APEngine launched at onedotzero‘s Adventures in Motion September 2009 and was Media Partner to AURORA 2009 in November. It was produced by Animate Projects – a UK-based, not-for-profit arts organisation, developing initiatives that explore the relationship between art and animation, and the place of animation and its concepts in contemporary art practice for exhibition in the gallery, cinema and online.

The project and online platform has been a huge success in accomplishing its initial aims. It has been home to some fantastic discussions on a range of topics around the animation and moving image sector. With over 500 posts in its 17 month duration, highlights include The Truth of Illusion – A critical insight into animation documentary and theory by Samantha Moore, A structure for Possible films by Ajay RS Hothi and Army of YouTube Rosemany Heather. APEngine received a steady 2,500 visitors per month and reached up to 6,000 visitors on particular months within its duration.

APEngine has been the platform for interesting conversation and engagement, highlighting posts include George Clark talks to Anjalika The Otolith Group and interviews with David Jacques and Kiron Hussain.

Further writers for APEngine have included the likes of Adam Pugh, Tim Shore, Edwin Rostron and John A Riley.

APEngine was the platform for the outcome films of the project Rough Machines an Animate Projects commission from open proposals for animators to produce new work. All films premiered on APEngine in November 2010 with great reception. The films have gone on to be included in offline exhibitions, festivals and biennials and are also available through iTunes.

APEngine as an online resource has also provided updates of relevant news, reviews, exhibition openings and opportunities around the area of animation and moving image.

All feature posts can be downloaded as a pdf and Animate Projects is proud to keep APEngine live online for use as an archive website.

Animate Projects would like to thank all writers, interviewees, artists and readers for producing content and engaging within this to create an interesting community around the sector of moving image and animation through the online journal of APEngine.

APEngine was supported by the UK Film Council’s Publications Fund.

Image: Digitalis, Sebastian Buerkner

Animate Projects, with support from the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, is pleased to announce a call for proposals for animated works that – in a broad sense – explore, question, subvert or confound our expectations of art and the ‘digital’.

We are looking to commission four works, at a budget of £2000 each, including artist’s fee. The commissions are available to UK-based artists, animators and filmmakers who can craft an inventive and engagingly provocative work.

The Digitalis Commissions are a part of Digitalis, a strand of activities for 2011 that focus on the potential of the digital space as a site for artistic production.

More information on the Digitalis Commissions can be found here.

Guidelines and submission form can be downloaded here.

Deadline for submissions: 4pm, 24 August.

Animate OPEN Digitalis is for complete works by UK-based artists, animators and filmmakers, produced since January 2009. We are looking for works that – in a broad sense – explore, question, subvert or confound our expectations of art and the ‘digital’. Or which might be ‘anti’ the digital, emphasising the handmade, physically crafted.
A Jury will select up to ten films for exhibition and there will be two cash prizes – one awarded by the Jury (£1000), and an Audience Prize (£300), open to a public vote. Each artist included in the exhibition will be paid a £100 fee.

Entry to Animate OPEN: Digitalis is free.

Guidelines and how to submit.

Image: Digitalis © Sebastian Buerkner

Animate OPEN: Digitalis

A fresh open for experiments in animation

Animate Projects – the champion of experimental animation – announces a call for its first online exhibition to be selected from an open submission.

The Animate OPEN is part of Digitalis, a strand of activities throughout 2011 that sets out to explore, question, subvert or confound our expectations of art and the ‘digital’. And that includes ‘anti-digital’ – handmade, physically crafted animation.

Call for submissions deadline: 20 June 2011

Exhibition online: from July 2011

Jury Prize: £1000

Audience Prize: £300

Guidelines

Entry: free of charge

For the Animate OPEN, Animate Projects is looking for experimental works by UK based artists, animators and filmmakers. The selected films will be presented online at animateprojects.org, from July 2011, accompanied by interviews with the artists. The films will also be featured in the Digitalis publication and at Digitalis events later in the year. Gary Thomas, Director of Animate Projects says: “We hope that the inaugural Animate OPEN will prove to be a platform bursting with experiment, to inspire and provoke discussions around creativity and the digital. And we are looking forward to discovering some awe inspiring stuff.”

The Animate OPEN Jury will select up to ten films for exhibition and there will be  two cash prizes – one awarded by the Jury (£1000), and an Audience prize (£300) voted for by visitors to the exhibition.

