to be good but also make sense. I feel like I’ve been trying to string together scenes that I love without a good enough reason. That can be a trap if you let it hinder your process too much. Sometimes the best stuff just comes from the heart, off rip, and you get there by just going with the flow.

With the world transitioning to a more digital world, do you have any opinions on the metaverse?

I don’t really have any big opinion on the metaverse. I hope that we solve the climate crisis and pass a green new deal. In the meantime, if people want to spend more time and money in the metaverse I don’t see any issue with that.

Who is your dream artist/brand to collaborate with for an animation project?

Alberto Mielgo, Masaaki Yuassa, Freddy Carrasco, Daniel Sannwald, Wernor Herzog, are all some of my favorite visual artists.

Your animations almost tell a story, with characters and a trippy world. What do you want people to learn or take away from seeing your animations?

I guess one thing could be: re-examining what we are deeming as important, or prioritizing, morally and emotionally, both as individuals and also as a community.

How do you choose the music/sound to go with the videos?

I’ve been working together with my friend Will Freudenheim since we were both in high school together. We started an animation studio together about a year ago called laserdays.studio. Will has scored a lot of the animation that we produce.