Digitalis Catalogue

8/3/2019 Digitalis Catalogue

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entire plant is toxic ( including the

and seeds), although the leaves o

pper stem are particularly potent, with

nibble, being enough to potentially

e death. There have been instances o

e conusing digitalis with the relatively

ess.’

alis, Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia,

ved 1 December 2011, rom

kipedia.org/wiki/Digitalis

Animate began in 1990, commissioning

s and animators to make experimental

or television. It was one o several

borations between the Arts Council

broadcasters as part o a strategy that

d to lever additional nancial support

mbitious projects and to enable the

vely vast television audience to readily

ge with artists’ moving image. It was,

ally, about television as a primary orm

merely platorm - or contemporary

s’ practice.

adays, exhorted to broadcast ourselves,

ea o ‘television’ itsel can seem

nt idea. ‘Digital’ is as unwieldy a subject

scussion as ‘writing’ or ‘biological’.rtheless, the institutions o support

ce debate to their reminders that digital

a technologies are aecting every

ct o our society, economy and culture.

essages that themselves reach us by

. Interrupting our making and delivery o

e purchases or attending James Wales’

onally appealing eyes.

this language o ‘aect’ and impact

ys is how many o us in the arts and our

nstitutions are playing catch up with the

d. Digital doesn’t simply aect the world.

he world. The world is digital. And as

previous technological revolutions -

rinting press, the threshing machine,

illin - nothing is the same as it ever was.

‘Homer: Is this episode going on the air live?

June Bellamy: No, Homer. Very ew cartoons

are broadcast live. It’s a terrible strain on the

animators’ wrists.’

The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show, The

Simpsons, Season 8, Fox Network, 1997

The notion that ‘live’ is primary still prevails,

with media - broadcast, and now digital -

as carriers. Arts Council England asserts

how ‘digital technologies enable artists

to connect with audiences in new ways,

bringing them into a closer relationship with

the arts and creating new ways or them to

take part.’

In all the hoopla around digital relay o opera

and Twitter eeds in theatres it would be

wrong to conuse the ‘live’ - cultural objects

- with culture itsel. Many o us are culturally

engaged elsewhere. In places the ‘live’

do not go and cannot reach. A generation

doesn’t riot because it can’t sing in a choir.

And the digital does depend on our ‘re-

imagining’ what an ‘arts experience’ can be

- it can be an authentic ‘arts experience’ in

its own right. And the challenge or that art

is to counter our acquiescence; to becomecelebrant not supplicant.

2 — You are reading this. Either rom the

printed page (and i so, does this very act yet

seem strange to you? I not, one day, it will.)

Or rom a screen. Just as text isn’t speech

and reading isn’t listening, so these are

dierent ways o reading, and the dierence,

inevitably, incurs a shit in meaning. The

ways in which we compose and understand

language depends on circumstance.

Platorm circumscribes text and we write

and read dierently accordingly. So much

irony lost in email translation.

Animated moving image is ubiquitous now,

on public and personal screens - new

digital spaces that are very dierent to the

traditions o cinema or television.

Screen size, devices that we hold in our

hand, the choice o what, where and when

we view – these are all elements that

contribute to new modes and orms o

expression and receipt.

3 — Artists have always explored and

interrogated technologies and animation is

at the oreront o creative and technological

digital innovation. In the spirit o the

pioneering project Container Ship (cship.e-2.

org, 1998), and its proposition o ‘internet

specic art’, Digitalis set out as a tentative

exploration o digital ‘circumstance’ as

material and site or experimental animation

practice, and the inherent shits in practice

and engagement as the work that artists

make responds to shits technologies. Artists

make work in, or, and about these new

digital contexts and Digitalis oers pause to

refect on making and engaging with art in

digital spaces.

Digitalis Commissions

The Digitalis Commissions are our lms

selected rom an open call or short lms

that explored and interrogated the digital as

texture, material and site or artistic practice.Proposals were considered by a Jury

comprising o: Abigail Addison, Assistant

Director, Animate Projects; Nick Bradshaw,

Web Editor, Sight & Sound Magazine; Susan

Collins, artist and Director o the Slade

School o Fine Art; Gary Thomas, Director,

Animate Projects; and Sarah Williams,

Coordinator, Jerwood Visual Arts.

The selected artists are: Adam Butcher,

Lizzie Hughes, James Lowne and Matilda

Tristram. The lms premiered at BFI

Southbank on 14 December 2011. They can

be seen online at animateprojects.org and

are available to download through iTunes.

Animate OPEN Digitalis

The Animate OPEN: Digitalis is Animate’s

rst online exhibition selected rom an open

call or submissions by a Jury comprising

Francesca Gavin, writer, curator and Visual

Arts Editor at Dazed & Conused; Rebecca

Shatwell, Director, AV Festival; Gary Thomas,

Director, Animate Projects; and artist and

music video director, David Wilson.

Works by 11 UK-were selected rom more

than 200 works submitted. The Jury ocused

on the Digitalis theme - considering how

works explored digital technology and ideas

o the digital, and their appropriateness to

online exhibition and engagement.

The artists are: AL and AL, Tony Comley,

Phil Coy, Kristian de la Riva, Joe Hardy, Max

Hattler, James Lowne, Rob Munday, Noriko

Okaku, Edwin Rostron, and David Theobald.

The Jury Prize was awarded to James

Lowne or his lm Someone behind the door

knocks at irregular intervals. Joe Hardy and

Kristian de la Riva were also awarded Special

Mentions. Max Hattler won the Audience Prize.

All the lms can be seen at

animateprojects.org, along with

interviews with the artists and backgroundproduction materials.

This newspaper includes inormation

about the lms and artists in the Digitalis

programme, along with commissioned texts

about the lms and related themes. There

are two Digitalis Discussion events -

a screening and panel at BFI Southbank in

December 2011 and a symposium at London

College o Communication in 2012.

The Digitalis Commissions are supported by

the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. Digitalis

is supported by the National Lottery through

Arts Council England.

Please share your thoughts on the digital

with us at animateprojectsobserver.com/

digitalisdiscussion

Digitalis:Algorithmo lie is apowerul beatGary Thomas

talis About the Writer

Gary Thomas is Director o

Animate Projects

About the Writer

Nick Bradshaw is a writer and journ

Web Editor at Sight & Sound maga

He was a member o the selection

the Digitalis Commissions.

Digitalis

Digitalis:Electro —ReectionsNick Bradshaw

William Gibson, as ever, puts it best: ‘The

prex “cyber” is going the way o “electro”.’

The digital world that just a ew years ago

seemed so brave and new will soon be – or

is? – such a commonplace that it won’t bear

mention, just as we take or granted modern

lie’s electrical inrastructure. Digital will be

the deault modes o movie production,

distribution and exhibition, but more than

that, its voracious appetite or simulating all

the techniques and qualities o the analogue

– rom the celluloid ‘look’ on down – will

leave precious little to contrast between

the two modes. Or so I’m increasingly

convinced. Perhaps the subtleties o pencil

and paper are still not replicable, but I

wouldn’t be surprised.

Still, the light o strangeness has not yet

dimmed on the digital revolution; and as I

watched James Lowne’s Someone behind

the door knocks at irregular intervals ( and

speculated on the outcome o his Digitalis

Commission, Our relationships will become

radiant), it seemed that there was still

something unexpected, or counterintuitive,

about the notion o contemplative or

meditative art in the digital space. Isn’t digital

about artice, reconguration, alchemy,commotion, whisper our prejudices? Isn’t

the internet, the acme o the digital, one big

distraction system? (Yes, but only because

it’s an expression o the human id.) Isn’t it

those ruminants o the cinema – Nathaniel

Dorsky, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Béla

Tarr, Lisandro Alonso, you name them

– who’ve clung on longest to celluloid, with

its Bazinian indexical relationship to a world

bigger and wilder than the artist’s palette?

