Category Archives: animation

Ruth Catlow -Time is speeding up

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Time is speeding up (2016, 11MB, 1:00 min)

This is a beautiful piece, a distillation down to a minute of a three month installation by Ruth Catlow, artist and co-director of the marvellous Furtherfield.
She explains its premise and construction better than I can, so I’ll hand over to her:

This networked video performance and installation is about how life seems to speed up as we get older; based on the reflection that when I was one day old, a day was my whole life but on the second day one day was only half my life etc.
The work was commissioned for ‘We Are Not Alone’, an exhibition for 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, UK.


During exhibition opening hours between 23rd January -24th April 2016, viewers could watch a live looping video online. At the exhibition people could pose for the web cam, or might be caught looking at the video in which they were soon to be portrayed.
Using a computer programme called Geological Time Piece that I created with Gareth Foote a still webcam image was captured every 3-5 minutes during exhibition opening hours. The camera pointed at a wall in the gallery, upon which a changing text was displayed. The software added each image as a frame to a looping video, of fixed 3 minute duration. The frame density increased every 3 minutes, as each images was added to the video.
In the exhibition space full of movement – of light and shade and people coming and going – people could insert themselves into the video by standing between the webcam and the text. Over three months the human presences started to flicker and disappear and the moving image progressively conveyed a more geological sense of time, the arc of daylight moving through the space, the architecture, and other more static things came to dominate the image. The computer programme stopped running when the exhibition closed by which time the video contained over 3600 images. The final video runs for a minute at 60fps.

GAC – Belgrades

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Belgrades (2013, 50MB, 4:04 min)

Neat music video – for a D J Investor track – from Martin Rychicki a.k.a GAC,
originally from Poland and now Paris resident.
The bendy Sax is particularly fetching.
Assured & engaging movie making.

I Don’t Want Your Lasagne Furnace – Donna Kuhn

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I Don’t Want Your Lasagne Furnace (2009, 41.4MB, 2:23 min)

Artists I really care for tend to fall into two distinct categories.
The first is the extensive or Picasso category – refusing to be
bound by stylistic limitations or boxes they constantly
reinvent themselves, often seeming like ten artists in one skin.
The other might be called the Giacometti or Morandi model, where
the best part of a lifetime is devoted to an intensive, deep,
exploration of a limited set of themes and content.
They have in common more than would at first appear to be the case.
They are both led by a kind of shamanistic passion, a surrender to
the unconscious, to whim, to a playfulness which can be either infantile
or deadly serious, and they reject the most common practice which is the
dull conformity of making work which attempts to guess the market,
or follow fashion or whatever.
If Sondheim is the net exemplar of the first way then Donna Kuhn
must typify the second.
Small miracles of freshness & originality mined and chiselled from
a tiny pallette! Wit and sadness both! Wonder! Delight!

Almost 7 Minutes of Unalloyed Bliss

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What’s Opera Doc? (1957, 57.2MB, 6:52 min)

Remember the tingle down the spine when the first song kicks in in
the musical episode of Buffy?
Well, here’s the template from 1957.
Cartoons featuring talking and singing animals performing opera simply
do not get better than this.

Wishing you all a very happy holiday season…

3 from Ben Pranger

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Morse Gestures (2009, 28.6MB, 2:54 min)


Floating Cup (2009, 1.35MB, 28 secs, silent)


Suitcase in a Box (2009, 59.6MB, 1:00 min)

Assured & smart domestic surrealism from Ben Pranger.

The Story of Stuff

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The Story of Stuff (2008, 54.1MB, 21:20)

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard is a twenty
minute video about waste, recycling, corporations,
and sustainability. Even a radical like me finds it
occasionally heavy-handed, but then, this is serious
stuff. Nicely done, worth the twenty minutes you’d
otherwise spend watching crap TV, no?

Essen Dortmund Lederhosen by Rick Silva

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essen_dortmund
Essen Dortmund Lederhosen (2005, 36MB, 6:11 min.)

Rick Silva a.k.a – camoufleur, created a musical video
for the former duo-member band – Zeugwart Hallbauer.

Aleksandra Domanovic – La Biennale (Dictum Ac Factum)

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La Biennale (Dictum Ac Factum) (2009, 63MB, 1:40 min)

Nicely made, kind of de Chirico-ish in its
sense-of-place-that-never-was & the way it
haunts you long after viewing, this piece from
Aleksandra Domanovic featured as part of the
Padiglione Internet of the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Oh –Dictum ac Factum – ‘No Sooner Said than Done’, apparently.

Timo Vaittinen – 3 Stop Motion Works

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Breakblast (2008, 7.7MB, 1:01 min, silent)


Breakblast (2007, 4.9MB, 55 secs, silent)


Over the fence and here we go (2006, 4.4MB, 49 secs, silent)

Three stop motion pieces, economical &
elegant all, from Finnish artist Timo Vaittinen.
I like the (justified) confidence their silence
demonstrates.

