website
3 x animated gif, HTML, CSS, jQuery, web browser
Duration and dimensions variable
2018
I Am Ned Kelly (part3) is a browser-based artwork that reimagines fragments of The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Stripped of its character moments and story elements, the surviving footage is left as a swirling field of analogue decay, a material trace of cinematic time breaking down.
This decayed film fragment is then subjected to multiple digital glitch processes, including databending and datamoshing, before being reassembled into looping animated GIFs. Presented within a hand-coded browser space, the GIFs float against a randomly generated background colour, centering themselves like an emblem. Their form recalls Sidney Nolan’s iconic flat paintings of Ned Kelly’s helmet, here refracted through layers of cinematic myth, material breakdown, and digital reanimation.
At once playful and destabilising, I Am Ned Kelly (part3) asks whether the screen itself becomes Kelly’s mask, or whether the viewer, looking in, finds themselves inside it.