Yes, but even then I’m reminded o those

who have crossed the foor: American

landscape artist James Benning, say, who

recently retired his 16mm camera or HD

video. His rst video eature Ruhr, though

a typically ultra-minimalist single-shot

contemplation o a actory at sunset, saw

him immediately take up digital’s oer

o invisible, DIY image manipulation: the

movie’s condensation o two hours’ worth

o colour changes into one hour-long shot

makes Ruhr the most spartan instance o

digital animation I know. (I’m also minded to

propose the elided rog symphony at the end

o Abbas Kiarostami’s Five Dedicated to Ozu

as a comparable case o extreme-minimalist

pixilation, but perhaps that’s pushing

the point too ar.) O Animate’s Digitalis

commissions, Lizzie Hughes’s Fountain

(zoom) seems to promise a variation on this

long-take manipulated-photography theme,

with its slow zoom and trompe l’oeil ocus

sounding echoes o both Michael Snow’s

Wavelength and Hitchcock’s amous dolly

zoom in Vertigo.[1]

O course, animation doesn’t have to claim

a photographic relationship with the world in

order to create a space or contemplation, as

many Animate commissions down the years

have demonstrated. But those animations

that are explicitly ‘digital’? O the works

selected or the Animate OPEN: Digitalis

exhibition, Max Hattler’s conveyor-belt enter-

the-void visions 1923 aka Heaven and 1925

aka Hell could be classed as trance lms (an

equal but opposite state to contemplation?).Edwin Rostron’s Visions o the Invertebrate

certainly conjures a meditative, immersive

space somewhere in the back zones o

our mind, speaking directly to the world

o concepts and the subconscious. Most

pertinent, Joe Hardy’s visually minimalist,

aurally evocative Cassette Tape: Side A

opens up acres o thought time over its

15-minute span.

It’s striking, though, how many o these

lms – Cassette Tape, David Theobald’s

Worker’s Playtime (a TV or our robot

colleagues), Phil Coy’s eleven seconds

o paradise (2010) (fash-rame images o

‘paradise’ grabbed rom the internet) hark

back to earlier iterations o technology itsel.

Can digital animation look beyond its own

means? James Lowne’s two projects seem

to come closest to striving or an an

even as they wear their digital mean

their sleeve. Someone behind the d

knocks at irregular intervals is both

o contemplation and an inducemen

As I write, Our relationships will beco

radiant awaits inspection, but I reme

its proposal sketching the eerie inco

o a conab o (opaque but presuma

powerul) executives within a solita

building inside a nature reserve – a

that conjures all manner o salient t

about the current ways o the world

twisted power relations and environ

segregation to the moti o separat

isolation that may or may not implic

brave new digital world itsel. Could

sel-refexive and more?

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_zoom



4

Three narratives unold together. Inside a

vast nature reserve sits a solitary building, a

caé, where an important meeting is being

held by executives. Outside in the park, the

collective singular lounge about wearing

ancy garments. Images are exchanged,

participation simulated: the interminable

present. Meanwhile, the dormant wildlie

ades away.

James Lowne is an artist based in L

He completed a BA in Fine Art at C

Saint Martins in 2000. Ater this he

on making music in solo projects a

collaboratively with other musicians

recording and occasionally perorm

live. During this period he also cont

drawing as his main artistic practic

He has worked commercially in pos

production, learning about editing,

computer animation and 3D render

James has exhibited drawings as w

animation and lm in London.

Our relationships will become radiant (storyboard), James Lowne

talis Commissions

Our relationshipswill becomeradiantames Lowne

8’53”2011

SynopsisProcess Biography

Images were sourced, then reramed and re-

painted onto new backgrounds to develop

scenes. Characters modelled and animated

in 3D sotware and edited on the computer

with analogue treated ambient sound.

Digitalis: Where did the idea or the

flm come rom?

James: It is part o an ongoing exploration

o themes that I’m concerned with around

advertising and corporate lm - which

use conventions rom cinema. They have

generated their own aesthetic over time,

now completely mastered into this perect

mode o dialogue with the consumers.

It is ascinating that you can make some-

thing that’s incredibly engaging but empty

o any substance or soul or anything like

that. It’s almost like a complete non-art

orm.

So is your flm criticism or a celebration?

I’d say it would have to be both. Because

it’s a critical celebration!

In your proposal you used the term

‘collective singular viewing’..

Well, I write a lot and I like the ree asso-

ciation o putting words together when I’m

thinking o ideas or i I’m reading. So the

collective singular was just two words that

came up, with me thinking about how we

consume lots o image based inormation

and how as entertainment - traditional en-

tertainment, cinematic entertainment – we

would review collectively, and an audience

response - a group o people - would be

quite important. Whereas now we watch

things on the internet, our iPhones and

stu, sort o locked on. But connected to

sort o a matrix o other people - because

you don’t necessarily eel like you’re on

your own. You eel in some way you might

be connected with others, as long as it’s

active; as long as your laptop’s on, as long

as your iPod is on.

The flm has three narratives strands, yes?

Possibly more. One o the ideas is having

people who are connected to a network,

with a central mechanism o people who

might be making decisions and might be

running things, but they themselves are

all also part o the network. And then the

relationship o all o them inside nature.

There was a script on your storyboard,

but there’s no dialogue in the flm.

When I write the script, I like to have a

story in my head to help me to understand

what the characters are doing and why

they were doing it. So I’d write down what

they say. People are speaking in the lm

but you don’t hear what they’re saying.

I like that eect.

Has the internet enabled you to

velop your work?

Yes, deinitely. I like accident and

takes. The digital tools o produc

dictate its aesthetic and they’re g

all geared to getting things pere

slick. So I like trying to ind accid

within the 3D sotware - not trying

orce or manuacture one, but try

work in a process that I’m not ne

ily brilliant. The process allows ac

to happen and I think they can be

an interesting part o the work, ju

painting, music or perormance,

I guess – you can have accidenta

rences that become an interestin

the work.



6

Five Year Plan is an abstract comedy or

devices such as iPhones or iPads, using

emoji (Japanese text message character

pictures) as material with which to draw.

It is an appreciation o the arbitrar y nature

o symbols in apps like emoji, where you

can nd such things as an egg, a shit, a

syringe, a sun, a puppy, an old man, a

palm tree or a saxophone in one category

to punctuate text message conversations.

The script is based on a selection o

symbols; it is an attempt to connect

them, and to celebrate the unpredictable,

hilarious, moving and complicated nature o

communication and understanding.

Matilda Tristram graduated with an

Animation rom the Royal College o

in 2008. She has worked as an anim

director on music videos and online

and as a scriptwriter and developer

Ragdoll Productions, on BAFTA aw

nominated Dipdap and The Advent

Abney and Teal. Her own lms cont

screen at estivals i nternationally. I

she produced a 76 page anthology

collected comics.

‘I’m interested in what people critic

modern digital technology or (part

mobile phones): Corrupting the En

language, shortening our attention

hindering our capacity to remembe

response to that, I think there is a c

playul sort o new digital real ism e

that makes use o the strange limits

mobile technology provides.’

Actors read an inormal script based on

the emoji. I made a rough audio edit then

drew scenes and characters to go with

it using corresponding emoji as digital

paintbrushes. Ater animating the shape

o the characters on an iPad app called

Animation HD, I traced over each rame

on the iPad screen using cellophane and

a china marker. Then, I retraced that using

emoji in an iPad app called Sticker Doodle,

taking a screengrab each time to use or the

nal animation, which was put together in

Ater Eects.

Digitalis: How did you start working in

animation?

Matilda: I studied illustration, but what

I always liked about animation was that

you could write the story, be involved with

actors and the theatricality. And I like

being in control o the idea and making it

- the sound and everything that you need

to create a universe.

Why is humour important to

your work?

Humour is one o the most important

things to me generally, in my work and in

my lie. And I think you can ind humour in

really surprising and unlikely places.

Could you explain a bit about the

emoji/emoticons you use?

