Pic to Plasma Conference Eng

8/8/2019 Pic to Plasma Conference Eng

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Character design on billboards incites us to consume

and as street art, to join the revolution. It appears as

well-intentioned animation on our mobile phone dis-

plays and is a constant, if annoying companion to

hours spent at the computer.

character design

Characters are everywhere: Theyre taking over the

advertising, art, media, internet and urban landscapesacross the globe . . .

As consume-promoting branding or its subversive

inversion, loveable kitsch or urban art, Hello Kitty or

Obey Giant, Emiliy the Strange or Takashi

Murakamis DOB - character representation, abstract

and reduced to the essentials, has redefined the

aesthetic standards of visual communication world-

wide.

Free at last from the restraints of narrative or culturalcontext, the contemporary character has gained full

independence, reliant only upon its visual strengths

and powers of communication.

1st pictoplasmaconference on contemporary character design & art October 28 - 30, 2004 Berlin, Germany 2


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pictoplasma history

www.pictoplasma.com

Pictoplasmas online archives form the heart of an

ever-growing community of artists, designers and

an interested audience, which deals with the visua-

lisation of characters and figures. With often as

many as 70,000 hits per day, it is proof to the over-

whelming interest in stylish, fresh and daring con-

temporary character art.

pictoplasma publications

Pictoplasma 1 & 2, published by the Berlin based

publishing house Die Gestalten Verlag, deliver a

first ever documentation of modern character

design. Both high quality compilations of cutting

edge character visualisations, techniques and styles

have become instant bestsellers and are referred to

as the new and old testament of contemporary cha-

racter art.

pictoplasma exhibitions

Shows, installations and exhibitions like this one

at the Future Is Now Galerie in New York, are the

living proof that you can create a true global net-

work, which branches out into the palpable world

of objects.

The pictoplasma project began in 1999 as an

extensive inventory, collection and archive of con-

temporary character design.

Through the countless images collected in its archi-

ves, publications and exhibitions, pictoplasma

examines the vast array of possibilities characters

offer as signs of an independent graphical langua-ge. By playfully sampling and remixing visual

codes, these characters evade established pictori-

al norms, confronting the viewer head on, emotio-

nally and regardless of cultural background.

chickpages: Fabulous? Amazing? Nifty? Brilliant? Smashing?

Ugh. Sometimes, mere words are so inadequate. This is one of

those times.

jackpotradio: It all started for me with the Pictoplasma book: a

symphony of pop culture graphic design. My friend let me take a

peak and I was hooked: hello kitty, japanimation, underground fly-

ers, and plenty of retro-modernity. Hip, hop, and happening, the

Pictoplasma book is a must have for all those serious in the art of

our zeitgeist. And the Pictoplasma sitewell that is where themagic started. ...

Artezine, Robert Sievert: There is an attractive modernism to

this volume. It is totally twenty first century in its cooled down car-

toon imagery and presentation.

Idana: ...there is real dedication and passion here.

Yahoo! Picks: Traditionalists may scoff, but the technique, imagi-

nation, and emotion rendered here surely rival older paint-based

genres.



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Whether graphic design, illustration, animation, street

or fine art - the emphasis is NOT on the limits of style

or format, but on the shared dedication to a character-

driven language.

Lectures, panel discussions and workshops will provi-

de in-depth examination of the global movement of

contemporary character design. More than 20 style-

setting yet stylistically diverse artists and designers will

talk about the meaning of characters in their work, pro-

vide insights into their production methods and engage

in open discussion rounds.

With an extensive accompanying program of exhibiti-

ons, performances, film screenings, parties and VJ

sessions, the pictoplasma conference offers you aninspirational overview of the very latest trends in cha-

racter design and an ideal opportunity to explore the

best of Berlin.

pictoplasma conference

From October 28th - 30th, Berlin will stage the first-ever

conference on contemporary character design and art


So far pictoplasma has been mapping out the territory

of character visualization through its archives and

publications. Now at last, the conference offers the

opportunity for the pioneers, creators, newcomers and

enthusiasts to go offline and meet in the flesh!

For the very first time, the pictoplasma conference

brings together an international scene of artists, desi-

gners and agencies, offering a unique forum for all

those working with or interested in the visualization and

application of character design.


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Furi Furi, Japan

what a happy life & death

www.furifuri.com

Established in 1998, 'Furi Furi Company' ("shaking, swin-

ging") is a design team based in Tokyo that has expanded

worldwide. Furi Furi covers every aspect of design from con-

sulting and planning to media promotions, combining theirunique Manga aesthetics with a generous helping of adult

madness.

