The Spine by Chris Landreth

The recently revamped National Film Board of Canada website is currently showcasing the new film by CG pioneer Chris Landreth.

The Spine tells the everyday tale of a marriage falling apart, made fantastical through Landreth's astounding signature 'Psychorealism' style of visualising human psychological states. The film was made with the assistance of fifteen animation students from Seneca College in Toronto at C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, Toronto.

The NFB site features the trailer, interviews with the Director, key personnel from C.O.R.E. and the student animators, and there's a fantastic blog by Chris Landreth.

Chris Landreth has been making animated short films since the mid-90s, including The End, Bingo, The Listener, Caustic Sky: APortrait of Regional Acid Deposition and Data Driven: The Story of Franz K. His film Data Driven: The Story of Franz K, made in 1993, is currently showing in our online exhibition Computer Baroque (online until 14 July). Landreth won an Oscar for his film Ryan in 2004, a documentary animation that recounts conversations between Landreth and animator Ryan Larkin, a once highly regarded Canadian animator who had fallen on hard times.

The Spine premieres at Annecy International Animation Festival this week (8-13 June).

Image: Ryan, Chris Landreth

Computer Baroque - now online

We are proud to present Computer Baroque, curated by Richard Wright, online from 14 April to 7 July 2009.

Computer Baroque is a selection of defining works in the history of artists’ digital moving image, featuring computer animation pioneers: Karl Sims, Yoichiro Kawaguchi, William Latham, Beriou, John Tonkin, Chris Landreth, Peter Callas, Simon Biggs, Ruth Lingford, James Duesing, Paul Garrin, Shelley Lake, The Butler Brothers and Jason White & Richard Wright.

And there's a great accompanying essay by Richard Wright that explains his choice of films.

"Artists wanted to push the computer as far as it would go, to create visual transformations that defied previous traditions, to blend image and music and text, to apply scientific ideas as new sources of inspiration. It created a strident kind of image that insisted on the fact of its own realisation, fleeting paeans to the artificial." Richard Wright.

Please feel free to feed back any comments you have about the exhibition here. Thanks.


Image: Heliocentrum, Jason White and Richard Wright

Animation Breakdown: Drawn to Life

The Animation Breakdown Weekend at Tate Modern has now been and gone. If you missed it never fear - the films from the Computer Baroque programme will be on animateprojects.org from mid-April and the Study Day presentations and Q&As will be online soon...

In the meantime, you can read the transcript of the presentation that Belgian curators María Palacios Cruz and Stoffel Debuysere gave at the Study Day, here on Stoffel's blog Diagonal Thoughts. The presentation focused on the Drawn to Life programme that Stoffel and Maria had previously shown at the Maison des Cultures Saint-Gilles, Brussels, in November 2008.

Image: i've got a guy running, Jonathon Kirk

transmediale 09 prize...

We are thrilled to report that Tantalum Memorial, by Graham Harwood, Richard Wright and Matsuko Yokokoji, has deservedly won first prize at this year's transmediale festival in Berlin.

A "telephony-based memorial to the people who have died as a result of the “coltan wars” in the Congo", the installation was shown at the Science Museum in London last year. It is very powerful stuff.

We're also very pleased to be working with Richard on the Computer Baroque programme that we're showing as part of the Animation Breakdown weekend - and it looks likely that we'll be able to present some of the films online too later this year.

Animation Breakdown Weekend at Tate Modern

We are very excited to be working with Tate Modern on a weekend of screenings and discussion that will" explore the relationships between drawing, moving image, and the influence of digital technologies". Though I keep on calling it 'Animate Breakdown', which isn't sending out the right signals at all...

On 21 March, the Animation Breakdown Study Day will kick off with an illustrated talk by Brussels based curators Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacio Cruz. Artist panels will focus on drawing, photographic and digital practice. Confirmed participants include: Simon Faithfull, Ann Course, Dryden Goodwin and Emily Richardson. International artists attending include Joshua Mosley (USA) and Samba Fall (Senegal/Norway). The sessions will be chaired by curator Angela Kingston, Steven Bode (Director, Film and Video Umbrella) and David Chandler (Director, Photoworks).

On Friday 20 and Saturday 21 there are two 'Computer Baroque' screenings, curated by Richard Wright. Short Films on the Friday - a selection of defining works in the history of artists’ digital moving image that represent a period in which computer animation was the focus for the most audacious and exuberant experiments across all areas of new media, art and technology. The programme includes rarely seen works by Karl Sims, William Latham, Paul Garrin, Tamas Waliczky, Ruth Linford, Shelley Lake and James Duesing.

And on Saturday, a rare screening of WAX, or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees (David Blair, USA/Germany, 1991) - one of the earliest examples of how to use inexpensive, digital production methods, including computer animation by the now well-known media theorist Lev Manovich. Blair constructs a long-form, hallucinatory narrative that ties together the first Gulf War, flight simulators, psychic research...and bee keeping. Followed by a Q&A with David Blair.

Booking information and online booking here.

We'll be updating the programme here.

Organised by Animate Projects and Tate Modern in association with the Animation Department at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London and The Drawing Room Gallery. Supported by Arts Council England.


The image is from Time Tear by Sebastian Buerkner.