Emoticons are those little tiny pictures

and symbols that people use to put in text

messages to each other. I started o by

trying to write a script based on what

the pictures are, a little bit like playing

consequences. So choose a airly random

selection o the symbols and try and think

o a way to link them together,

with dialogue.

I’d never really worked with an iPad

beore and when I irst got one I imagined

that all o the Apps would be brilliant

and there’d be loads o things that would

be really great to paint and draw with

and really good to animate with. And

I was quite surprised when I started

downloading how rubbish loads o them

are, how ugly they are, how pointless they

are. But that’s kind o what I love about it.

I don’t want to imply that iPads are

rubbish! I just want to show that you can

use Apps in ways other than what they

were designed or.

You can have the best, most amazing

equipment and still make the most empty,

pointless, stupid ilm, and that’s what I’m

sort o trying to poke un at maybe.

How else do you engage with the

digital?

Well obviously I use computers or all my

projects to put them together. It’s not that

I don’t like using digital things but that I

don’t think they should be the only thing

that attracts you to a project.

The internet has inluenced my w

I like how quickly you can see thin

on the internet and how many pe

can see your work who might not

it otherwise and how you can sor

bypass distributors, galleries.

You can just show your work so e

Obviously I love YouTube, but mo

ideas come rom real lie and not

the internet. And all o my ilms ar

the internet and I think a lot o pe

reluctant to put their work on the

in case people rip it o and or in c

they don’t know where it ends up

shown. But I think it’s more impo

people to see it and i somebody

o then you can just do somethin

talis Commissions SynopsisProcess Biography

Five Year PlanMatilda Tristram

2’28”2011

Five Year Plan (background material), Matilda Tristram



8

The story o Bradley Manning, not as

a Wikileaks ‘hacktivist’, but as a young

American soldier simultaneously going

through a crisis-o-conscious and a crisis-

o-gender-identity.

Using Adrian Lamo’s chat logs o instant

messenger conversations held with Bradley,

the lm explores issues o personal and

political secrets, digital identity

and alienation.

Adam Butcher has been writing and

directing since 2006. His work oten

combines lmmaking techniques, c

live action, miniatures, puppetry, ha

drawn and computer animation. Hi

short, Arcadia, a drama set in a car

alternate universe, won a Filmstock

Audience Award and a Screentest T

Achievement Award. His second sh

Internet Story, spins a narrative rom

screengrabs and digital animations

played across Europe and was a vir

its release.

‘Ater reading an article about the B

Manning chat logs in The Atlantic,

and read them in their entirety rom

com. There was a lot o material in t

and I had to cut so much out. I took

dialogue rom the chat logs word-

cut bits out, moved sections aroun

create a ve minute script.’

Bradley ManningHad Secrets

dam Butcher

talis Commissions Synopsis Biography

5’30”2011Dialogue rom Bradley

Manning chatlogs,

released by Wired.com

Voice Actors

Danny Mahoney

Angus Dunican

Film Crew

Alisdair Cairns

Alec Milne

Animation

Ben Claxton

Adam Butcher

Original Soundtrack

Blair Mowat

I lmed a lot o l ive action ootage, edited

together a live action cut o the lm, then

rendered out the whole timeline scene-by-

scene at a very low resolution, to create the

individual shots to rotoscope. The low-

resolution ensured that everything had the

lo- pixelly look. I’d specically select which

element to draw over, such as body shape.

Working with Ben Claxton, we’d outline in

a bright green colour, then, in Ater Eects,

key out everything but the green.

Process

Digitalis: What inspired the flm?

Adam: I read an article on a blog that drew

on the chat logs - showing these quite

poetic things going on with Bradley Manning

commenting on personal issues, but linking

them almost subconsciously to political

issues. So ideas o personal change and

political change and political and personal

secrets - there was this whole unknown story

that was ascinating to me.

And when I read the chat logs in their entirety

I elt like I’d got in to this paranoid hacker

world but also in to the trans-gender world.

I elt very sympathetic towards Bradley, and

that people would eel that same sympathy i

I told that story.

I don’t think the lm is an out and out

political lm. I think it’s a human story,

and I avoid making any clear cut

statements about Bradley’s actions and

Wikileaks’ actions.

Your previous flm Internet Story also

played with ideas around this kind o

internet treasure hunt - what is it about

data and stu that interests you?

We use the internet day to day but it’s

actually very complicated in terms o its

relation to human interaction. I am interested

in exploring the idea that we eel connected

on the internet and yet we’re not.

There’s this inherent uncanny loneliness

to the internet where you eel like you’re

talking to someone but no one’s actually

listening. And we can adopt identities so

easily - which is ascinating in the context o

Bradley Manning’s gender identity, but also

in the context o not being able to tell what a

person is really like or what their motivations

are because you don’t see them ace to

ace - you just have a text based int

But I think equally it has these amaz

capabilities - via the internet I eel a

connection with Bradley Manning th

probably wouldn’t have known othe

What impact does the ‘digital’ hav

your work?

It has just opened up everything. An

think it orms my style as a lmmake

that I’m always trying dierent styles

animation and mixed media and thin

opportunity to experiment. A lot o th

things that I like come rom mistakes

Top row: Bradley Manning Had Secrets, Adam Butcher. Bottom row: Bradley Manning Had Secrets ( script), Adam Butcher



10

Fountain (zoom)izzie Hughes

talis Commissions Synopsis Biography

A slow zooming shot o an especially

exuberant ountain is digitally manipulated,

rame-by-rame, so that the size o the

ountain within the rame o the screen

remains a disorientating constant or the

duration o the lm.

Lizzie Hughes was born and grew u

Anglesey, North Wales. In 1993 she

to London and in 2002 graduated r

the Slade School o Fine Art with an

having completed her BA at the sam

college in 1997. In 2010 she comple

a ve year residency at the ACME F

Station Building in London. In 2012

will be curating The Present is a Po

Passed at The Stephen Lawrence G

Greenwich University. Recent exhib

include Concrete Poetry at the Hay

Gallery and the solo exhibition Vide

at Broadway Media Centre, Notting

Aside rom her studio practice, she

undertaken residencies and comm

which have taken her work into a br

public realm. Her work includes ins

sound, text and video works.

2’30” loop2011

Digitalis: How did you start working in

moving image?

Lizzie: I studied sculpture and while I made

a couple o lms while I was at college, I had

no real interest in lmmaking as such. I think

the ideas always come rst in a work and then

I nd the best way o working through that.

Sometimes that’s a lm.

When I was at school I painted and drew a lot,

and gradually realised I was not very good at

painting and thought I’d give sculpture a go.

And then gradually realised I wasn’t very good

at making things either, rom a technical point

o view!

I realised I wasn’t interested in object making

per se. It was more the actual business

o what it was to make art that interested

me. And that then opened lots o dierent

avenues in terms o what the nal product

could be.

How important is digital to your work?

Digital made lmmaking much more

accessible to me. I don’t come rom a

background o crating with lm; digital meant

that I didn’t have to go through that huge

process o learning how to work with 16mm

and all that sort o complicated stu that

really is a crat.

It was sort o airly cheap and available, but

also, I could manipulate what I was doing very

easily too. Suddenly you had a camera and

you could just lm something quickly and on

the spot, working quickly

and intuitively.

The internet kind o made it all possible really.

I am completely sel-taught. I will have an

idea and I will want to nd some way to

make that possible. So you have this

incredibly complicated sotware but you

can Google and ask questions and nd

somebody who is very skilled without having

to have a ull gamut o knowledge yoursel.

You can quickly problem solve. It jus

everything possible.

Did you design this flm in mind o

will be viewed?

Yes. It’s quite a short lm and it shou

be viewed kind o on a loop. It’s got

o sense o breathing in and breathin

think through watching it over an exte

period o time you gradually work ou

happening within the image. And get

o location within that. The quiet, priv

space o a smartphone or an iPad giv

that closeness to the image that I thin

it a dierent viewing experience.

