motion graphics

In the age of internet media.

Rhizome has supported innovation and artistic exploration on the internet for about 13 years. Founded in 1996 as only an email list subscribed to by some of the first online artists, Rhizome created a space for artists working in emerging technologies to exhibit work, critique and define this new media and archive the work which is quite ephemeral as dot com time limits can expire.

Rhizome is a non profit and this month are holding a benefit: Rhizome 2009 Benefit There are still many spaces left on the $50,000 web page. Buy a pixel or a ticket to the event which will include works by innovative artists.

Mission

Rhizome is dedicated to the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology. Through open platforms for exchange and collaboration, our website serves to encourage and expand the communities around these practices. Our programs, many of which happen online, include commissions, exhibitions, events, discussion, archives and portfolios. We support artists working at the furthest reaches of technological experimentation as well as those responding to the broader aesthetic and political implications of new tools and media. Our organizational voice draws attention to artists, their work, their perspectives and the complex interrelationships between technology, art and culture.

Rhizome is located in the New Museum.

the new museum

Super Bowl Ad.

Ahhh, the beautiful and plentiful broadcast time put aside for advertising during the Super Bowl.  This year my absolute fave was the ‘Heist‘ done by Psyop and Weiden + Kennedy Portland. The little tricksters are brilliant in the use of illusion and subtlety! Full list of Credits. The sweet crane shot at the beginning is just perfect for setting up the scene to be somewhere between dream and reality.

butterlies as coca cola

Competition.

From the Crane website.

The Competition:

TheCrane.tv, Discovery Campus and reelisor.com are hosting a film competition for creative talents from all over the world in the categories: Culture, Art&Design, Lifestyle, Fashion, Ideas, Travel and “Green”. We reward creativity and encourage you to offer fresh, insider perspectives into your topic of choice. We would like to feel inspired and enriched by your contribution.

Launch: 18th November 2008 at the International Film School Festival, Munich.
Deadline: 28th February 2009 Films: There are no boundaries to your creativity. The short films can be fiction, non-fiction or animated.
Specifications: Between 1 and 5 minutes long, preferably in English (or subtitled) and all standard file formats
Submissions: Electronically via the upload portal on www.thecrane.tv Here you can also register your email address to receive the latest news on the competition.

The winning films will be selected by our accomplished jury and announced at the international launch of TheCrane.tv in February 2009. The rewards for Laureates include cash, equipment and TV broadcast. All entries will be available for viewing on www.thecrane.tv when the competition is over.

MassMarket Interview.

Justin Cone the editor for Motionographer and a Motion Designer in his own right has done a podcast interview with MassMarket‘s Justin Lane and Chris Staves.  They go on to talk about how the ball got rolling, a bit about the past, about the agency and then go into the nitty gritty of motion design and into working on projects.

Podcast from Motionographer

It’s great hearing about what goes into some of these projects, especially when they make it look so effortless.

N.A.S.A. Spirit of Apollo.

I just found Joyengine, based in Boulder, CO! They seem to have their collective finger on the pulse. They pointed to this work of music and animation by the talented group at N.A.S.A. featuring designs by Shepard Fairey.

N.A.S.A. (Squeak E. Clean & DJ Zegon) assembled an all-star team including Money ft. David Byrne, Chuck D, Ras Congo, Seu Jorge & Z-Trip for this track from their debut album “The Spirit Of Apollo”. The agit-prop video is directed by Syd Garon & Paul Griswold, & features the work of artist Shepard Fairey.

One thing…

that I try to remember is to know what is important, not just to me but others as well.  In Stefan Sagmeisters latest book, Things That I Have Learned So Far In My Life, he reminds us that

“over time we get used to everything and start taking it for granted.”  ~Stefan Sagmeister

He is a master of getting out of the box.  He has recently done a workshop in Europe and one of my favorite designers/ artists, Julien Vallee was in attendence and inspired by him in making “do it without thinking of critics.”  Monsier Vallee also recently had his own showing, Raking Leaves In The Wind at Create Berlin a super inspiring place to be right now I think.

Analog Futurism.

Check out Analog Futurism.  It’s upside down stop motion animation.  WordPress doesn’t embed the vimeo player yet but it’s worth the click.  Max Hattler is a super innovative director/ animator and Jemapur a Japanese musician full of intriguing beats and rhythms.

