When UW–Madison Digital Arts Professor Stephen Hilyard’s short animation titled “Morning Glory” screened at the Taos Film Festival this year, the official selection gave the artist something galleries rarely can: the chance to experience his viewers’ reactions in real time.

“Having everyone together in a large space, viewing it at the same time — which is what a movie is — is a very different experience,” Hilyard said. “It’s very gratifying.”

Hilyard saw “Morning Glory” accepted into the Experimental Shorts category of the festival in late April. A quietly mesmerizing mix of color and motion, the 3-minute, 6-second video clip screened for festival-goers twice, with Hilyard seated among them.

Created in 2008, Hilyard’s animation is built from still photos he made of a blue-hued morning glory flower and an image he found online of a blue-and-white ceramic plate crafted by Wedgwood, the famed 18th-century English mass producer of fine porcelain.

The animation takes viewers into the heart of the morning glory, starting with a view of the entire flower and then moving progressively deeper into the flower’s center. Internal structures of the flower spin outward from the center, before the camera moves deeper again to reveal a rural Western landscape of shepherds tending flocks rendered in shades of blue on the plate. A final plunge leads to an Eastern landscape hidden within the Western one and featuring a Chinese pagoda, in a nod to the original Asian porcelain makers that Wedgwood emulated.