A slow zooming shot o a particularly

exuberant ountain was lmed beginning

rom the ar distance and stopping when

it reached ull rame, beore immediately

zooming back out again. The resulting

ootage was divided into still rames,

then each o these images was digitally

manipulated so that the size o the ountain

within the rame o the screen remains

constant or the duration o the lm.

In the studio just over 140 seconds o lm

was broken down into 3,700 rames. Each

o these was then enlarged so that whilst

the quality o the image was changing the

size o the image remained constant rom

rame to rame. As the image began to

recede, or the rst ew seconds enlarging it

by a minute percentage produced an image

that was easy to judge as identical to its

neighbour but as the ountain became little

more than a handul o pixels in the centre

o the screen the lack o inormation made

the transition more o a stutter chosen

by an estimated aesthetic judgement. A

dark, almost binary image gives way to an

elaborate structure bathed in summer light

that slowly yields to its source.

Process

Fountain (zoom) (production stills),

Lizzie Hughes



12

To write about the digital space as a site

or artistic production in the 21st century

is a bit like writing about the analogue

space as a site or artistic production

in the 19th century: it’s a no-brainer. Or

is it? Today, the digital is dominant, it’s

ubiquitous. Your dad is on Facebook,

your mum in on eBay, and granny is

checking out UndercoverLovers.com.

Smartphones and social media are

all-pervasive. Revolutions might not be

televised, but are tweeted instead – at

least or now. When visiting art galleries,

it is easy to orget which decade, orindeed which century we live in. Most

contemporary art still revolves around

painting and sculpture - ormats that sell.

Video art, whether analogue or digital, is

twitching, hal-alive, on a monitor in the

corner. Most art that truly embraces the

digital largely remains conined to

the ringes.

Digital technology has always played

a pivotal role in my own artistic

development. Getting my irst computer

in the early 1990s, I saw the technology

mature as I mysel was coming o age.

Games such as Great Giana Sisters and

Leisure Suit Larry were a irst attraction,

quickly complemented by 8-bit sot

pornographic images purveyed on 3½-

inch loppy disks by a sweaty classmate

o my elder cousin. But soon, paint

and animation programs, sound editing

sotware and music production packages

started arriving on those disks too. And

it wasn’t beore long I ound mysel

spending days on end trying to igure out

these new arrivals. Soon, the computer

had taken over as a tool rom all other

artistic pursuits, replacing pencil and

brush, pen and paper, camera, violin,

guitar and drum set. I was growing up a

digital native.

Sotware tends to be based on analogueequivalents. Video editing sotware

resembles a Steenbeck ilm editing table;

paint packages emulate paints, brushes

and paper types; music programs

emulate analogue instruments, synths,

and sequencers, and so on. But sotware

is also always ordered by the logic o the

code, and by the thinking o sotware

developers whose medium is code.

The computer itsel, o course, doesn’t

distinguish between media. It processes

and applies its calculations according to

whatever it is being ed.

It is this underlying equality o media

that excites me about making work in the

digital age. It relates directly to my own

artistic practice, rooted in the experience

o growing up with computers and

exploring dierent sotware packages –

playing with them as i they were games

– irrespective o medium. Sound, music,

still and moving image - all media are

interacted with through a series o similar

interaces and operations: cutting and

slicing, copy-paste, layering, keyraming,

eects and transitions, additions and

multiplications. All media can be worked

with simultaneously, equally, as they are

essentially reduced to maths. There’s

an almost spiritual quality to it, as all

becomes zeroes and ones. Pure data.

The immaterial nature o the digital

realm, importantly, allows or endless

nonlinear editing and experimentation

without signal loss or cost implications.

Digital, thereore, ultimately also contains

an element o democratisation. I’m not

sure i Marx would agree, but I think it

is air to say that through computing,

access to the means o production has

opened up. Almost anyone, at least in

the so-called developed world, can buy a

computer and ind the sotware powerul

enough to create moving image works,

which previously would have required

roomuls o prohibitively expensive ilm

stock, assistants and equipment. All hail

to computers, then, as I am airly certain

that I would not have taken up ilm in

Oskar Fischinger’s time.

Thanks to another aspect o the

namely the internet, it is now eas

ever or artists to promote and d

their digital artworks. There’s an

Euros vs. eyeballs debate going o

the merits o artists putting their

online, and whilst I’m undecided,

putting my work up until I’ve mad

my mind. So ar this has helped m

generate new commissions, exh

and invitations. But then again, I

to sell editions. Which brings us b

to the gallery. Ater all, it’s they w

good old material objects.

Digitalisubiquitous?Ramblings o asel-conessed

digital nativeMax Hattler

About the Writer

Max Hattler is a moving image artis

His lms 1923 aka Heaven and 192

Hell were selected or the Animate

Digitalis exhibition, and won the An

OPEN Audience Prize.

e is something special about moving

e presented or the intimacy o online

ng. In the cinema or gallery there’s an

ional shared experience. But squatting

the computer screen, pixels dancing

your eyes - and your eyes only, it seems

e’s a direct one-to-one conversation.

he selected entries or the Animate

N: Digitalis exhibition have resulted in

e surprising dialogues.

call or works wasn’t restricted by

e, simply inviting submissions that

designed to embrace or challengeal technologies. This made or a richly

se selection o oerings. From Heaven

Hell to a lemon with legs; rom stop-

e to 3D and 3D rendering; hi-tech,

ch; gentle observation to ull-on

ation; gloss and grain; poetry and

e; sonic thrum to stretched cassette

organ playing. It’s all in the mix o this

r’s dozen (well...11 and

tych).

pen exhibition is, by denition, not

ated selection, but i n watching this

tion with a view to try to assess what

might say about animation, they can be

ered into loose thematic bundles.

ms; memory; streams o

ciousness; ights o ancy

Dreams - the subconscious and “what

i?”s - are ertile ground or the animator.

Edwin Rostron’s Visions o the Invertebrate

alls into the stream-o-consciousness

camp. A deceptively simple line and colour

animation, with a muted voiceover, it’s

like snatches o a dream. Noriko Okaku’s

Allegory o Mrs Triangle nods to Max Ernst

and to Terry Gilliam’s early Monty Python

animations, on its strange and colourul

story-less journey. Someone behind the

door knocks at irregular intervals, by

James Lowne conversely creates threads

o narrative without words. In using 3Drendering Lowne deliberately subverts

the potential perection o that process,

introducing a drawn element that matches

the dream-like sequences and music.

The past, the uture

A 15 minute animation o a cassette

player, running a stretched tape o organ

music, doesn’t sound promising. But

Joe Hardy’s Cassette Tape: Side A is

strangely compelling as the animated tape

counter rolls in real time. Background,

domestic noises add to the sense that

this is a real experience. Hand-drawn in

loving monochromatic detail, it provokes

wistulness. David Theobold’s Workers’

Playtime, eaturing the BBC tune used to

galvanise the actory workorces o the

40s and 50s, rethinks the world o work.

Theobold has re-imagined those 1950s

actory workers as a solitary robot, playing

keepy-uppy with three balloons (keep an

eye on the blue one).

Lie, the Universe and Everything

The beginning o the World and subsequent

events, is told in a perect conjunction o

image, poetry and music in Tony Comley’s

‘VERSE. And at the end o the world, a

lemon with legs, hal a cat and a short-lived

onion are the survivors o Armageddon

in Rob Munday’s Teddy Goldblatt. Their

increasingly bizarre story is narrated ina reassuring voice that is somewhere

between Oliver Postgate and a 1970s public

inormation lm.

Max Hattler goes beyond the world with

twin pieces, 1923 aka Heaven and 1925

aka Hell, using outsider artist Augustin

Lesage’s paintings A symbolic Composition

o the Spiritual World,(1923 and 1925) as

their starting point. However, the technically

polished, mirror animations seem worlds

away rom the visionary artist’s obsessively

detailed paintings. On the small screen

1925 aka Hell seems to be more Dante’s

circles o Hell-ish, than 1923 aka Heaven is

Heavenly, but a big screen might change

this. Phil Coy’s eleven seconds o paradise

(2010) is a re-examination o the images

thrown up in a web search o the term

‘paradise’, rst explored in 2000. 275

images fash by at 25ps, creating a strange

subliminal ater burn.

