Masterpiece 2.0 is a social media art project by Baschz and Selfcontrolfreak and the first ever unique painting made with a Web 2.0 approach. In the summer and fall of 2009 a multilayered canvas and animation was created which could be influenced and followed by website visitors online 24 hours a day.
Six weeks long and through actions like Introduce Object, Shirt ‘Em and Cameo Appearance website visitors could interact with leading character Selfcontrolfreak. Each sent in gesture added a new animated interaction as they were painted layer-by-layer into the growing animating canvas by Baschz. Every new layer was photographed seperately and together with the other frames created the stop motion animating canvas, leaving the end canvas consisting of well over 100 different painted layers.

http://masterpiece20.com

Artificial Paradise, Inc., by Jean Paul Frenay, is an experimental film anticipating a future where a major corporation has developed an unique software, based on organic virtual reality, which holds all the lost memories of humankind. A user connects to this database of the forgotten…what is he searching for?

http://www.frenayjp.be

This film, named Vol Libre, was presented by Loren Carpenter at the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in 1980. It is the world’s first fractal movie and utilizes 8-10 different fractal generating algorithms. After that presentation, the author was hired by Lucasfilms and used an antialiased version of the same software to create the fractal planet in the Genesis Sequence of Star Trek 2, the Wrath of Khan.

Longer article at kottke.org
Loren Carpenter on Wikipedia

Computer Baroque is an online exhibition, curated by Richard Wright and hosted by Animate Projects. The show includes a selection of defining works in the history of artists’ digital moving image (featuring 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). Rarely seen, they represent a period – the eighties and early nineties – in which computer animation was the focus for the most audacious and exuberant experiments across all areas of new media, art and technology.

Why characterise this period as ‘Baroque’? I think it was the sense that by the late 1980s we had at last reached a stage where more than just a handful of insiders were able to harness the power of computers. 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 was an illusion that disguised totalizing control, paranoia and catastrophe. (Richard Wright)

http://www.animateprojects.org

Please Say Something is a brand new short film by David O’Reilly. According to the artist’s own words: “it’s a very simple story about a relationship that’s hard to resolve. Underneath that I wanted to prove you could produce emotion and authenticity with something blatantly artificial and unrealistic. You can even do it without facial expressions.” Please Say Something won the Golden Bear for best short film at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival.

http://www.davidoreilly.com
http://www.boingboing.net (Interview on Boing Boing)

A futuristic designer (code name: Z) infiltrates the mega-design corporation headed by Commander C. Z battles the designer drone army in a no-holds barred action thrill ride, packed with explosions, decapitations, and martial arts mayhem.

http://cmdz.tv

Great success in terms of participation has been obtained by the Videoart section and by the more traditional Movies section. But a real multitude of videos has been gained by the Music category: musicians, singers, bands from all over the world (from Singapore to USA, from Germany to Czech Republic ÷) sent us their videos to promote them through this event. And this also thanks to the partnership with Sonicbids, web network dedicated to music that promotes events, contest and activities to his vast and heterogeneous community of artists and professionals operating in music production.
Once again in this second edition the web audience will pick the most beautiful video through the voting electronic form present in every artist page in which it will be possible to find also the biography, e-mail address, synopsis and images.
In the meanwhile the technical Jury – almost completely formed, of which we’ll be given communication in the next few weeks – will vote and select the winner in each discipline in the contest. In October, thanks to the close collaboration with Ultra Promotion (entertainment service agency managed by Elisabetta Galletta) and to the keen availability of the management of Mercafir – Mercato Alimentare Polivalente of the city of Florence, two events of great proportion will be held in Florence and Milan to show live the videos winner of this edition. Dates and places will be communicated soon.
www.digifestival.net

[ITALIAN BELOW]

1st Ave Machine è uno studio di produzione video con sede a New York specializzato in grafica tridimensionale. Ciò che rende le loro realizzazioni davvero uniche è un’efficace mix di realtà e immaginazione. Per rendere la linea di separazione tra natura e artificio il più indistinta possibile.
Fondata da Arvind Palep e Serge Patzak, rispettivamente regista e produttore, la 1st Ave Machine realizza cortometraggi, videoclip e spot pubblicitari. Nonostante la diversità di intenti e tematiche, un filo conduttore ben riconoscibile lega tutti i lavori. Attraverso la fusione di riprese tradizionali e una raffinata postproduzione tridimensionale, il team riesce a dar vita ad effetti straordinariamente affascinanti. Dai robot che vivono nello spazio urbano alle forme vegetali aliene, le visioni di 1st Ave Machine parlano di un presente tecnorganico e immaginano un futuro (non troppo lontano) in cui la sempre più sottile linea di confine tra naturale e artificiale sarà indistinguibile.

www.fallen-art.com

(francesca de nicolò)

www.venusia.org

Animotion
AnimaRtion
La recensione di Animotion su Exibart

(raffaella albamonte siciliano)

http://www.hoogerbrugge.com