Their famous characters break through all language barriers

and appeal to a broad audience, not only within pop culture.

Well-respected right across the board, in merchandising,

advertising, toy design and other media, their ability to style

japanimation characters with amazing precision and inner

logic, emotion and motivation, has secured them a key role in

the creation of computer game characters, be it for Sega,

Nintendo or Sony.

Rinzen, Australia

Creating Collaboratively

www.rinzen.com

Australian design group Rinzen is perhaps best known for the

collaborative approach of its five members and their RMX

project, which brings artists from around the world together in

spontaneous collaboration. In a visual version of Chinese

whispers, images are passed on from one player to the next

and evolve and mutate as their individual elements are high-

lighted, discarded, erased or re-used.

Rinzen will introduce their new project RMXtoy, which takes

the concept into the third dimension with an intensive charac-

ter design remix involving character and toy designers, illust-

rators and artists. A series of initial character designs will be

progressively remixed, resulting in a sequence of characters

which morph, chop and change, mixing techniques and sty-

les. Ultimately, the remixed character designs will find new

directions that no individual designer would chance upon.

Franois Chalet, SwitzerlandMinimalism with soul

www.francoischalet.ch

In his graphic work Chalet creates an expanding universe of

minimal, often abstract characters, all based on a very tight

geometric framework. Although he references a clear, almost

archaic formal language, his characters radiate charm and

loveable emotion.

In his VJ performances, Franois Chalet makes his growing

family of characters dance in real-time to the music. As the

performance progresses, the characters are carried along on

a spontaneous narrative.


speakers


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Genevieve Gaukler, France

psychedelic simplicity with attitude

www.g2works.com

Genevieve Gauckler has had a highly successful career with

strong links to electro culture. She started out designing

album covers for F Communications, before working on

videos and animation with Kuntzel and Deygas. In 1999, sheturned her attention to interactive design, joined the Boo.com

start-up and worked with Me Company. On her return to

France, she worked as an independent graphic designer,

developing her own style in art, illustration and character

design. Shes also a member of the Pleix group, a collective

of French graphic designers, 3D artists and musicians.

Genevieve Gauckler has a distinct taste for simple, colorful

shapes. Her world is amusing, optimistic, lively, happy, sur-

prising and offbeat.

Gary Baseman, USA

genius and stupidity smudged beyond recognition

www.garybaseman.com

Gary Baseman won three Emmy Awards and a BAFTA for his

creation of Disneys critically acclaimed television series

Teachers Pet, which has just been turned into a feature film.

He describes his own work as where the line between geni-

us and stupidity has been smudged beyond recognition.

His diverse exposure includes illustration for everything fromthe New York Times and Readers Digest to the popular

Cranium board game. His paintings are part of the permanent

collection at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC

and the Museum of Modern Art in Rome, and he has recent-

ly designed toys for Critterbox and Sony Japan.

Philip Hunt, UKCharacter animation

www.studioaka.co.uk

As creative director of the London-based animation studio

Studio aka, Philip Hunt was the driving force behind many

of the most interesting and stylistically groundbreaking

European animation campaigns.

Truly the creative sum of its parts, Studio aka has a talent

base of thirty directors, artists, technical and production staff,

and has created exceptional and award-winning works in ani-

mation, garnering both BAFTA, D&AD, and BTA awards alon-

gside an Oscar nomination, and continuously pushing theboundaries of commercial animation wherever possible.



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Christian Montenegro, Argentina

pop visuals meet the Genesis

www.christianmontenegro.com.ar

Alongside teaching Morphology at the Buenos Aires

University for graphic design, young and very up-coming

artist Christian Montenegro has worked as a freelance illust-

rator for international publications and campaigns. His newbook, published by Berlins Die Gestalten Verlag, has literally

redesigned the Bible, including stories of creation, Adam and

Eve, Noahs ark, the Tower of Babel and Sodom and

Gomorrah.

While Montenegros designs have more in common with the

emotions of Expressionism and the texture of woodblock

prints, their distinctly contemporary feel gives them a stylish

cutting-edge appeal.

Were hoping his talk will give us a long-awaited glimpse of

how he actually makes these fantastic creations.

Derrick Hodgson / MadReal, Canada

Victims of the mass mania

www.madreal.com

Derrick Hodson describes his style as a fusion of imagery

absorbed while growing up on the family farm and living now

in an urban setting.

His paintings and drawings are depictions of monochrome

mass mania, complex social spaces crowded with familiar

and mutated characters.