Guns and Gore

Now, some o the above works stray

into this category too – both Lowne and

Okaku’s lms eature axes – but the

weaponry isn’t wielded. Nor is it in AL and

AL’s 3D Anaglyph Avatar loops, where

guns and grenades spin harmlessly,

glossily, like new cars at a motor show,

while a skeletal biped is showered by

pink triangles. So ar, so miles away romcomputer game gore ests. However, or

the squeamish and easily-upsettable,

Kristian de la Riva’s CUT is possibly the

most disturbing o all. As the lone, line-

drawn character (repeat while watching:

‘it’s just a line, it’s just a line’) carries out

acts o extreme sel-harm, a eeling o

distress at this dispassionate damage

translates into the unanswerable question:

Why?

And what does this Animation OPEN

selection tell us about the current state

o animation in a digital age? That the

hand-drawn/hand-made is still alive

and well, and that digital technologies

can be exploited and subverted to make

creative conversations. And that these

conversations can happen online.

Digitalis:Heart medicineor the mind

mma Geliot

About the Writer

Emma Geliot is a reelance arts journalist,

deputy editor o b lown magazine (www.

blownmag.com) and blogs about

contemporary art in Wales at emmagelit.

wordpress.com and at culturecolony.com.



14

Someonebehind thedoor knocksat irregularntervalsames Lowne

Julia spends the day at the leisure centre

where she slips into a sombre reverie. As

her thoughts continue she becomes aware

o the possibility that perhaps she never

came here at all. Outside in the sun, the

stillness changes the road, it’s inherent

notion o speed has dissipated, allowing the

surace to be elt.

The lm suggests ideas o non-activity

and meditation, memory and perception.

It explores the relationship between

contemplation and the act o l ooking.

James Lowne is an artist based in London.

He completed a BA in Fine Art at Central

Saint Martins in 2000. Ater this he ocused

on making music in solo projects and

collaboratively with other musicians,

recording and occasionally perorming

live. During this period he also continued

drawing as his main artistic practice. He has

worked commercially in post-production,

learning about editing, computer animation

and 3D rendering. James has exhibited

drawings as well as animation and lm

in London.

Jury statement:

‘It is a lm that directly addresses the strangeness o the digital - it dees the pursuit o

shiny perection, and revels in the ailings o its own digitally crated construction. It’s also

beautiully, cinematically composed and engaging.’ury Prize Winner

mate OPEN: Digitalis Synopsis Biography

(4’55”, 2010) 1923aka Heavenand1925aka HellMax Hattler

1923 aka Heaven and 1925 aka Hell are two

animation loops directed by Max Hattler,

inspired by the work o French outsider

artist Augustin Lesage. The lms are

based on Lesage’s paintings, A symbolic

Composition o the Spiritual World, rom

1923 and 1925. Both lms were created

during 5 days in February 2010 with student

animators and CG artists at The Animation

Workshop in Viborg, Denmark.

Max Hattler was educated at Golds

College and the Royal College o A

London, graduating with an MA (RC

Animation in 2005. To date, he has m

over 20 moving-image works, the m

known o which are Collision, Spin,

1923 aka Heaven and 1925 aka He

works have been shown at exhibitio

lm estivals worldwide, winning aw

at 700IS; Eksjo; KLIK; LIAF; LSFF; m

Skepto; SLIFF; Videoestival Bochu

Videologia; the Visual Music Award

others. Max is also active in the el

audiovisual perormance and has w

with a wide range o music acts inc

Basement Jaxx, Diplo, Jemapur, Jo

and The Egg. Max currently teache

animation at Goldsmiths, while stud

towards a Proessional Doctorate in

Art at University o East London. He

represented by Partizan or comme

projects and by Cimatics agency o

audiovisual perormances.

Synopsis Biography

* Audience Prize Winner

(1’50’’, 2010) (1’36’’, 2010)



16

An animated portrait o an imaginary

character, Mrs. Triangle. The lm is

concerned with the complexity o one

persona and the dierent aspects o

personality. This is done with an abstract

storyline, encouraging the audience to

evoke new possibilities o understanding

the work in their distinctive way. ‘My work

explores the variety, eclectic nature and

strangeness underlying everyday things

and actions.’

Noriko Okaku studied at Chelsea C

Art and Design and the Royal Colle

completing an MA in Animation in 2

well as animation, she works in inst

and audio-visual perormance.

Her works have been shown interna

at Festival Images Contre Nature, F

Magmart International Videoart Fes

Italy; Garage Center or Contempo

Culture, Moscow, among others. N

presented her audiovisual live pero

internationally, most recently at

Donauestival, Austria; Anilogue, Hu

the Museum o Image and Sound,

Circuito O, Italy; Cimatics, Belgium

the Design Museum, London.

Noriko was awarded Beck’s Future

Student Prize, ICA, London in 2003

Best Audiovisual Perormance, Inte

Videoestival Bochum, Germany in

Allegory oMrs. TriangleNoriko Okaku

(6’34’’, 2011)

Drawn animation o a lone male character’s

attempts to cut away various body parts,

using ever more extreme methods to do

so. A distorted ode to relationships lost is

hinted at within the work but the eld o

reerence is expanded to incorporate the

pain and humour implicit in an individuals

day to day thoughts and routines.

Kristian de la Riva studied Fine Art at

Nottingham Trent University and then at

Central Saint Martins, London, graduating

with an MA Fine Art in 2009. He has

exhibited his work at Palais Paradiso,

Amsterdam; Oriel Davies Gallery, Wales;

New Contemporaries, Liverpool Biennial;

ICA, London; and the Armoury Show,

New York amongst others.

A TCM-848 plays a ound cassette tape o

an organist practising. Snippets o speech,

shufing and someone washing up in the

kitchen all add to the atmosphere.

The lm is simultaneously nostalgic and

mundane. The speed o the spooling

tape and ratio o the counter are both

reproduced aithully.

Joe Hardy studied Fine Art (Time Based

Art) at Sheeld Hallam University and

he maintains an interest in emerging

technologies. Much o his recent work has

been animated short lm pieces mixing

hand-drawn imagery with digital

animation techniques.

What do we mean by ‘labour’ in the

digital age? A contemporary reboot o the

morale raising BBC radio show, ‘Workers’

Playtime’, which was broadcast rom the

actory foor throughout the 1940s and

1950s. The music used is ‘Calling All

Workers’ by Eric Coates which eatured on

the original show.

David Theobald originally trained a

chemical engineer, he pursued a ca

in nance or teen years, living bo

New York and London. Nine years a

decided to change proession and

himsel to becoming a ull-time artis

Most recently, his main works have

animations structured rom photog

scanned images or single rames e

rom video ootage, blending these

to create a amiliar yet alien environ

These may be structured as conve

lms or as continuous loops with n

discernible beginning or end.

CUTKristian de la Riva

Cassette Tape:Side Aoe Hardy

Workers’ PlaytimeDavid Theobald

Special mention

Special mention

mate OPEN: Digitalis Synopsis Biography Synopsis Biography

(3’08”, 2009)

(15’04”, 2011)

(3’10’’, 2011)

Teddy GoldblattRob Munday

In a post-apocalyptic world a lemon called

Teddy nds his legs.

Rob Munday is a lmmaker and wr

living in London. He has made shor

spanning many genres rom experim

to romance, documentary to come

time trying to create particular worl

show how their characters think an

I there is such a thing as surreal tru

that’s what he’s looking or. His lm

been shown in estivals around the

including The BFI London Film Fest

South By South West in Austin, Tex

(9’34’’, 2010)



18

275 thumbnail images collected rom an

internet search or ‘paradise’ played at 25

rames per second. First made in 2000, the

earlier version was exhibited in the Hayward

Gallery touring exhibition Incommunicado.

