Animation

The Bats details the mating habits of flying mammals in an abandoned Mayan temple in the 14th Century.

This title is only available on Soft Science.

Shot in a creaky, wooden floored Parisian recording studio at an inaugural three-day “forum of ideas” focusing on the manifold possibilities of Resistance (the title of Jean-François Lyotard’s unrealized follow-up exhibition to his 1983 Les Immateriaux), occasional collaborators Ben Rivers and Ben Russell have produced what initially appears to be a structuralist document of a philosophical discussion in-the-round. This “appearance dimension” is deceptive, of course, and with the aid of an immersive 5.1 sound-mix, a Green Man, a Green-Man-shaped

Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure is a fourteen-minute experimental video that unfolds through a series of short episodes. "To describe Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke's new video as ironic doesn't do it justice.

Hatsune Miku is a co-creation platform, personified by a cute and oddly seductive animated character. Fans bring her to life by creating content that she “delivers”. Her entire persona: lyrics, music and animation – is fan created, and that's her charm. Cosplaying Hatsune Miku, Ann Oren goes to Tokyo for a performative journey among these fans and explores the Miku phenomenon as an expression of collective fantasy. The habits of Miku's fans is a familiar exaggeration of our social media habits, that flood us with crowd creativity.

BE CAREFUL KYLE was produced over a few days shortly before Jacob Ciocci and Kent Lambert discussed their work with Scott Wolniak in a webinar for the University of Chicago's Local Produce series. Jacob sent some clips to Kent, who roughed out a basic structure and added an improvised guitar score. Jacob finished the piece off with some motion graphics and image processing magic. The video owes its tone to the general dread and paranoia of the early pandemic lockdown, and to the consolatory pleasure of first-time collaboration.

In the next chapter of Bobby Abate’s mysterious lo-fi cyborg tale, we find ourselves roaming the set of a 1960’s evening newscast. The mysterious unearthly being has claimed a new test subject and is making use of the station’s control room in attempt to communicate and perhaps reunite with his unshaven counterpart. Zenith is a celestial space, high above the clouds, where lonely frequencies and frantic spirographs pulse the dimension that separates the real from the rendered, the now from nostalgia--and ultimately divides these two beings (alter egos or lovers?)

Based on Emanuel Admassu's essay Menged Merkato, an architectural analysis and historical journey of the largest open-air market in Africa, located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Merkato was developed during the Italian occupation of Addis Ababa to segregate the markets of the locals and the newcomers. Unlike the earlier circular formation which centered the royal palace, Merkato was built on a grid which allowed for a dispersed flow facilitating dynamic interactions and exchanges.

In this piece I am exploring the idea of belonging by tracing the outline of the shifting skyline. Through imagination, learning, and a continuous adjustment, I strive to relate the communal with personal identity.

— Ezra Wube

This title is also availble on Ezra Wube Videoworks: Volume 1

In i am wise enough to die things go (2023), Syms explores the idea of psychosis through an unnamed protagonist reciting a monologue. Responding to the work of iconic animator Chuck Jones, Syms transfers the form and narrative structure of an animated short into live-action. Working with the inherent challenges and restrictions brought about by this sort of translation, she delves into both the breaking up of images and the breakdown of the psyche.

La Mesa explores the intersections of memory, identity and queer desire. It recreates fragmented and romanticized stories of a childhood in rural Mexico as told by the artist’s father. These disjointed vignettes are interwoven with queered reenactments of scenes from popular culture. The artist casts himself in the old Mexican films and American Westerns he grew up watching with his family in California. He appears as the romantic lead opposite the male actors, including Pedro Infante, Mexican national hero and the filmmaker’s childhood crush.

Re-Animation 3,4, & 2 are short animations created by looping images of dead insects taken from the artist’s own amateur entomological collections. Each frame of video within a loop is an image of a separate insect in its own distinct contortion. The variety of contortions, coupled with the similarity between insects of the same species, creates the stop motion movement of an individual insect in the final video.

"Here is Everything presents itself as a message from The Future, as narrated by a cat and a rabbit, spirit guides who explain that they've decided to speak to us via a contemporary art video because they understand this to be our highest form of communication. Their cheeky introduction, however, belies the complex set of ideas that fill the remainder of the film. Death, God, and attaining and maintaining a state of Grace are among the thematic strokes winding their way through the piece, rapturously illustrated with animation, still and video imagery." 

