Expanded Animation 2016

The fourth annual Expanded Animation symposium is entitled The Alchemy of Animation in keeping with the 2016 Festival theme, RADICAL ATOMS and the alchemists of our time. The focus is once again on the fringes of the computer animation field as well as on the reciprocal interaction of animation and technology. This year’s three featured topics are science, society and industry, which will be discussed from a variety of perspectives by three panels made up of animation filmmakers, curators, scientists, VFX artists and prizewinners in the Prix Ars Electronica’s Computer Animation/Film/VFX category.

Kicking off the symposium is the Prix Forum in which the 2016 Prix Ars Electronica prizewinners present their work and discuss current trends and future developments in computer animation. The Art & Science panel will scrutinize various areas at which animation, art and science intersect and overlap. Producer/curator Abigail Addison presents Silent Signal, a collaborative project by six animation filmmakers and six scientists in the field of biomedicine. This form of cooperation gave rise to experimental works that explored questions concerning new ways of thinking about the human body. Animated visualizations in science and fiction will be treated by Erwin Feyersinger, a scholar of film and media. Scholar/software developer Diana Arellano presents interdisciplinary research projects carried out at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy’s Institute of Animation—among them, The Muses of Poetry and SARA—Stylized Animation for Research in Autism. An artistic take on the subject of art and science is provided by Markos R. Kay, an animation filmmaker who’s known for abstract experiments on scientific data.
Three artistic positions occupy the focal point of the Art & Society panel. Mihai Grecu, who was honored with an Award of Distinction in the Computer Animation/Film/VFX category last year for The Reflection of Power, an animated short film with a political theme, will offer insights into his surreal, metaphorical world of imagery, and personally preside over a screening of some of his recent work. His fellow panelists include experimental filmmaker/media artist Reinhold Bidner and designer/artist Jonas Hansen, who’ll go into interactive installations and experimental games. The Art & Industry panel will demonstrate how art and industry can influence and inspire one another. Representatives of a London-based studio named ManvsMachine and Aixsponza, a 3D motion design studio in Munich, will present their latest artistic and commercial work.

Expanded Animation is brought to you by a group of dedicated people from the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Hagenberg Campus | Digital Media Department.