The Jury members are Francesca Gavin, writer, curator and Visual Arts Editor at Dazed & Confused; Rebecca Shatwell, Director, AV Festival; Gary Thomas, Director, Animate Projects; and artist and music video director, David Wilson.

The Animate OPEN is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Submission guidelines

Deadline for submissions: 10am, Monday 20 June 2011

The Animate OPEN exhibition will be online from July at animateprojects.org.

If you have any other enquiries please email digitalis@animateprojects.org

Animate OPEN: Digitalis press release

Rabbit Hole (2010) Dir: John Cameron Mitchell

Chapter Arts Centre is forty years old this year and to celebrate that fact Outcasting and Chapter Cinema have joined forces to screen experimental moving image work from around the globe amongst the main programme of the best of World Cinema, film classics and a sprinkling of Hollywood fayre. Selected films will be screened before the main feature. The programme aims to offer the wider public a taste of experimental film in the intimacy of a cinema setting.

This April the work of Anthony Shapland (The Life of Raymond C. Cook (Title Sequence) screened with The Wasteland), Huw Andrews (Kezar screened with True Grit) and Erica Scourti (Trailer Truths III screened with Never Let Me Go) will be shown.

For  times of screenings and booking details visit Chapter Cinema.

Visit Outcasting for more information about this and other projects.

Film Still: Malcolm Le Grice, Castle 1 (1966)

THE MAB FILM EXERCISE is a monthly programme of screenings and discussion that explores the social or political timeliness in curatorial approaches to artists’ film and video, as well as the diverse potential in approaches to the form. It began in December 2009. Each month guest curators working nationally to present are invited to discuss a programme, presenting a forum for peer-led reflection, education and critique in the South West.

THE MAB FILM EXERCISE has sought to address both the diverse potential for artists’ film as a form and a sense of the current urgency, social or political timeliness in the work of both curator and artist.

The next season of THE FILM EXERCISE begins on 13 April with an afternoon workshop for artists and curators at Spike Island with Benjamin Cook, founder director of LUX. Their will also be a screening of The Auratic Film at Arnolfini in the evening. To subscribe  costs £12 for the season of three events. The project is produced and presented by Bridget Crone with Arnolfini.

For more information you can visit the Arnolfini website.

Further information and film notes about past FILM EXERCISES can be seen here.

Film and Video Umbrella have announced a series of new online artworks. The first of these is Babel Fiche, a fantastic collaborative film project by Dave Griffiths.

For this collaborative film project, Griffiths invites members of the public to gather and select a set of user generated video clips that describe contemporary existence. These will be transformed into a set of colour microfiche films, creating an imaginary media for the anthropologists of the future.

Utilising online filmmaking platforms, Griffiths surrenders authorial control in favour of a crowd-sourced, democratically produced artwork. Members of the online film community will write and direct a series of animated shorts using the microfiche as a resource.

In Babel Fiche, process and discussion are given precedence over end product. The final results of this endeavour are as yet unknown; viewers and collaborators are invited to follow the progress of the project as it develops and changes.

Babel Fiche is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, with support from North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University. You can see this work online at Babel Fiche and you can visit FIlm and Video Umbrella for more information on their web commission series.

A still image from film 'Weak Rot Front' by Victor Alimpiev

Regina Gallery will next month be the host to the first solo exhibition of Russian video artist Victor Alimpiev.

The exhibition entitled Several, juxtaposes Alimpiev’s practice as a multifaceted artist – painter, choreographer, filmmaker – exploring the artist’s poetic visual language and his interest in interhuman relationships.

Alimpiev’s video works are reminiscent of twentieth century avant-garde theatre with its expressive gestures and diluted language. Thoroughly choreographed but lacking any obvious narrative plot the characters oscillate between a state of fragile human and graceful alien, uncomfortable individual and intimate collective. It is the exploration of this liminal space, within which the distinction between single and collective entity is blurred and becomes meaningless, that forms the nucleus of Alimpiev’s work.

One of Alimpiev latest films, Weak Rot Front (2010) portrays the tension and energy released from human interaction, both corporeal and spiritual. Alimpiev’s collectivism is not one which suppresses individual freedom and expression, but empowers the group through the intensity of the performers. The sculptural vigour adopted by the men and women on the screen is potent. Yet the graceful gestures are void of menace or aggression, in a sense ‘weak’ as the title suggests, but not powerless. They convey an emotive ‘sense belonging and brotherhood’ which devolves to the viewer but never quite encompasses him.