Using the Islington Gazette and local pigeons as my guides I strolled, re-strolled, and strolled some more along the Essex Road: updown, downup. Paving stones, buses. Railings railings railings. More buses. Abandoned dummies and mystery blotching on the concrete – is that gum or lichen? – as shadows sundial the day away.

A combination of live action, stop motion and table top animation – my contribution to Essex Road IV draws on the glee of motion through cinematic artifice: a 25 fps flick book of a film.

This classical animation explores personal memory, associations and atmosphere.

"I remember from the other room I could hear you violently buttering bread. I secretly hoped that I could be your next victim."

"Barry Doupé's lusty A Boy on a Dock Blowing His Nose features vaguely articulated, quasi-human doodles and Spirographs animated within a bizarre netherworld of its own humid imagination."

--Images Festival, 2005 catalog

If asked to say what this work is about in one word, the answer — which is woven into the electronic musique concrète soundtrack — would be a Joycean one: it’s a “collideorscape.” The imagery is a return to materials Rankus dealt with as a young man in the video Naked Doom (1983). He has recycled imagery such as cages, a toy robot, and brain convolutions; newer motifs include a winged ballerina, Victorian corsets, and alchemical vessels containing birds.

Shot in a creaky, wooden floored Parisian recording studio at an inaugural three-day “forum of ideas” focusing on the manifold possibilities of Resistance (the title of Jean-François Lyotard’s unrealized follow-up exhibition to his 1983 Les Immateriaux), occasional collaborators Ben Rivers and Ben Russell have produced what initially appears to be a structuralist document of a philosophical discussion in-the-round. This “appearance dimension” is deceptive, of course, and with the aid of an immersive 5.1 sound-mix, a Green Man, a Green-Man-shaped

Prophecies of doom, disaster and political catastrophe envisioned by some of the world’s most famous psychics between the 1960’s and the year 2001 are conjured up through 3D-animation, industrial films, text and historical footage -- the sum of which combine to form a visually stunning meditation on the forces that are driving us into a dark, paranoid and uncertain future. Soothsayer reconsiders yesterday’s daunting and sometimes whimsical predictions for the future after they’ve been outpaced by time. 

The expansive cycles of time vs. the ever smaller circles of life under lockdown. Includes: a journey to the river, some rat facts, more adverts, anagrams, and a noticeable build up of ideas.

Third video in The Variations cycle.

"Presented in seven parts, Beauty Plus Pity considers the potential for goodness amidst the troubled relations between God, humanity, animals, parents and children... (it) contemplates the shame and beauty of existence; it is part apologia, part call to arms."

— Duke & Battersby

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

Walt Disney's re-imagineering of Martin Scorsese's classic film Taxi Driver follows Mickey Mouse-obsessed Travis Bickle as he looks for love in a rapidly transforming New York City. A 'fair use' parody by Bryan Boyce.

"A brilliant video essay."

-- Roger Ebert

A journey through home life where hope hangs by a tangle of fine and fragile threads.
A document of insecurity coming to rest on distinctly shaky ground.
An 8 minute video in which few answers are supplied, but much meaning is gathered along the way.

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries. All action takes place around NASA's Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries. Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent 'whistlers' produced by fleeting electrons. Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?

In Stitch, computer graphics are altered with image processing effects. Beeps and electronic music provide a soundtrack as abstract structures and evolving shapes and patterns rotate in space. About halfway through the video, the music takes on a jazz and blues quality and at the end, Tom Defanti, a collaborator of Phil Morton’s, introduces an event with thanks to the artists and other people who made it possible.

A buoyant character struggles with hazards in a cloudy gray environment in this animation inspired by the Dylan Thomas poem Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed. The look of the entire animation is shades of gray.

Fragments of Motion Capture data from two dancers were used to drive physical simulations of cloth, smoke, particles and fluids along with geometry for all the 4 “characters.”

Dancers: Michael Walsh and Maribeth Maxa

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances" wrote Oscar Wilde. Lay Bare is a composite portrait of the human body, revealing it as it is only rarely seen in the most intimate relationships we have with our family or our lovers -- erotic and comic, beautiful and vulnerable.

Music, sound design and mixed by Andy Cowton

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.