The 2010 version was made out o a curiosity

to see how ‘paradise’ had changed.

Phil Coy grew up in the West Midlands,

Sussex and Norolk and now lives and

works in London. He studied Fine Art at

Liverpool John Moores University and has a

Post Diplôme rom Ecole des Beaux arts de

Nantes. In 2000 he completed an MA at The

Slade school o Fine Art. Exhibitions include

Whitechapel Gallery; South London Gallery;

Volt/USF Gallery Bergen, Norway; Artprojx

Cinema at The Armory Show, New York;

Whitstable Biennial and the National Glass

Centre, Sunderland.

In Pink Triangles a biped perorms inside

a simulation o the motion tracking studio

in which the human perormance was

originally captured. The captured and

translated human gestures and movement

o the biped is cut with the biped running

through a shower o pink triangles.

In I killed thousands o people last night and

these are all the weapons I used, a series

o animated weapons are labelled with

their value as though in an arms dealer’s

showroom, or is it just a computer game

waiting or the player to buy

their munitions?

AL and AL began working together

Central Saint Martins art school in

In 2001 they were awarded an ACM

residency transorming a warehous

East London into a blue screen spe

eects lm studio. Their lms have

shown around the world and exhibi

include FACT Liverpool and Rotterd

Festival. They have curated exhibiti

Metal, Hill Station in Liverpool and

Antwerp. They were awarded the Li

Art Prize in 2009 and in 2010 collab

with composer Philip Glass and ph

Brian Greene on Icarus at the Edge

premiered at the World Science Fe

New York and perormed with

a live orchestra.

A prose poem portrayal o the rst ever

love triangle.

Tony Comley is among other thing

Animator. He has made etchings c

the BBC, Tube-maps moan or Lo

Sinonietta and Orange Juice exp

or Warp Records. He is a Directo

with Sherbet, through which he w

British Animation Award and a wo

designer or the Tate Gallery and

Aardman, through which he toure

in a transorming truck.

even seconds paradise (2010)il Coy

sions o thevertebratewin Rostron

’VERSETony Comley

mate OPEN: Digitalis

‘A large mirror in a silent room where you

know there is a presence. You look into it

but there is nothing.’

The lm concerns liminal states, marginal

spaces, and the ringes o reality. In these

places everyday objects take on peculiar,

unknown qualities, shapes merge and

recombine in a state o constant fuidity and

strangers impart cryptic knowledge that we

sense is somehow deeply important. The

lm explores such matters in the manner o

the non-conscious mind with which they so

strongly resonate.

Visions o the Invertebrate is a collaboration

between artist and animator Edwin Rostron

and musician William Goddard AKA

Supreme Vagabond Cratsman.

Edwin Rostron is an artist based in London.

He studied Fine Art at Sheeld Hallam

University and Animation at the Royal

College o Art. His work is an attempt to

visualise the realms o the unconscious

and takes inspiration rom a myriad o

sources including alternative comics, ‘Neo

Romantic’ painters such as Paul Nash and

Graham Sutherland, and the post-industrial

landscape o North East England, where

he grew up. His animations have been

shown at estivals such as onedotzero,

Pictoplasma and the Australian International

Animation Festival.

SynopsisSynopsis Biography Biography

(3’55’’, 2010)(0’11”, 2010)

(2’35’’, 2011)

(2’22”, 2009)

(5’58”, 2009)



20

Analogous:Digital/AnalogueMetaphorsEle Carpenter

raw analogies between things is to

iy similarities to help communicate

ning, oten relying on anecdote,

phor and poetic license to capture

ssence o an idea or thing. But there

lways problems o translation. When

ssing our understanding o the

d, the term ‘analogue’ has become

hand or anything not digital, and

become an analogy o its own.

tal’ has also become an analogy

nything requiring a computer. This

y starts to investigate some o the

ogies o analogue and digital media

veal some o the messy complexity

nking about art and animation.

history o animation orms an archive

e relationship between the hand

e animator and the development

dio-visual technology. Here the

ator, editor, artist, and producer

e and shape their tools in ways

h oten reveal the process o

ng. From sand painting to early

ern European animation, puppetryime, the stop-rame or storyboard

imation is altered rame-by-rame,

-by-pixel.

when we spot the puppeteer’s hands,

e blue pixel in the corner o the

en, are we any less entranced by

lusion? Or is this is the Brechtian

od – where the audience, able to

owledge the theatre as artiice and

own role as the spectator, can then

ge with the content o the play along

rather than despite, its artiice?

like any successul artwork, orm

content are precariously balanced to

al an understanding o the physical

rial, the spatial concerns o the

um, and the complexity o meanings

ay.

Animation can be drawn in a fickbook,

photographed, lmed, or digitally created

using sotware, or even working within

the space o the internet where the

network is both the site o production and

distribution. But are these digital tools or

spaces more or less hand-made or crated

than Geppetto’s puppetry workbench?

Each generation learns to use its tools

and machines with the knowledge o the

past and anticipation o the uture. But

then the uture arrives and we become

dated: our style and syntax identied by

a technical timestamp. Yet we have to

continuously learn to use the aesthetic

and sotware codes o the present – i

only to understand enough to reject them,

but to do so knowingly. It’s a constant

catch-up with the next generation o

early-adopters. But what about in-depth

expertise in a particular set o tools? An

artist can hone their skills to nely tune an

instrument to achieve the desired eect,

or push the technique to its limits, where

the exploration o the medium is both theorm and content o the work, in keeping

with the Bauhaus mantra ‘truth

to materials’.

To understand the signicance o digital/

analogue explorations in contemporary

art, it’s useul to investigate the

characteristics o the technological

processes and the conceptual rameworks

in which they operate.

During March - April 2011, I hosted a

discussion o Analogue/Digital Art on the

Crumb New Media Curating email list that

provided a snap-shot o current thinking.

[1] The topic provoked intense debate

about the distinctions between discreet

units and continuous data fow on a

metaphorical, quantum and philosophical

level which is pertinent or the conceptual

context o artists’ lm and video currently

being made within the digital data-stream.

On a more material basis, people refected

on the physical experience o making

and the sensory experience o engaging

with the analogue and digital world.

The discussion also highlighted current

concerns surrounding technological

sustainability. Many o these ideas are

pertinent to contemporary animation that

explores tensions between digital and

hand making using a range o media

and tools.

For argument’s sake, lets start with

a basic distinction between the two

processes o producing and

transmitting inormation:

‘Very simply “analogue” is a continuous

signal, like radio waves, or a dial which

indicates the time on a clock. Small

fuctuations in the signal are meaningul,

but are also eected by white noise (like

the static on the radio). Celluloid lm isanalogue because it records a continuous

fow o light and images over time, whilst

digital moving images are composed

o on/o dots. Analogue signals are

prone to intererence, and copying them

degrades the original. Analogue machines

can be powered by electricity, hydraulic

power or windup clockwork. Some say

that ‘analogue is the new digital’[2]

because its cool to know how things

work, and to make hybrid digital-analogue

contraptions. In contrast, ‘digital’ is

the way in which inormation or data is

transmitted in digits. Digits are binary

- you can count them on your ngers:

zero/one or yes/no or on/o.[3] A punch

card stores binary inormation through a

sequence o holes. Digital inormation is

encoded so both the sender and receiver

o digital inormation must speak the same

language. Digital signals do not to suer

rom intererence, making the inormation

error-ree. This means you can make

lots o digital copies and creativity is

easily networked and distributed, so that

the idea o owning an original becomes

problematic. Examples o older digital

systems include: an Abacus, Morse code

and Braille. A modem translates analogue

inormation into digital.”[4]

Although it is possible to map the

characteristics o certain categories

o technologies, the Crumb discussion

revealed how the Analogue/Digital divide

can be an arbitrary distinction on several

levels. As human beings we experience

the world through our analogue senses,

however that inormation is created.[5] At

the same time digital inormation exists

in a constant data-stream, in which we

are immersed. Charlie Gere points out

that, ironically, it is oten digital art that

can be ‘touched’ and interacted with,

whilst more traditional material based artworks are displayed in glass vitrines, or

behind ropes, and cannot be touched.

