OPEN SOURCE ANIMATION
for Activism, Education and Civic Organisations
Introductory Video:
Open Source Animation would be my focus during a Visiting Artist residency at Massey – within the three-month period I would expect to achieve at least these three tangible outcomes, in addition to the responsibilities at the University:
- to have automated certain aspects of the customisation process: for example, an activist group could select a new colour palette and submit a text file of translations – this would automatically update project files and render a new animation on my server, which could then be downloaded and combined with new audio.
- to have created another short prototype animation (if possible, together with students) and adapted it to multiple contexts.
- to have written a series of weekly blog posts on my progress
In addition, I would also like to experiment with other animation methods:
- using code in place of a graphic vector animation program to increase the modularity and flexibility of the process.
- co-creating 2-dimensional stop-motion animations in a tactile, low-tech workshop in order to rapidly sketch out ideas with less-experienced-animators. I would be interested in building further upon a workshop I ran last year (Arts & Commons), giving participants tangible experience of artistic peer-production without using any digital technology.
I would like to gather feedback from students and staff on the process of trying to adapt an open source animation – in order to identify some of the main barriers and challenges in order to improve the process for contributors.
Previous Work in Film & Video:
PROTOTYPE FUND
Prototype Fund is a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, together with the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Individuals and small teams receive a grant to test and develop open source tools and applications in the fields of civic tech, data literacy, data security and others.
The Prototype Fund team support the candidates in their application process, keeping things as unbureaucratic as possible and adjusting it to the needs of software developers, hackers and creatives. In short: the Prototype Fund brings iterative software development and government innovation funding together.
In the next three years about 40 projects will be funded. In total, the BMBF will grant 1.2 million euros in support of these projects.
I concepted and animated this teaser video, and created a graphics & edit template for the team to use on interview videos. The video, music track and all project files are available for download and reuse on Gitlab.
POC21
I took part in the 5-week open source innovation camp, POC21 (“Proof of Concept”) in Chateau de Millemont near Paris, making weekly videos as we prototyped open source solutions to help mitigate and adapt to climate change. After the camp I turned the mountain of footage into a 60-min documentary, which you can watch or download here:
Documentary premiere at Babylon Berlin.
HUIA (EXQUISITE CORPSE)
Public Domain Remix for the Day of Remembrance for Lost Species
‘Huia (exquisite corpse)’ deals with cultural memory, and builds on two existing interpretations of the huia – which was one of three native New Zealand wattlebirds. The huia was driven to extinction before photography was prevalent, and before audio recordings could be made of its song. (The last confirmed sighting was in 1907.) More information on the backstory to this weird audio, the original illustration (drawn in London from stuffed specimens) and the sad destruction of the huia can be found here.