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Transcript of Digitalis Catalogue
8/3/2019 Digitalis Catalogue
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2
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
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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.
8/3/2019 Digitalis Catalogue
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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
8/3/2019 Digitalis Catalogue
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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
8/3/2019 Digitalis Catalogue
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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
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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.
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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.
talis About the Writer
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
8/3/2019 Digitalis Catalogue
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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
talis About the Writer
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.
8/3/2019 Digitalis Catalogue
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/digitalis-catalogue 13/13
Animate
Projects
The Digitalis Commissions are supported by the National
Lottery through Arts Council England and by the Jerwood
Charitable Foundation.
The Jerwood Charitable Foundation is dedicated to
imaginative and responsible revenue unding o the arts,
supporting emerging artists to develop and grow at
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literature and music. It also supports and manages Jerwood
Visual Arts; a year round contemporary gallery programme
o awards, exhibitions and events at Jerwood Space which
then tours nationally.
All the artists and writers
Liz Barnsdale, Stuart Brown, Sebastian Buerkner, Benjamin
Cook, Nisha Duggal, Olga Gribben, Hannah Kerr, Anna
Mandlik, Shonagh Manson, Jon Opie, Caroline Smith
Copyright: Animate Projects, artists and contributors, 2011
Design: Dave Gaskarth / cyrk.org.uk
Cover image: Sebastian Buerkner
A limited edition print o Sebastian Buerkner’s Digitalis is
available to buy rom animateprojects.org/shop
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