He concludes: “Thus it can be suggested

the work o art in the digital age can be

thought o as a chiasmus in which the

analogue work o art is distinguished by

its digital discretion, whereas the digital

work is characterized by its apparent

analogue continuity.”[6]

This analogue experience o the world

is tied to the desire or a more haptic

orm o working with computers evident

in the digital-makers who are busy

reverse engineering, innovating with the

technology we already have, rather than

chasing the latest upgrade. In the Crumb

discussion, I wrote: “I’m interested in

the physical, spatial, sculptural aspects

o our work: the moments at which the

relationship between digital and analogue

become messy. On the one hand many

people are so amiliar with end-user

tools, there’s little understanding o the

machine and its internal workings. In

terms o art and curating - this discourse

ocuses on the nature o the image. On

the other hand there seems to be a strong

DIY/DIWO (Do It With Others - to quote

Furthereld[7]) / DIT (Do It Together - to

quote action weaver Travis Meinol[8])

movement to work collectively and make

stu. In this context ‘making’ includes

reverse engineering, upcycling, reuse,

recycling, hacking, modiying, collage,

remixing etc... all creative activities across

crat, design, computing, and art. And

these kinds o making involve a range o

tools and processes rom knitting needles

to coding, online and located networks.

Here the discourse ocuses on the nature

o the process. But o course both these

areas o practice are inter-related, even

i we think o one as ne, art, theoretical,

critical, and the other as more hobbyist,amateur, olk, populist, etc.”[9]

So here I’m trying to make a link, albeit

a crude one, between analogue-digital

hybridity and sustainability. Digital

sustainability raises questions o longevity

o digital ormats, the limited resources

we have to maintain and run them, and the

consumption o natural resources used or

building disposable computers. The built-

in obsolescence o ast-upgrading ormats

o disposable goods is the cornerstone or

deault o ree-market capitalism. Along

with diminishing resources, crashing

markets and deskilling, there’s an

increasing sense o being lost in an excess

o digital inormation that is sliding out o

view. At the same time, analogue ormats

are no longer seen as commercially viable,

and their machines and print acilities are

being phased out.[10]

Remarkably, in his Babel Fiche project

artist Dave Griths is transerring digital

video onto microche. It’s a kind o

reverse engineering the pixel back into a

sequence o rames. The project imagines

a uture where anthropologists wont be

able to access the moving images o the

21st Century. To anticipate the problem,

Babel Fiche is transcribing digital lm into

still rames, printed onto colour microche

lm which can be viewed through an

enlarger which magnies the images.

Microche is “a photographic medium

capable o lasting 500 years and simply

requiring light and a lens to reveal its

contents.”[11] This is Steampunk at its

best, using the historical imaginary to slide

between time zones – a Heath Robinson

invention or a uture where natural

resources and electrical power may be

limited, and digital ormats outdated.

Sean Cubitt describes the precariousnesso extracting Lithium or batteries rom

the Salt Lakes in South America, and

highlights the potential environmental

degradation o indigenous land in Bolivia

that will provide another 20 years o

Lithium. Here traditional lie is in danger o

being lost in the ace o modern progress,

where the geopolitics o modernity is

mapped by the fow o wealth. Cubitt

expands on Charlie Gere’s post earlier

in the crumb discussion: “As Charlie

observes, analog is invented by digital,

in the same way tradition is invented

by modernity - indigenous tradition by

colonial modernization.”[12] This process

o modernity – the naming o the other as

old to dierentiate the new and prioritise

its development, is explored by Marshall

Berman who traces the deep Faustian

metaphors o progress which have

sustained industrial development rom the

medieval to the modern world.[13]

Animation is traditionally an exploration o

the handcrated spaces between analogue

and digital processes. But in the drive

towards the digital uture it is important

that we don’t construct a hierarchy o

ormats, that we value the hand-made

and the coded, the analogue and the

digital. This is essential i we are to move

beyond the analogue as a digital special

eect, and retain a deeper understanding

o image making with a range o tools,

spatial and aesthetic languages. Not

simply as a new wave o nostalgia, nor just

to conserve a century o moving images,

but to enable us to use the tools o the

uture, understand their provenance and

evolution, and re-invent them or our

own use.

From the perspective o the present,

Babel Fiche is traditionally archiving a

transient ormat which slows down themode o capture, and viewing, to a more

human analogue scale. In part, this is

due to the accessibility o microche, in

comparison to the complex programming

languages o sotware, which are oten

proprietary and locked. The image

printed on the microche is the image we

view it’s not encoded in another ormat.

For the artists and pro-sumers o the

uture, creating digital animation today

is heavily reliant on end-user sotware,

rather than learning the programming and

coding skills to create their own syntax,

aesthetics and orms. A return to learning

computer programming and woodwork

skills in schools could be the rst step in

enabling a generation to be digitally and

analogically dextrous enough to create

their own metaphors.


Ele Carpenter in an artist, writer an

and lecturer in MFA Curating at Go

College, University o London. As th

acilitator o the Open Source Emb

project (BildMuseet Umea Sweden

2009, Museum o Crat and Folk Ar

Francisco, 2010), Ele is currently a

the ‘Embroidered Digital Commons

distributed embroidery exploring co

work and ownership 2008 – 2013.

[1]Analogue/DigitalArtdiscussionon theNEW-M

[email protected] hostedby CRUMB

oSunderland,UK,March-April,2011.Thelistarc

availableat: jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0

curating.Aneditedtranscriptothe mainthreads

availableina pdontheCrumbwebsitein2012:c

[2]AnalogueistheNewDigital’CuratedbySimon

AndreaZapp. Madlab,Manchester 2010.analogue

madlab.org.uk/content/analogue-is-the-new-digi

[3]CharlieGere,Re:[NEW-MEDIA-CURATING]A

DigitalArt,4 March,2011,12:51

JohannesE. Goebel,Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATIN

DigitalArt,4 March2011,13:12

[4] EleCarpenter, Re:[NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] A

DigitalArt:MarchTheme.1March2011,20:34

[5]‘Atthelastmile,humansexperienceallmedia

“analogically”.Analoglightwavesenteraphysica

soundwavesenteraphysicalear,physicalskina

eelanalogsignals(heat,resistance).WhetherI’m

toadigitalCDor analogvinyl,bothultimatelyente

analogically.’Curt Cloninger.Re: [NEW-MEDIA-C

Analogue/DigitalArt,6March,2011,20:14

[6] CharlieGere, [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING]Analo

Art.4March,2011.12:51

[7] urthereld.org/events/urtherelds-do-it-othe

networking-event-2007

[8] actionweaver.com

[9]EleCarpenter,Re:[NEW-MEDIA-CURATING]A

DigitalArt:22 March,22:29

[10]InMarch2010,SohoFilmLabceasedtoprint

Itwasthelastproessionallabprovidingthisacil

Seegopetition.com/petition/43 288.html

[11]babelche.net

[12]SeanCubitt,Re:[NEW-MEDIA-CURATING]A

Digital,6March201122:57

[13]MarshallBerman2010.‘AllthatisSolidMelts

Verso:London/NewYork.Chapter1,‘Goethe’sF

Tragedyo Development’p37-86



22

‘..at a distance o roughly ninety-eight

million miles is an utterly insignifcant little

blue-green planet whose ape-descended

lie orms are so amazingly primitive that

they still think digital watches are a pretty

neat idea.’

The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy,

Douglas Adams (1979)

Dear Siri. Please hold my hand. I’m

mindul o the gap. I am worried by the

smallest o gestures. Between my thumb

and orenger; my orenger and my head;

between the complex concatenation o

my thumb, orenger, middle nger, ring

nger and the keyboard o my computer.