Directed and produced by Max Hattler
Music: Jemapur
Creative Director: + cruz
Animation: Max Hattler, Noriko Okaku
Assistant Animation: Philip Serfaty, Rodrigo Vives
Commissioned by: W+K Tokyo Lab
Available formats: HD, Beta SP, DVD
Length: 4’45”
Year: 2008

Semiconductor: Nuit Blache

One of the most interesting and far out motion graphics producers out there, SEMICONDUCTOR, just did a large scale exhibit at Nuit Blache Paris.  This years Nuit Blache spotlighted the city’s five major train stations.  Semiconductor played on the limits of perception with a timelapse animation called Brilliant Noise at Gare Saint-Lazare.

A sense for the richness in life.

With the year being so productive and bringing of bountiful colors and nourishment, the time moving towards the darkest days and Halloween, I am reminded of the film/animation called Mirror Mask a rich and imaginative work.  It was done by Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman two artists who I have found can grasp a breathtaking sense of beauty and combine it with the fecundity of our world to create a metaphor or a backdrop to a story of mythical proportions.

Edgar Allan Poe has said, “There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion…” and both of these artists have found the things in our world that are hidden and so often out of proportion to what we see in everyday life, albeit quite darkly.

The art in this film is stunning and I think, quite original.  The writings of Neil Gaiman have always inspired me, his ability to tell stories is amazing.  As he focuses on the words Dave McKean works tirelessly on satisfyingly fantastic images which tell the stories well.

If you are interested in the works of creative and imaginative storytellers this movie will fill you with wonder.  Here is a short to satisfy that craving until you can get the film, it’s an animated version of Shakespear’s Sonnet 138.

Sense of color II.

A super interesting note about the previous post on color and it’s psychological, subjective qualities.

When I was completing the color test a window was directly behind my monitor while I was sitting under florescent lighting looking at the screen.  Natural sunlight is at such a high intensity much higher than bulb lighting and our sense of color perceives that intensity as blue, the lower intensity light, indoor lighting isn’t as bright giving that light a more reddish hue.

I find it interesting that with blue light, higher intensity light, interfering with my perception from behind the monitor, made it harder to see the tiny nuances of difference in the color test at the blue range.  Doing the test again in a controlled lighting environment made the sense keen and I made a perfect score.

A side-note is that because electromagnetic waves are all around us, only a small range of these waves being visible light, there is much more affecting our perception than meets the eye.

EM radiation carries energy and momentum, which may be imparted when it interacts with matter.

Our world is so much more subtle than we are daily able to pay attention to, and it is always in flux.  Color theory is still not pure.  The problem arises because the absorption of light by material substances follows different rules from the perception of light by the eye. A major issue for designers of print is that the printing process requiring ink and a subtractive process gives material substance to a color while our eye perceives the direct wavelengths causing color perception.

Many historical “color theorists” have assumed that three “pure” primary colors can mix all possible colors, and that any failure of specific paints or inks to match this ideal performance is due to the impurity or imperfection of the colorants. In reality, only imaginary “primary colors” used in colorimetry can “mix” or quantify all visible (perceptually possible) colors; but to do this the colors are defined as lying outside the range of visible colors: they cannot be seen. Any three real “primary” colors of light, paint or ink can mix only a limited range of colors, called a gamut, which is always smaller (contains fewer colors) than the full range of colors humans can perceive.

So does an artist, the human element, give a work of art, design, or even a photograph that personal touch just by a different mood, a different lighting scenario….  a perception of color… a sense?  Of course, and the texture of our differences is stunningly beautiful.

Revealing our physical world.

Artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, who have been artists in residence at the NASA Space and Sciences Laboratory are making extraordinary works of visual magnatude.

“Semiconductor make moving image works which reveal our physical world in flux; cities in motion, shifting landscapes and systems in chaos. Since 1999 UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt have worked with digital animation to transcend the constraints of time, scale and natural forces; they explore the world beyond human experience, questioning our very existence.”

Semiconductor holds performances, artshows and screenings all over the world.

They are doing what I dream of doing. Visualizing what is really going on around us and it seems so valuable.  Visual expression is so powerful.

They have been showcased at the Lumen Eclipse. “Magnetic Movie” was shot at the SSL at UC Berkley and won a British Animation Award in 2008.

It’s been dubbed e-ink.