More from Martin Rychlicki

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tyrytyry
TyryTyry (2012, 133MB, 2:06 min)

Nice bit of work from Polish film maker and musician Martin Rychlicki, who also
trades as DJ Gacmaster & GacPax,
for a track by DJ Investor.
We’ve featured Rychlicki’s rather winning work here before and no doubt will again.

Bonnie Prince Billy Again

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Agnes (2004, 7.3MB, 3:12 min)


Horses (2004, 16.7MB, 4:37 min)

Agnes video by David Shrigley
& Horses by Braden King,
both of them classy bits of work.
There’s a PhD to be had for someone along the lines of
‘The Curatorial Role of the Recording Artist’.
BPB/Will Oldham’s CD cover art never disappoints –
the acme of hip good taste ( though not in a bland way, I think)
– & the same is true of his videos.
I particularly love the projection-within-the vid trope of Horses.
Also -what songs!

Albert Nanning – Exit

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Exit (2008, 48.6MB, 4:50 min)

Says Albert Nanning:

‘I’m a writer (poems mostly) and photographer, living and working
in Amsterdam. My age is 41. See also. The last five years I’ve made
so many pictures due to the digital workflow that by accident
I discovered a way to give all those pictures that I don’t use
a kind of meaning by putting them in a clip that I made.
Most pictures are from Amsterdam. I made
the clip with iMovie.’

& nicely it works too…

Eddo Stern – Best…flame war…Ever

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Eddo Stern – Best…flame war…Ever (2007, 32MB, 12:08)

Even the non-gamers (that includes me – and I think everyone
else here at DVblog) will appreciate this one from Eddo Stern.

A Map Comes to Life

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Andersen M Studio – A Map Comes to Life (2006, 11.4MB, 2:20)

Incredible stop-motion animation from London’s
Andersen M Studio. Much of their video work is
in the same style, but why switch it up when
they’re so talented in this specialized way?
Inspiring and fun.

Stan VanDerBeek – 2 Poem Films

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astralmanpoem
Astral Man an Illuminated Poem (1959, 22MB, 2:27 min.)

poemfieldNo2
poem field No2 (1966, 60MB, 5:42 min.)

A true innovator. Creator of countless films displaying complete artistic control.
What vision Stan VanDerBeek, what vision.

Netbehaviour Mailing List Fractal Excerpt

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gun_has_no_trigger
Netbehaviour Mailing List Fractal [Excerpt] (2012, 5MB, 59 secs)

From Claude Heiland-Allen:
Seven years of archives for this mailing list filtered down
to the most often occurring 1000 words of 4 letters or more,
in an infinite fractal zoom – each word is made up of the
words that most likely follow it.

We love the Netbehaviour list & this, splendid & bonkers both, does just
what it says on the tin with that excellent institution – we’ve posted
the minute long version here but if that whets your appetite for more
there’s an hour long version at archive.org.

2 from Adamo Macri

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still life
Still Life (2006, 16.9MB, 3:36 min)

spout
Spout (2006, 8.26MB, 2:14 min)

Two short movies from Canadian artist Adamo Macri in 2007.

PSST! Pass it on…

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DRIFT SLICYCLE POPPED! (2007, 11MB, 1:59)


LOQUACIOUS EYESICLE WILD-BITES (2007, 14.9MB, 2:34)

PSST gets designers, animators, and directors together for
collaborative film projects every year. Their main concern
is process, which they explain comes from a fusion of the
Dadaist game Exquisite Corpse and the sometimes childhood
game, Telephone.
Whatever their theory, their annual collections are stellar.

Pierre Huyghe

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Pierre Huyghe #1
Pierre Huyghe #1 (NK, 2.69MB, 1:43 min)

Pierre Huyghe #2
Pierre Huyghe #2 (NK, 1.59MB, 3:03 min)

Pierre Huyghe #3
Pierre Huyghe #3 (NK, 2.33MB, 1:29 min)

Pierre Huyghe #4
Pierre Huyghe #4 (NK, 2.29MB, 1:30 min)

Four short videos by the often vexing, occasionally brilliant, Pierre Huyghe
from the website of the PBS Art in the 21st Century series.

Diana Brighouse – Floating Green Leaves

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Floating Green Leaves
Floating Green Leaves (2012, 212MB, 3:52 min)

Diana Brighouse is a doctor turned artist in a grand tradition.
She’s currently completing an MA at the University of Chichester in the UK.
Her work is intensely thoughtful and thought through and also often very beautiful.
I’m not always keen on artist commentaries on their own work but what she sent
me is a model of clarity so I’ll reproduce it in full here.

