Ben Ridgway blends his love for abstract painting and experience as a video-game designer to create animated films. An assistant professor of Cinema who joined SF State in 2012, Ridgway takes an experimental, meditative approach that has won him awards at the Black Maria Film Festival, Cine Toro in Colombia, Canada International Film Festival and ASIFA-SF Spring Festival in the last two years alone.
Ridgway’s Ad Infinitum screens at the Detroit Institute of Arts as part of the Avant-Garde Animation program through January 5. Most recently, his work is featured on The Creators Project, a joint venture of Intel and Vice that showcases innovative uses of art and technology.
“After your second or third viewing of one of his pieces, you realize that there is more to his work than luminous colors. Much more,” Bogar Alonso writes on The Creators Project. “Their ability to hook your attention while some alternative mind state morphs before your eyes make them out to be bite-sized mantras suited for the Internet age. This is intentional on Ridgway’s part, who states that his work ‘is intended as something that is meditative and that is for contemplation....It’s something to slow you down so you can watch and enjoy.’”
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Tribocycle from Ben Ridgway