AGAINST GRAVITY
Dance in animated music video and animation films
To be honest, I was looking for a title for this programme for quite a while. I was looking for terms that stand for visualizing sound and music with the body, or experiencing music with the body. But like most of the time when you are trying to find the right thing too hard – it comes to you when you least expect it.
One of the videos that I discovered in the infinite Internet (and immediately booked for the programme) is called Gravity. While watching it I was reminded what this programme is really about: Dance – choreography and movement – but in a completely constructed environment – the animated film.
Animation enables the creator to control every little detail of the film, which can be a big advantage, but it can also be a curse: it doesn't pardon even “little” mistakes.
So there is two ways of seeing the relation between dance and animation: First: Animation IS dancing and choreography, as every single frame and every single object in the frame has to be choreographed precisely.
Or: Animation and Dance are two worlds that contradict each other: Dancing, either choreographed or spontaneous, is an expression of the body and soul, in dancing there is precision but there is also a lot of things that happen by accident and can make the dance even more interesting or appealing. And this seems to constitute the exact opposite of animation.
And this is where the aspect of Gravity emerges: every dancer is fighting against Gravity – every jump, every movement is an attempt to escape the fact that you are bound to the ground. Animation finally gives the dancer the freedom of movement – in Animation the rules of Gravity need not exist – the body can float and does not need to follow any physical rules.
For this programme I selected mostly music videos using dance – either performed by a person, but also choreographies with geometrical forms and abstract figures.
The abstract forms also refer to the human body and again, to the fight against gravity.
Like in 2011 – when Animateka screened my program “CLIP KLAPP BUM” – I am again showing the music video as an art form, as I am convinced that these videos should not only be consumed on You tube or Vimeo, they belong to the big screen.
And as a reference to the programme in 2011, I am starting with a repetition: “Ariel” by Field. This is one of the videos that always come back to me, and as back then I wrote that dance is "one of the oldest visualisations of music” – it had to be this video as a reference and example.
One of the challenges for the programme was not only to find pieces where someone or something dances, but where the creators explore new media and new possibilities with the digital, interactive and with online communities.
So I found two more great projects that use motion capturing, but result in something completely different than is the case with “Ariel” (“Forms”, “Global Perfume Project”), then there are the abstract works that make the triangles and dots dance, like (this could almost be called a “traditional” animation technique) Jeff Scher is doing in “Matchstick” or, in a more conceptual way, Tarik Barri for the song “Judge Jury and Executioner” by Atoms for Peace.
Speaking of “traditional” or the beginnings of Animation, there is a beautiful reference to Len Lye in Milos Tomic's video for Jarboli and their song “Support is important”. The second video by Milos Tomic that I selected, though, uses a completely different technique and might be closer to “Gravity – Un rêve de demain” – where parts of the body or the whole body are moved with pixilation and follow their own rules.
I will not mention all the videos that will be screened in this programme, but I want to emphasize that the techniques vary greatly, from Live Motion Capture, to Found Footage, and drawn animation, as well as stop trick techniques.
And I also wanted to state that I was amazed by the variety of how dancers and animators seem to approach each other, work with each other and I am sure that the influences – working both ways – are opening up new visual and collaborative possibilities!
Let us therefore give them the attention of the big screen and enjoy the stories the bodies and forms have to tell.
Wiktoria Pelzer,
curator Animation Avantgarde Vienna, free curator
Ariel
The Artists behind Field are working between new media, animation and visual art. This piece, made for the band Stateless is a perfect example for melting all these forms together. Dance as one of the first expressions of visualizing sound, and the motion capture which allows the artists to move the bodies in a fee space – a fight of good and bad – of light and darkness.
Perfume Global Project
Perfume official global website:
Vol 2: Takafumi Tsuchiya
Vol 3: Daihei Shibata + Hiroshi Sato
Vol 1: unknown artist
Vol 5: YKBX (Masaki Yokobe)
The works shown in the “Perfume Global Project” series originate in an open source, community project. “Perfume”, a girl band from Japan, danced a choreography that was transformed into motion capture data, and widely accessed and adapted by users worldwide. The users created new videos with the choreography sequence, each one with a unique style, from abstract moving geometric forms to cute bears dancing – an astonishing project that will hopefully find lots of new forms in the future.
Matchstick
Jeff Scher guides us to a world of forms and objects – and they are all moving to the music. His style recalls works by Len Lye and leaves you with associations and enjoying the choreography of the dots and lines dancing to the rhythm.
Gravity
Filip Piskorzynski lets the puppets dance – but it is not really puppets. The woman who is the protagonist of the video looks like a puppet on a string, she is struggling and dancing without touching the ground. She floats through a deserted landscape, trying to accomplish everyday life tasks, against gravity.
What It'll Take
Again a project based on community content – the filmmaker asked fans of Graham Coxon to send short shots of themselves dancing – then he edited them to a complex dance. A lot of different people are dancing in very different styles and apparently they are having a lot of fun.
Eclipse/Blue
A beautiful video combining “real life” dance and dancers who are interacting with the screen behind them. The silhouettes get a life of their own and complete the movements, expand them or burst into shapes and colour. A symphony of dance on and off screen.
Judge Jury and Executioner
A very abstract piece by Tarik Barri for Atoms for Peace – we see a shape on the screen consisting of geometric forms that seem to belong to an abstract body and move their party in rhythmic contractions to the atmospheric and rhythmic music.
Radar
The puppet on a string comes back to us again – the music starts moving strings that we can see in a deserted old ballroom. A dancer who was lying down gets reanimated by the strings and starts walking, fighting and dancing with the strings.
A beautiful choreography is created to the classical instrumental music – until the strings let go again.
Thought of You
The thin lines sketched on brown paper construct this beautiful and romantic struggle between a man and a woman. The rawness of the animation makes the film filigree and maybe even more subtle. A love dance and a dance of not being able to hold the other person – of being together – and yet not being together.
Orgesticulanismus
Movement begins in the head. Mathieu Labayes shows us this in a very special way: The protagonist uses animation and moves his figures in a way he himself can't move any more, as he is sitting in a wheelchair. The characters he creates, morph into each other and in the end they are transformed into various abstract forms. A very joyous film experience which goes back to the origins of movement and dance.
Forms
The two digital artists transformed the movement of sportsmen and -women into an abstract dance of sticks, dots and colours. Sometimes the movement can be recognized as jumping or running – but most of the sequences remain in their beauty of abstracted movement.
Podrška je važna
This video for the rockband Jarboli is completely different from what you probably imagine a rock video should look like. We see a professional dance couple dancing to the music – first in an empty white space. But the spaces starts to change and the dancers are in an animated surrounding – so we get to see them as silhouettes, moving lights on their bodies or with ornamental layers. A little homage to Len Lye’s films.
Frictions
What happens when the art piece gets alive and doesn't follow the will of the creator any more? Frictions shows a dance and also a struggle between the creator and his creation. A beautiful dance unfolds, between the real body of the dancer and the abstract forms that are made from sticky notes. It is beautiful to watch this battle between the creator and the art work – and it ends again in perfect harmony.
Rusty Nails
The collective Pfadfinderei created a breathtaking video for the sound of Moderat: The performance reminds of secret rituals and creates a ghostly atmosphere, the dancers are mysteriously covered in cloth. Everything is floating a little over the ground, as if there was no gravity.
Hairs
The dancing protagonist of this video by Miloš Tomić is the hair of the singer Ridina Ahmetova. Sometimes a whole strand of hair dances like a tail of an animal, sometimes each and every hair dances for itself to the very soft voice of the singer.