Victor Alimpiev’s work has enjoyed both national and international recognition with solo shows at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum for Actuele Kunst in Gent, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the BFI London Film Festival.

The private view for the exhibition will take place on Thursday 31 March from 6-8PM.

The exhibition runs at Regina gallery from 1st April until 21 May.

Make it New John by Duncan Campbell

Flatpack Festival consists of five days of cinematic wonders in various venues spread across Birmingham city. From mobile cinema to bunker installations and shadow shows, this years programme of events looks even greater than previous years.

This years programme sees Animate Projects and Flatpack Festival present a screening of experimental film Make It New John, followed by artist Duncan Campbell in conversation with curator Anna Douglas. Best known for its starring role in Back to the Future, the DeLorean DMC-12 is an enduring symbol of brash 80s optimism. Its designer John DeLorean had risen through the ranks at General Motors, and when he left to set up his own company he persuaded the British government to help bankroll a new factory on the outskirts of Belfast with a promise to bring prosperity and unity to the area. It all turned out very differently. In a story which rings plenty of contemporary bells, Make It New John stirs together 50s surf tunes, 80s news reports and scripted reconstructions to explore the mechanics of selling a dream. Make it New John and Duncan Campbell will be at Ikon East from 15:00 – 16:50 Sat 26th March.

Other events APEngine highlights of Flatpack Festival are:

Pixel Visions at Ikon Eastside. Including artists’ John Whitney whose early films were made using a modified analog computer, originally used to control anti-aircraft guns in the war, then at IBM he worked by directly filming his computer console. Lillian Schwartz whose work can be more chaotic, notably the mixed-media meltdown of Pixillation (1971), while Larry Cuba achieves ethereal effects by synchronising dots of light with a Japanese flute in 3/78 (1978) and Allures (1961) by Jordan Belson. This is followed by a half-hour performance from Scree, an experimental audio-visual project investigating the properties of feedback loops and chaotic systems.

Mind Bombs at The Electric. Morphing, pulsating psychedelia seems to be back in a big way. Young animators have picked up the gauntlet from Bruce Bickford (see Flatpack 4) and Pink Floyd visuals, and carefully melted that gauntlet with various 21^st century tools. Highlights include the award-winning Love and Theft (dir: Andreas Hykade), Anthony Francisco Schepperd’s amazing Blockhead promo and Umbra, a sci-fi parable from the prolific Malcolm Sutherland. Also nestling within Minds Bombs is a mini-retrospective for Mirai Mizue, whose dazzlingly detailed frame-filling ‘cell animation’ needs to be seen on the big screen. Includes a world premiere for his new short Tatamp.

To keep up to date with Flatpack’s news and festival recommendations visit their blog.

The festival runs from 23-27 March.

Boken Stillness - Folkstone

APEngine recommends Broken Stillness at Salisbury Arts Centre. An exhibition curated by Helen Sloan, Director of SCAN which includes innovative artists such as boredomresearch, Susan Collins, Sigune Hamman, Peter Hardie, Tim Head and Susan Sloan.

Broken Stillness comprises subtle, beautiful and hypnotic work which uses digital practices to examine the border where well-established forms of image-making, especially painting and photography, meet the possibilities offered by new technologies. Through animation, motion capture, modelling software and other processes the artists generate unexpected interpretations of the landscape tradition. Slowly moving and shifting, their works reveal the constructed nature of images, highlighting our expectations about both static pictures and the hyper-speed of the digital environment. The exhibited works display the materiality of the digital or photographic image while challenging images that are frequently regarded as ‘true’ representations.

Tim Head presents recent works which explore the alterior life of the pixel, randomly generated from his bespoke programmes to create ever-changing colour fields; whilst Susan Sloan’s animated ‘portraits’ use the myriad moments usually discarded by the games or cgi designer that now remain as unrealised potential through digital code. Also on display will be Sigune Hamann’s new frieze-format photographic print captured at the London student fees protests in November 2010.

Peter Hardie uses scientific modelling programmes to conjure the sight and sensation of light playing on water, leaves floating downstream while boredomresearch’s works are more like fantastic aquaria, their digital life forms responding to the viewer but pursuing their own decisions, making the viewer a ghostly presence on the periphery of their parallel world.

The exhibition opens on the 10 March and runs until 21 April at the Salisbury Art Centre.