Linear, Dryden Goodwin

Londoners traveling from Southwark and London Bridge tube stations may well be familiar with the images above. As part of TfL’s Art on the Underground initiative artist Dryden Goodwin has been commissioned to draw sixty portraits of individuals working in various roles on the Jubilee line.

Rendered in multiple layers of delicate pencil strokes and scribbles, the blown-up portraits are presented outside the stations on big billboards and on poster sites across the underground network. For a real sense of the project however, you are encouraged to go online where the intimate portraits come alive. Each image is presented as a short animated film that documents the accelerated progression of the drawings, accompanied by fragments of conversation between the artist and sitter that reveal a multitude of personal exchanges and stories. Together the animations and dialogues form an intimate and diverse social portrait of this community of workers.

Linear will be online until February 2011.

Animade

Created by the talented Tom Judd, Animade is a blog collecting quality animation from a broad range of styles and practices, both new and old. ‘He is joined by a number of other contributors in an effort to uproot the gems of animation from across the interweb and replant them in a simple, searchable site.’ The site offers a simple, no fuss format for sharing their latest finds providing around three new posts a day. A great source of inspiration.

Tom has also, in partnership with James Chambers made 5oup, a portfolio sharing community for artists and designers.

Take a look at Animade.

davidoreilly.com

This has to be one of the most comprehensive websites ran by the artist themselves. O’Reilly shares his thoughts on animation, his sketches and random thoughts, relevant or not. His no-nonsense self promotion seems effortless with his lengthy list of awards and sold out shop. We’ll forgive him the U2 video.

peewee.com

It’s Christmas in the Playhouse. And our hearts are all aglow.

26 July 1991. We thought it was the day the magic died. Paul Reubens, looking like Ted Kazcynski’s madder brother, was “arrested in Sarasota, Florida for masturbating publicly in an adult theater” (source Wikipedia).  No more Pee-wee?!

But he’s back! With a live show in LA (where else…), and doing the rounds of US chat shows. It is a little disconcerting seeing Reubens at 56 doing the Pee-wee routine, but queasiness was always part of the fun.

And fun though Tim Burton’s movie certainly is, it’s the unrestrained joy and insanity of the TV show, with lots of clips on the site… and YouTube… that we really cherish.

filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com

Film Studies For Free is a blog dedicated to sharing information about noteworthy freely-accessible sites that feature articles about film. The site was set up last year by academic researcher Catherine Grant who wants to “actively espouse the ethos of open access to digital scholarly material.” The links range from articles on Miyazaki, essays on Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, and theses on diverse subjects, from performing virginity in Hollywood films to geo-televisuality in Indian cinema.

trailersfromhell.com

Watching Lucio Fulci’s video nasty House by the Cemetery has inspired this nomination for Site of the Week. Trailers from Hell is a much respected resource for those who adore the cult classics of Grindhouse, Horror, Sci-Fi, Exploitation and B Movies.

In the picture above, special effects make-up artist extraordinaire Rick Baker (look out for his handiwork in The Wolfman, due for release next year) introduces the 1957 horror I Was a Teenage Werewolf, a film so wonderfully camp that it inspired a song by psychobilly instigators The Cramps.

Notable contributors include Jack Hill (Spider Baby), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London) and founder Joe Dante (Gremlins), plus from the new breed of horror makers Eli Roth (Hostel) and Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead).

This is the place to find some more exotic DVD gift inspirations for your loved ones this Christmas.

Ubuweb

UbuWeb is ‘a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts.’ A volunteer-staffed digital archive of avant garde artwork spanning various genres, the site boasts an impressive (and totally free) range of film and video work. The list is far to long to recount but expect to find material by and/or about Cocteau, Debord, Burroughs and Ballard, Godard, Yoko Ono and Rachel Whiteread (to present a random sample). More or less the entire avant-garde Who’s Who is represented in fact, and the whole enterprise is lent a nice countercultural frisson by the site’s avowed disdain for the vagaries of intellectual property law; their FAQ states ‘we give you permission to take what you like even though in many cases, we have not received permission to post it. We went ahead and did it anyway. You should too’. For anyone even remotely interested in avant ‘n’ underground culture it’s too good an invitation to refuse.

radarmusicvideos.com

An inspired idea from founder Caroline Bottomley saw a music festival transform into an online network – what better way to see the work of up and coming music video directors without leaving the comfort of your own home? Simply put, Radar Music Videos is a space not only to showcase work, but also for record labels and bands to advertise their music video briefs to a growing community of directors who through Radar can then submit their treatments – a sort of digital Dateline for the modern creative. Go on take a peek.

John Gerrard, Animated Scene

John Gerrard’s Animated Scene was what impressed me most by far at this year’s Venice Biennale.

The setting wasn’t bad either – in a warehouse on an island where water buses only do request stops.

Three animated landscapes played on three large screens – created in Realtime, an animation software more usually associated with computer games, using Gerrard’s own photographic and video documentation of the real world. They  unfold in real time themselves – over twenty four hours, 365 days a year. So mid-morning in Venice, set to Texas time, it was night time and dark, though, just like in the real world, as my eyes adjusted, the stars came out.

It’s stunning, affecting and considered work, reflecting on landscape, technology, and how we understand the world, and our place in it. Emphatically contemporary, and – in a sense, literally – eternal.

And haunting.

There are extracts on the project website and more on the project at:

http://www.whitewallmag.com/2009/07/02/john-gerrard-animated-scene/

http://www.johngerrard.net/

http://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/view.asp?key=21&subkey=411

Author: Gary Thomas, Editor of APEngine.

thecaravangallery.co.uk

The Caravan Gallery is a moving image site in so much as it is a mobile photographic exhibition venue that can be found temporarily visiting many UK locations. The project is run by artists Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale who are on a mission to record the ordinary and extraordinary details of life in 21st century Britain. If you haven’t yet been fortunate to chance upon their delightful caravan then do check out their website where you can view many of the fantastic photographs that they have taken over the past nine years that sum up the everyday oddities of life in the UK. There’s even a shop, with perfect gifts such as the visitor guide to Glasgow (it’s so stylish!) that you can wrap in their fabulous car park attendant wrapping paper. And check out the news section to find out when the caravan may be exhibiting in a town near you.