Esquire has implemented motion graphics into their 75th anniversary issue by using e-ink.  The magazine had to make a six-figure investment to hire an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover.  Funny thing is the battery only lasts 90 days, of course it will run out.  E-ink can be used exclusivley by Esquire till the end of 2009 as reported by the New York Times.  Esquire is owned by Hearst-Argyle a large news cooperation so I am seeing potential here.

They should start implementing charging centers around the bus stops and news booths so people can download or charge the battery of their daily news.  However, e-ink is in it’s nascent stages so impractical for mass consumerism.  Hopefully it will be used in a strong enough way that the energy it saves is more than the energy it uses, and for less disposable products.  The cost as reported by the Fast Company could end up being much more than our earth can afford.

Motion graphics are so eye catching.

Communication at light speed.

What our relatively immediate form of communication actually takes.  New advancements in Compressing Light.

The speed of light is a constant used in physical calculations, measured at 299,792,458 meters per second.  The concept of the speed of light blows my mind.  People have learned to contain it and direct it to carry information.  We use it to express our ideas through pixels, we manipulate and store our ideas in light.  Really beautiful when one thinks about it.

“The speed of light can be assigned a definite numerical value because the fundamental SI unit of length, the metre, has been defined since October 21, 1983, as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second; in other words, any increase in the measurement precision of the speed of light would reduce the uncertainty in practical realizations of the metre but would not alter the numerical value of c. The approximate value of 3×108 m/s is commonly used in rough estimates (the error is 0.07%).”

Eric Lerner for Coca Cola.

A character driven animation by Eric Lerner, who has exploded onto the scene after his graduation from Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.  It seems that his graduation project, Mr. City Men, is what got everyone’s attention.  (Here is Mr. Fortune from the series, it’s so cool.  Mr. Dreamer, so imaginative. And Mr. Deja Vu. There are more…)  His camera matching and compositing of the animated character into the scene is pretty nice.

He is with Partizan and under them he directed his first global campaign for Coca-Cola and agency Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, for the Bird’s Nest Stadium built for the Chinese Olympics, Birds Nest Stadium.

Motionographer did and interview with him, Back to Beijing.

Lumen Eclipse.

There is an outdoor venue for motion graphics in Harvard Square.  And there are eight short films displayed each month! Julien Vallee has created a short piece that I especially love (great editing, stop motion animation and sound design!)

“The project exists in three spaces:  Outdoors: on a pair of large outdoor video screens.  The screens incite public interaction with motion-based art by bringing artwork to the street, outside the confines of the gallery walls.  Online: as an artistic and informational community, LumenEclipse.com showcases artwork, interviews, news and events so viewers may learn about the art and artists represented.  Screenings: intimate monthly screenings at local venues facilitate conversation between art, artists and audiences.”

Le:60, a motion graphics/ film festival where the top films from each category will be played in the venue, is on September 27th.  The submission deadline is August 15th.

It’s a fantastic opportunity for exposure.

Radiohead, “House of Cards Video.”

Talk about creativity and innovative ways of expressing the inner scape of imagination.

“Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards” off In Rainbows was shot without cameras and instead used a “Geometrics Informatics Scanning System” that uses structured light to capture the 3D images. The Velodyne Lidar system used 64 lasers spun at 900 revolutions per minute to capture the large environments, actors and Thom York all in 3D.”

In depth by Promo News.  Make your own version.

Oh!  …And a making of.

These guys aren’t afraid of hard work and taking risks for artistic experimentation.

Motion

I have been busy making phone calls, scheduling a shoot that will happen 1667 and then 1767 miles away.  So I haven’t been here for a bit.  And although I am working as a production manager now, my passion still is with art, creative, design and of course motion.

There are a couple of designers/ artists who through sheer creative impulse put out a large body of work, probably by staying up half of the night, inspire me to keep with the meditation and create output (as designiscasual calls it).  Some are already discovered, some are on their way to being discovered.  I will be posting a lot about work that I find inspiring.

One, ANOVA, is a Danish designer, who I found on a blog called Heavy Backpack and saw some time ago on The FWA after his site overhaul.  Anyhow, there is an interview with ANOVA on the Muse website.  He has been using all this software we have found to express his ideas and styles for himself and an impressive roster of clients.  It takes so much hard work to get noticed, he must have spent a lot of alone time at the face of a computer.

It’s obviously worth it.