post-digital aesthetic

Expanded Animation in Linz

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Expanded Animation V:

Daydreams and Nightmares: Amalgams of Technology and Aesthetics in Animation

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A fascinating symposium on September 8th – 9th 2017 that looks at hybrid technologies and collapsing boundaries in digital animation will take place at the Central Linz in Austria as part of the Ars Electronica Festival.

Organised by Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, the Ars Electronica Festival and Central Linz.

For more details about the event and the speakers: http://www.expandedanimation.com.

 

 

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Terry Gilliam’s paper cut-out animation

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Let’s not forget the hand-made. In the olden days, back then before computers…. people made animation by hand.

Terry Gilliam describes how he achieved the raw dynamism and anarchic humour of his paper cut-out animations for Monty Python. From Bob Godfrey’s brilliant ‘Do It Yourself Animation Show‘, 1974.

Here’s some of Gilliam’s work in action for Monty Python:

Questions to ponder: does our work actually benefit from technical perfection? Or is there something that gets lost – some form of energy or dynamism – when we spend too much time getting it just right?

Seeing Gilliam’s use of real hands in combination with paper cut-outs reminds me of this fantastic car commercial that uses many, many hands. The initial simplicity of ‘What Hands Can Do‘ reminds us of the hand-made and takes us back to what the very first images projected through shadows may have looked like and then it builds to an extraordinary complexity. This commercial is a perfect example of a post-digital aesthetic – seamlessly combining the hand-made with the digital, using the best of both worlds.