Aesthetically combining aspects of cartoon, graffiti and con-

temporary design to produce his own illustrative style, he

uses repetition of his characters to illustrate ideas of techno-

logical advancement and its consequences.

James Marshall / DALEK, USAtransforming rapidly by drawing the same thing repeatedly

www.dalekart.com

For many artists, inspiration comes from experiences they

had when they were young children. For DALEK, these expe-

riences were nothing short of traumatic. Somewhere between

head injuries and Space Monkeys, DALEK found time to

become a respected graffiti artist and work extensively in the

skateboard industry.

For me, character design is the new figure study... it is taking

the figure and looking at it in all new ways. Parodying it, con-

torting it, exaggerating it and looking beyond it.

For all of us that grew up in a world of cartoons and comicimagery it seems only natural for us to explore the figure in

this manner.

speakers



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DOMA Collective, Argentina/USA

Understanding the world as a big lab helps to detect

the reaction to each action

www.doma.tv

Violence, control, public surveillance, mass media, hi- tech,

consumption, mega corporations, etc. All this put together

creates a huge information chaos and audiovisual pollution.DOMA, a group of Argentine artists who started in the Street-

Art scene in 1998, work with all these elements, adding a

dash of irony into the mix.

As their work has progressed through urban installations,

guerilla art and absurd campaigns, DOMA has created

various concepts and characters which gradually evolved to

come alive in the animations, motion graphics, films and VJ

performances which have become the groups main focus

today.Situated in Buenos Aires and Miami, they divide their

time between art projects and commercial work for clients

such as Latin MTV, Disney or Fox.

Friends With You, USA

A new generation of stuffed animals and the vanguard of a

growing underground toy movement

www.friendswithyou.com

Welcome to Friends With You. The friends have magic

powers never seen before, and are improving lives one per-

son at a time. Share your wishes and desires with your new

friends and watch, as everything you ever dreamed of beco-

mes reality! Welcome friends into your heart and home and

start living better TODAY!

Sam Borkson and Arturo Sandoval combined forces in 2002

and have been slowly spreading their art around the globe

ever since. Originally the Friends With You characters ventu-

red into the world as hand-sewn plush dolls that provide

magic and mayhem for their owners; now they have expan-

ded to modular wooden toys, public art installations, motion

pictures and more. This artist group was created with one

basic concept in mind and that is to become Friends With

You.

The London Police, The NetherlandsGet up wherever and whenever possible

www.thelondonpolice.com

The London Police is an artist collective based in Amsterdam,

Holland. They have been working together for over 4 years to

bring their Street Art to cities all round the world, and they

have been pretty successful - chances are that there is a TLP

graffiti right next to your front door...

They operate as a crew and employ an array of tools and

media - spray and bucket paint, rollers, posters, markers and

stickers.

By establishing an easily recognizable basic character with a

bold, graphic line-quality and reduced palette, The LondonPolice has pushed Urban Art a huge step away from graffiti

tagging towards logo-like communication and CI design.



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Boris Hoppek, Spain & Germany

Characters as therapy?

www.borishoppek.de

Hello, Im Boris, son of Horst and Heidi Hoppek. Ive been

living in Barcelona for one year and Im happy.

Boris Hoppek doesnt say much but this seems to be becau-

se hes working all the time. He creates characters and crea-tures, which he recycles in a continual process of variation, as

dolls, installations, animation and graffiti. As de:bug writes,

his Kukluxklan, bimbos, cannibals and Hitler figures are ...for

everybody to love, all the time and everywhere...

And to spare him the torture of giving a one-hour talk, we

asked him to stage a live overhead projector battle against

Neasden Control Centre.

Neasden Control Centre, UK

interesting handwriting thats great even when it sucks

www.neasdencontrolcentre.com

Formed in 2000, Neasden Control Centre is a multi discipli-

ned studio based in London UK. They work with and for indi-

viduals and companies worldwide on exhibitions, commissi-

ons and mish mash.

(Nobody quite knows exactly what an overhead projector

battle is yet, but were all convinced its something great.)

Gob Squad, UK & Germany

Pixel to@st and tea!

www.gobsquad.com

Gob Squad is a group of artists who have been workingcollectively with performance, installation and media since

1994. In their performance/installation To@ster, the digital

age meets the low-tech sensibility of Gob Squads patented

To@ster technology. Large-scale images of famous/infamous

people are rendered using hundreds of slices of rare, medi-

um and burnt toast each piece a pixel in a crunchy, delicious

mosaic. Some of the people who have been immortalised in

toast so far, are The Queen Mother, on the occasion of her

100th birthday; Red Army Faction terrorist, Ulrike Meinhof;

and artist Joseph Beuys. For the pictoplasma conference

they will to@st a very special portrait

During the creation of the image, the artists will host a verypolite debate on whether it is possible to capture ones per-

sonality in an image. Tea will be served.

presentations



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The accompanying design exhibition characters at war!

will enable visitors to meet the elite of international cha-

racter design literally eye-to-eye.