‘The underlying stimulus for my work is to challenge the reductive philosophy
that prevails in Western society today.
I believe that reductionism is manifest through a prioritising of scientific
or quantitative methodology. An unquestioning belief in the measurable is
found not only in science and technology, but also in education, medicine
and politics.
I believe that the supremacy of the measurable can be directly related not
only to the political and financial threats to the arts, but also to the
regressive attitudes towards women and the disabled.
Successive postgraduate university educations in medicine, spirituality,
psychotherapy and art have repeatedly challenged the certainties I have
been taught.
My use of digital video (a quantitative binary process) to produce images
that I believe to be non-reductive reflects the paradoxes created by my
chosen professions.
There are multiple possible interpretations of the videos depending on
the background of the viewer. This is deliberate and hopefully supports
my non-reductive thesis.
These videos are part of a series investigating reflections; a second
series that I am also currently working on investigates shadows.
My intention is that this series will be more politically orientated.
My videos are taken in my garden and edited with Sony Vegas Platinum 11.0HD.’

We’ll have another of these beautiful works next week.

Dr Hairy – Mentoring

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Floating Green Leaves
Mentoring (2012, 255MB, 16:01 min)

Final one in the present series of Edward Picot’s Dr Hairy videos.
Great stuff, which we’ve enjoyed a great deal.
We eagerly anticipate series #2, perhaps we could suggest The Return of Dr Hairy,
Dr Hairy’s Repeat Prescription or The Beard is Back.
Glad to see he’ll be putting in an artworld appearance at
the new Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park, London.
Not to be missed if you’re in the area during the run of the show (not only
because Dr H is great but also because Furtherfield haven’t put together
a remotely dull show yet).

Okie Dokie

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Okie Dokie
Okie Dokie (2008, 46MB, 2:47 min)

Neat bit of videoing by Dave Hughes for Dan Deacon’s Okie Dokie.
Sparky & intelligent both (& nice use of Prelinger footage,
cheeky rather than earnest, makes a change)

José Carlos Casado – Agnus Dei

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Agnus Dei
agnus dei.v06 (2006, 11.8MB, 2:53 min.)

José Carlos Casado – Agnus Dei.
OK, a species of satire, clearly,
but such dream-beautiful satire.

Khaled Hafez – <em>On Presidents and Superheroes</em>

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On Presidents and Superheroes
On Presidents and Superheroes (2009, 7MB, 1:15 min)

Another piece from Manchester Cornerhouse’s excellent Subversion show.
This post is a collaboration with Furtherfield – they’re hosting ….

One Step Ahead

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One Step Ahead – Stefan Nadelman (2004, 9MB, 4:07)

Stefan Nadelman is Tourist Pictures, and since I like
his older stuff just as much (or more than) the new,
I’m posting this Nike-commissioned piece from a few years ago.

Takeshi Murata – Melter 02

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Melter2
Melter2 (2003, 8MB, 30 sec.)

Undermining the traditional notion of televisual viewing by creating a passive,
sculptural work of technicolour beauty.
Clip from Melter 02 by Takeshi Murata.

Alan Sondheim – What Remains

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what remains
what remains (2007, 19.7MB, 1:26 min.)

We need no excuse here to feature more of Alan Sondheim’s singular & remarkable oeuvre.
This one caused a bit of a debate on Netbehaviour in 2007 -some baulked, fearing it to be images
of rending, tearing of the body. Alan says not at all, it’s tantric/ecstatic.
The singer is Alan’s wife Azure Carter.
When he originally posted it, it came with this poem (a sonnet?):

what remains

because of the faces and powers among our second lives
and third and others in-between the others; because of
swollen faces thinned back to pages bones and shadowed flesh
that nothing stays what was simple and illusion

and then poetics rounds and fills the world
among lost pages and inscriptions freed
from every symbol and symbols freed and world;
the less are said the farther truth transcends

because of truths and songs and lights and place
where bodies turn; because of bodies churned and stretched
among beams of those lights and those songs; those truths
nothing stays back nothing; valleys fill with jostled things

and things churn symbols; the world
fills silence; skies get dark kiss; welkin

Still Life: Gallery – Gareth Long

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gallery
Still Life: Gallery (2002, 3.5 MB, 3:22 min.)

This piece was shot with a still camera. The images are ‘stitched’ together using
a combination of specialized software and by hand; the stills seamlessly joined to
create a new space. Because the space is made up of stills instead of video, any
and all action contained within the frame is arrested. The two major precepts of
video – motion and time – are thus implied but impenetrable.

from Gareth Long.

Charlie Mars – Videomaker from Outerspace

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deux
deux (2006, 22MB, 3:48 min)

by Charlie Mars.

Paul Slocum – Time Lapse Homepage

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tlh_web
Time Lapse Homepage (2003, 18.4 MB, 55 sec.)

‘Paul Slocum‘s Time-Lapse Homepage (2003) signifies through accretion.
This high-definition video is composed of 1,000 computer screenshots
of his homepage. Complete with an upbeat score that could easily be
a corporate jingle to promote a new technology, the stills display the
building, erosion, and occasional complete overhaul of an ever-evolving
Web site. This work provides a layered historical record of something
we tend to see only in discrete units-the appearance of a homepage on
any given day-while attempting to think through Web design in the
language of earlier time-based media.’