The Blue Plate– Daniel Pillis (Blacksburg, VA, USA)
An animated and interactive experience about the history of computer graphics, virtual humans, and the digital era. This version of the animation is a looping capture of an interactive leap motion controlled environment composed of historical looping computer generated animations. The main character, a A Computer Generated Hand, was the first 3D model and animation made by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation. The hand travels through a Youtube playlist (https://www.youtube.com/user/VintageCG) downloaded and reconstructed as an interactive environment. 120+ extracted and looping historical animations. The title takes its name from an object in E.M. Forester’s short story “The Machine Stops” written in 1909, telling of a future world where humans live underground and only communicate through a “blue plate”, a tablet type screen that lets you talk to people in distant places.
Daniel Gene Pillis is a queer artist and media archaeologist who works with robotics, computer graphics and large scale installations. They make work about the technology of reality, investigating the phenomenology of computing, the metaphysics of mixed reality, and the contemporary nature of the human experience through a queer, technologically informed lens. Thinking about gender and robots, empathy and virtual reality, and the affective dimensions of artificial intelligence, they investigate the ontological status of objects, images, and data as they relate to time, identity, culture and community. They are a co-founder of Robot Museum, a virtual reality robotics environment and pop up exhibition program for “robotics as art” based in Pittsburgh, PA. Pillis hold a B.A. degree from Rutgers in Cognitive Science and English Literature, and an M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University, where they worked under the supervision of Ivan E. Sutherland, considered the father of computer graphics and virtual reality. Pillis has exhibited work at the Warhol Museum, (Pittsburgh, PA) the Leslie Lohman Museum of LGBT Art, (NYC), Newark Penn Station, (Newark, NJ) and have performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, (Cleveland, OH), Open Engagement International Conference (Pittsburgh PA) and the Theatre for the New City in the East Village (NYC), as well as numerous other galleries and internet venues.
Koala at a rebellious age-Mikio Saito (Sapporo, Japan)
In this video work, we can see 3DCG animated koala, which has an expressionless eye and we can’t tell what he is thinking – and the nails are sharp and ferocious. It looks as though human being zips inside. He notices that we observe him thorough a lens, and suddenly changes his tune unexpectedly in an attitude of threatening.
Mikio Saito (born in 1978) is a Sapporo-based visual artist with a background in literature and cinematography. He studied literature and art history at the University of Waseda in Tokyo, Japan (graduated in 2000) and studied Fine arts at Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany (graduated in 2007) and holds Master of Fine Arts by Prof. Mark Leckey.
Mikio works mostly with video installation. He combines hand-drawn animation, photographed images and computer graphics, all in a highly individual way. “My interest in making art is to explore some common/similar ideas in different cultures. Local ideas are often related to a certain part of universal at the same time. I’d like to highlight the contrast of little difference and commonness between different traditions.”
Fahrenheit 4.33 – Fred L’Epee (Switzerland)
Contemporary mythology as the representation of a catharsis. A thousand variations from human vacuum. Translated by the definition of our identities which became amorphous. Stasis. The alteration of our psyche. Vertigo. An existential schism. The Labyrinth built by Daedalus. Death is not an end in itself. Perhaps an inertia. Without reproduction. Neither transposition.
Fred L’Epee is filmmaker and visual artist. His films and visual works has been shown in several international film festivals, cinemas, symposiums, juried screenings, numerous solo/group exhibitions. He’s working and living between Switzerland, Greece and France. Founder of Helicon Films with co-producers: Ed Alvarado and Jean-Baptiste Lozac’h. Indie Film Label of Cinematography and Sound design.