From Astroboy to Daleks Space Monkey: Hundreds of all

time favorites and shiny newcomers from the flat-faced

world of comics, graffiti and merchandising are pushing

through to the third dimension!

exhibition


A classical war painting comes to life in a cut-throat com-

petition of consumer icons and brutally violated copy-

rights!

And behind the foot soldiers of this enormous anthropo-

morphic army are none other than the heroes of the inter-

national design scene: Buero Destruct, Phunk Studio,

Snowcat, Fawn Gehweiler, Furi Furi, Francois Chalet,

ESM, ACNE, James Marschall, ShagArt, Mari-chan,

unit9, Jim Avignon and many, many more...

Characters at war! is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

The loveliest, cutest, and strangest characters stand tall

as life-size cardboard stand-up soldiers arranged in agigantic walkthrough battlefield installation!


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Pictoplasma design and animation screening program

The international design and animation program is organized in

cooperation with pictoplasma and offers an overview of interna-

tional animations, short films and motion graphics, focussing on

stylish and fresh character-driven visuals and narratives.

Witness as daring, stylish, cool and surprising character design

re-enters the world of animation!!!

and more...

PictoGadgets

The event location will host a special conference shop offering a

fine selection of design publications, related products and other

amazingly funky stuff.

Partys and VJ presentations

As soon as dawn sets in, not only the fassade of the conference

locations glass pavilion will be missused to backproject a fusion

of mooving urban art and animated graphic visuals.

On the 3 conference days youll be able to choose between

screening lounges, billard sessions, partys, live performances

and VJ presentations.

pictoplasma workshops

The creation of characters, logos and recognition values

automatically grants basic copyrights to their creators. A cozy

consulting hour with your own private lawyer for copyright and

media rights will provide detailed insight into the mechanics of

merchandising, the current situation of license dealing and

explain the international copyright regulations.

If you think youre well looked after, youre damn right! Under

the careing wing of the crme de la crme of cuddly plush toys

you can finish off uncountable buttons, miles of thread, several

borrowed sowing machines and a lot of professional expertise to

turn a pillow into a friend!


LoveAblan

StudioSoi

DomaColl.

BorisHoppek

MDRL


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Berlin - despite the never-ending economic recession - is still clinging

to its reputation as Europes most happening city for art and culture.

Starting right at Berlins central focus point, the Karl Marx Allee is

Europes Cold War boulevard and an impressive example of monu-

mental Stalinist architecture.

The Kino International combines the spartan charms of Bauhaus

design with a flourish of classy socialist decor - even back in the GDR

days, it was the official East German showpiece movie-theater.

The Cafe Moskau is just across the street. A former gentlemens club

for Russian generals, it is now enjoying a stylish comeback as a

magnet for Berlins club and party scene.

Located directly at Alexanderplatz are the endless bookshelves of

what used to be the biggest bookshop of East Germany. Today the

Zentralbuero uses the empty sales rooms as a project space and

exhibition show room.

This architectural Moderneast ensemble is a perfect host for all the

lectures, panel discussions, film screenings, exhibitions, workshops,

lounging and parties that make up the pictoplasma conference.Cafe Moskau

Kino International

Zentralbuero

location



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If you are interested in featuring, supporting or sponsoring the event please contact:

conferencePeter Thaler & Lars Denicke

Torstrasse 102

10119 Berlin - Germany

phone.: + 49 (0)30 247 216 48

fax.: + 49 (0)30 280 998 76

> [email protected]

> http://www.pictoplasma.com

Press inquiries please contact Guido Mbius:> [email protected]

US Press inquiries please contact Love Ablan:

> [email protected]

General inquiries on the pictoplasma project:

> [email protected]

Credits:

Curation and organization by pictoplasma

Production support by Club Transmediale

Exhibition coordination by Laura Schleussner

Animation screening curated by Anna Henckel-Donnersmark

Translations by Lucy Powell

Website by x-new-media.com & Klitsche.de

Graphics by jutojo

The pictoplasma conference 2004

is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds

contact


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Pic to Plasma Conference Eng