On cities, mapping, psychogeography and the experience of places.

defining works in the history of digital moving image – an online exhibition curated by Richard Wright

until 14 July 2009
http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_project/computer_baroque/baroque

Computer Baroque is an exhibition of films by pioneers of computer animation: 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.

Rarely seen, they represent a period – the late 1980s and early 1990s – in which computer animation was the focus for the most audacious and exuberant experiments across all areas of new media, art and technology. The films range from earlier works by Karl Sims and William Latham influenced by scientific ideas to the more ironic and satirical works by Shelley Lake and the Butler Brothers.

Films are accompanied by programme notes and an essay by curator Richard Wright.

“Why characterise this period as ‘Baroque’? I think it was the sense that by the late 1980s we had reached a stage where the power of computers could finally be harnessed by more than a handful of insiders. 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. Yet equally present was a nagging anxiety, that this artifice heralded a world of totalizing control, paranoia and catastrophe”.

Richard Wright

Just came back from Birmingham where I attended the closing days of Flatpack, a 10-day event put together by old pals 7 Inch cinema, now (already!) in its third edition. It’s good to remember that 7 Inch started life as a “family business”, running DIY monthly film nights at the Rainbow pub in Digbeth back in 2003 (I still have the very first flyers!), and it seems that they’ve kept going that way without selling their soul.

Eclectism and spontaneity is the name of the game in this quirky little festival; The clash of retro-modern graphics with victorian-punk aesthetics is spot-on, thanks to the visual craft of Gas. Many of the events were free and casual, reinforcing its vocation as an antidote to mainstream/commercial media, offering a mind-opening and enlightning glimpse into independent/amateur film-making and unearthing what the experience of early cinema must have been like before Hollywood and multiplexes came along – or possibly pointing at what moving-image might become as a democratised and participatory art-form for the future?

The programme successfully negociated its way around an array of strands pulling together the weird, the experimental, the kitsch or the serious, a bit like if Onedotzero, Aurora, Raindance and the London Short Film Festival had collided together, consequently attracting a well mixed audience. Overall, the greatest thing about the festival was the shameless balance between old and new, together with an uncompromised and resourceful emphasis on homegrown stuff. This reconcilation of past, present and future is refreshing – something that can’t be said about the plans for the new central library in Birmingham – more on this later!)

Highlights included a presentation and film programme compiled by Berlin-based animator David O’Reilly, and a panel discussion and screenings on the work of Birmingham-born architect John Madin.

http://www.flatpackfestival.org

http://www.7inch.org.uk

Cette carte de France à la toponymie fantaisiste n’est autre que l’illustration du LP de Ich Bin, “Obéis!”, sorti chez Poutre Apparente.

La représentation d’un territoire parsemé de symboles militaires ferait penser à une carte d’état-major, si les noms de sa géographie n’étaient pas humoristiquement travestis en noms imaginaires, tels Mulhouse qui trone en tant que capitale, ou le mont Jacques Chirac qui domine les Ardennes.

Plus d’infos, tracklist et bios sont disponibles sur le site de Poutre Apparente.