I’m worried about the greasy smears my

ape like thumb leaves on the small, hard

to hold, smartphone.

By the pricking o my thumbs, something

wicked this way comes. Digitalis. I’m

trying on a poisonous glove or my dirty

digits. I don’t think it ts. The opposable

has become disposable.

Digital is poisonous or animation; it

contains its end. Animation is about

doing, it is haptic, tactile and textured. It’s

about getting your digits dirty. Animators

oten plead a special case or their

discipline: that they should be treated

dierently because it takes so long, that

it is arduous, boring and slow. But that’s

its USP: the iteration o repetitive and

menial tasks, endlessly recycled, or at

least remaking twelve times a second,

is important. The dull labour o the crat

process allows us to recast making as

mechanism and in so doing we become

a worker. A robot, who, piecemeal, can

become a dream machine.

Using paper, pen, paint, sand, snot, and

rot may be mundane, but careul making

allows us to think dierently. We are

pioneers with time on our hands. We see

the gaps. We don’t need to let a computer

do it quicker, quieter, eortlessly or

better. We can ail at it and nd something

new and unexpected. We don’t have to be

new romantics enthusiastically embracing

an authentic crat guild to do this right; we

just have to work with the small things.

Animation isn’t about making, it’s about

unmaking and not making – dismantling

the image in a playul, tactile and touchinginvestigation, driven by a desire to

expose and explore the mechanics o the

movement. We are not interested in a one

size ts all perection, a hyper reality o

perect hair, water or ur.

Binary bells and whistles, the wonderul

things, are not appealing. O and on and

o and on again. An alternative altered

state o an invisible perectable uture.

The digital renders animation invisible;

all trace elements o the material and its

construction are lost, no longer visible

but invisible and divisible by a machine.

A void instead o a thing. On and o and

gone again.

Animation should be old, dusty, decrepit

and broke. The bright white light o the

digital, all those twinkling zeros and ones,

has already cast a strange glow upon

the aged and inrm and orced a rethink

about the value o making.

Alan Turing proposed that the articially

intelligent will, eventually, write a sonnet,

with all the letters and words in the right

places. But he added, it will be a sonnet

that is best appreciated by another

machine that will admire its binary digits

and their elaborate ordering, without

having to read it or hear it.

The digital isn’t a tool: it is a new

technology, where theoretical machines,

not yet imagined, will talk to each other,

without any need or all our ngers

and thumbs.

Second thatemotionim Shore


Tim Shore is an artist and teaches

animation at London College o

Communication.

I happened to nd mysel in Grande Prairie,

Alberta. I had never heard o the city

beore. In Canada most urban lie hugs the

border with the United States. Canadians

commonly reer to this border by its

latitude: the 49th parallel. Grande Prairie

sits just north o the 55th parallel. I you

were driving rom Montana, it would take

over 12 hours to get there. Call me ignorant

o geography. I didn’t know Canada had

cities that ar North.

I live in Toronto - the centre o Canada’s

media universe - and it cares little about

what happens in Grande Prairie; news

emanating out rom here barely mentions

the place. For the people o Grande

Prairie, I’m sure the eeling is mutual.

Ater all, Grande Prairie is booming. In

part due to the dirty economics o theTar Sands, Alberta is an exceedingly

prosperous province.

Driving the streets o Grande Prairie,

you can draw a map o Globalism’s

ranchising coordinates. Starbucks is

one outlet we are happy to nd. Good

coee is progress, says my companion.

Context is everything. In the absence o

better coee, Starbucks is good. Like the

prow o a ship breaking ice, Starbucks

opens up new markets or capitalism

while setting better standards or coee

taste. This is the progress we like, one

that caters to our urbanite selves. We

can thank the Tar Sands or this, along

with its disastrous environmental eects.

History is always experienced as a lived

contradiction.

At lunch, I read a BBC story on my phone

about Lady Gaga. How does she do it?

Various experts weigh in on the Gaga

phenomenon. I don’t doubt that, like

Starbucks, Lady Gaga is popular in Grande

Prairie. Shuttling through stations on the car

radio I hear Bad Romance and then Classic

Rock. I want to understand the changing

landscape o mainstream culture. In

Grande Prairie, I nd mysel in the changed

landscape itsel. To me, it looks like a city

that has popped up overnight, the spores

o Globalism taking root in the orm o big

box stores. Seeing duplicates o chains I

know rom elsewhere makes Grande Prairie

a place I both can and can not recognize.

Thriving, it still seems to barely exist. It is

simulacral, to use that old word.

At Starbucks I had picked up a fyer or alocal historical society. This is what culture

is in Grande Prairie, I think: Lady Gaga

and historically-accurate reconstructed

log cabins. Grande Prairie upends what I

thought I knew about the world. Globalism

redraws the map o the globe, and Gaga

looms large on this horizon.

At the 2010 MTV Music Video Awards, Gaga

wore a meat dress. Thinking about this, I

make the assumption it augurs something

new. Not the meat dress itsel – that is

an artwork made by Jana Sterbeck in

1987 – but the meat dress as an object o

mainstream consumption. Claiming to be

an artist, Gaga uses the shock tactics o

the avant-garde, but not to any avant-garde

end. As John Ashbery wrote i n 1968, ‘the

artist who wants to experiment [today]…is

now at the centre o a cheering crowd.’[1]

Gaga serves a structural purpose, not unlike

that o Starbucks coee.

Writing about the Pepsi Corporation in

the New Yorker, John Seabrook notes

that Pepsi products have a dual nature.

Every bag o Doritos oers favour

combinations that are the same every time,

used with something more abstract. As

Seabrook says, ‘PepsiCo grats taste with

desire.’[2] The same could be said or any

contemporary brand. In Gaga’s case, she

embodies the culture social media makes.

Gaga is the best example o its aspirational

narrative: sel-transormation is just a

costume change away. This is why the

music she makes can be merely adequate.

Art and pop culture are like languages.The parts o speech remain the same,

while meaning is generated through

the logic o substitution. I history’s

substitutions always move rom tragedy

to arce, Gaga is denitely the arce. She

wore the meat dress or the purposes o

a photo op, nothing more. It was but a

salvo in the arsenal o costumes changes

she uses to keep her publicity machine

churning. When Jana Sterbeck put the

meat dress in an art gallery its point was

decay. Not an irony or which Gaga can

spare the time.

To claim pop cultural novelty is new is

merely to betray my own biases. I am

naive like every Liberal Arts student.

Study o the modernist canon denes

the scope o my ormal education.

Figuratively, modernism is reducib

to clean lines and white spaces;

pure abstraction and an absence

embellishment at one time signie

break rom the past. It’s a legacy

on in the white cube o contempo

art today. And seeing the world r

inside the white cube nurtures ce

assumptions about what’s import

The problem modernism always h

kitsch is that it is not remarkable t

an – and ans are what popular cu

creates. Today, it is unremarkable

on Facebook; most people partic

the new culture the digital era crea

the same time, Facebook is not m

contemporary version o an older

Facebook, like the internet, is gen

new, in the way that collage and tonce were. This suggests that now

it is more notable to be on Facebo

it is to have an interest in moderni

and contemporary art. In the pop

o Lady Gaga and o Facebook an

Starbucks, we nd the cultural or

the modern era’s irrelevance.

Viewed rom the perspective o G

Prairie, Alberta, this becomes cle

to me. Not the literal phenomenon

modernism’s end, but rather the lo

its importance as a way to unders

culture.

[1] BruceAltshuler,The AvantGardein Exhibition

the20th Century(New York:HarryN.Abrams,19

[2] newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516

act_seabrook

Meat dressmaniesto:On the contemporaryirrelevance o

contemporary art Rosemary Heather

About the Writer

Rosemary Heather is a writer and c

based in Toronto. She thanks Ann D

her comments on this text. She blo

rosemheather.wordpress.com.



Animate

Projects

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