Stanley Plowman’s animated graphics take inspiration from electronic music and imperfections

Stanley Plowman is a graphic designer and animator who is merging the print-based with his computer to create work that bursts with sound, particularly electronic music. When Stanley finds himself attracted to a particular sound – and wonders how on Earth it was achieved – he often follows this thought up by exploring how he can translate it visually, a process that pairs well with the world of animation.

Obsessed with excitement that sparks up when creating, Stanley’s relationship with his computer is like a collaboration between musical artists, creating space for randomness and generative processes that are natural and born from riffing on ideas. “Music videos have got me very interested in using sound with video. In particular I am always blown away by the music videos from Max Cooper,” says Stanley. “I think the videos elevate the music and can create another layer of creativity and evoke more feelings.”

In his excellent collaboration with Paul Plowman and Ewoudt Boonstra, Stanley laid down the sound and music for a Hermes project, Typewriter Horse. The piece takes on the brilliant graphics of typewriter based “concrete poetry”, but Stanley’s samples from a real typewriter complete the experience: “I sliced the samples into a sampler and I used Ableton to randomly swap between the different sounds and then loop some of the rhythms which felt like the repetitive sound of a horse gallop,” says Stanley.

Meanwhile, in Bubble Sort, Stanley creates a 30 second animation containing images of scanned monoprints, using a “bubble sorting algorithm” which compares two adjacent elements and swaps them until they are in the intended order. Visually representing the opposite of bubbles, Bubble Sort plays with the grainy textures of print and automation, algorithms that satisfyingly create erratic movements. In all of his work, an open-minded and adventurous work ethic stops Stanley’s varied work from feeling purely digital. You can see the human hand at play in every animation and you can hear the human ear in every click, tap and beep-boop.