Category Archives: Multimedia

Alpha-ville’s magazine of multimedia, interactive, digital and hybrid art.

Catname:Multimedia

Memento Mori by Martin Bircher

Pick of the Week #93

This week’s pick is Memento Mori by Martin Bircher, a sculptural installation about technology and the passage of time.

Bircher is an artist and lecturer from Switzerland. He received a degree in Fine Arts with specialization in Media Art in 2003 from the University of Applied Sciences Northwest Switzerland. In 2006 he migrated to Kouvola, Finland, where he works as a media artist and lecturer for Digital Media. He occasionally teaches workshops in the fields of physical computing and electronic media in art.  Since last Summer Bircher is working only as a part time lecturer and as full...

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Catname:Multimedia

Look Up: 100 Year Starship Screensaver by Robert Hodgin

Pick of the Week #92

This week’s pick is ‘Look up’, a cosmic screensaver created by Robert Hodgin for the Barbarian Group and 100 Year Starship.

Hodgin is an code artist living in Brooklyn. He is a founding partner of the Barbarian Group and heads up its west coast officeHe graduated in 1998 with a degree in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Hodgin’s work ranges from simple 2D data visualizations to immersive 3D terrain simulations. He works in Java, Processing, C++, Cinder, OpenGL, and GLSL and has spoken at Eyeo Festival, Tedx, FlashForward, FITC, Flash on the Beach, OFFF, and FlashBe...

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Catname:Multimedia

Playing With Fire by Alexandra Levasseur

Pick of the Week #91

 

This week’s pick is Playing With Fire, an animation by illustrator Alexanda Levasseur.

Levasseur Lives and works in Montreal, Qc, Canada. She studied Fine Arts and Graphic Design at University of Costa Rica, a Postgraduate in Creative Illustration and Visual Communication at EINA School of Art and Design, Barcelona, Spain and is Currently studying Major in Film Animation at Concordia University, Montreal.

The film is an experimental animation and extension of the illustrator’s 2D work in acrylic and pencil.

“I have been experimenting with animation a bit before, but it is my mos...

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Catname:Multimedia

Alpha-podcast presents London-based label Astro:dynamics

To celebrate our new Alpha-podcast series we present the very promising London-based label Astro:Dynamics. Our editor Luis Munoz spoke to Luke Owen – the man behind the label. Founded in 2010 during his last year of university with a 16-track compilation record produced by his close friends Lukid, BNJMN, Tapes and Mike Slott.

During the time Luis spent chatting to Luke, they spoke about the inspirational time for small record labels, the effect London has had on him creatively, the challenges he has faced being in charge of a label and of course the podcast and images he has put together for us.

To start thin...

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Catname:Multimedia

The Defector Interactive by Fathom Film Group

Pick of the Week #90

This week’s pick is ‘The Defector Interactive’, an online cinematic experience about escaping North Korea.

 

“The Defector Interactive is a cinematic journey into what it’s like to be a North Korean who tries to escape. It begins inside North Korea and allows the user to take a POV journey across the Tumen River into China and South-East Asia. There are decision-making points and 360° interactive locations with hotspots which the user can explore for more video, information, stills.” (FFG)

Made by Ann Shin and Fathom Film group with digital agency Jam3 and Psyop, the online web doc com...

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Catname:Multimedia

Digital Drawings by Shantell Martin

Pick of the week #89

 

 

This week we introduce you to the work of Shantell Martin, an illustrator and pioneer of digital drawing.

“Artist Shantell Martin collaborates with her surroundings, translating into glyphs, lines, recurring characters, and words the newspaper someone is reading across the way, say, or a pair of shoes walking by, a thought she had, the sky, something overheard. Her universe is flexible, multi-dimensional, surreal, a constellation of small observations that spill from one medium to the next.”

 

 

Martin studied at Central St Martins in London and went on to live in Japan and New York....

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Catname:Multimedia

Data Cuisine by Prozessagenten

Pick of the Week #88

Data Cuisine is a data visualisation project that uses the medium of food to express data. They ran a workshop at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki and also presented at Resonate.

Taste of migration, Eleonora Ivanova. Each non-Finnish nationality is represented by a stripe of typical food – from Salmon for the Swedish to rice for the Chinese. The amount of food on the plate corresponds to the number of people from that nationality who live in Finland.

Using food as a means for data expression, Data Cuisine takes the medium of dataviz and subverts it, turning it into a sensory exp...

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Catname:Multimedia

Visualising Fukushima by Interactive Things

Pick of the Week #87

A web publication about the effects following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

 

 

Interactive Things are a user experience & data visualization studio based in Zurich. Their past work includes the World Inequality Database on Education and Geo-Bee Rankings for National Geographic. They also run Datavisualization.ch, a news and knowledge resource for data visualisation and infographics.

The project is a web publication written in German featuring interviews, photographs and data visualisations explaining radiation exposure, distribution and evacuations following the disaster.

 

 

For the...

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Catname:Multimedia

RGB XYZ by David O’Reilly

Pick of the Week #86

Do you remember watching David O’Reilly’s ‘The External World‘ at Alpha-ville Fest 2011? It was an utterly captivating, disruptive experience. This week, we pick-up his first short film from 2007 that was uploaded online just a week ago.

David O’Reilly is an Irish film maker & writer based in Los Angeles. He uses glitch effects and 3D animation, deconstructing and simplifying to create ultra-brash and intense experiences. His films have travelled across the globe to many festivals and have had a big online impact.

RGB XYZ is a digital journey into a psychedelic world of colour and nois...

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Catname:Multimedia

Gravity by Sergio Calderon and FIELD

Pick of the Week #85

Gravity is Sergio Calderón’s chapter of Energy Flow, a collaborative app by FIELD for iOS and android. The non-linear film experience is unique every time it is played, and explores the complexity of how things are connected in our lives today.

Digital Art Studio FIELD created Energy Flow with the help of the Creators Project, bringing in artists Calderón, Maxim Meshkov, Andreas Nicolas Fischer and sound by David Kamp. The app aims to translate real-life events and processes into digital paintings in motion, exploring the “fragile equilibrium between physical, political, and cultural te...

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Catname:Multimedia

Visualizing Open Processing by Sinan Ascioglu

Pick of the Week #84

Visualizing Open Processing is Sinan Ascioglu’s interactive data visualization of the activity of users on OpenProcessing.org in 2012.

Ascioglu is a User Experience and Interaction Designer from America. He launched OpenProcessing almost 5 years ago as a forum for users of Processing, an open source programming language and environment. Users can share and improve their sketches while tapping in to the community.

The visualisation of the Open Processing community demonstrates the intricate web of interaction and movements – split into commenting, following, tweaking or favoriting – of...

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Catname:Multimedia

Starry Night

PETROS VRELLIS

Digital is like magic, may your dreams come true. In this project Petros Vrellis has animated the classic Van Gogh “Starry Night”, bringing it to life through interaction using openframeworks and with a dramatic soundtrack.

The App is available for iPad 2 here for 1.99.

(Source: Creative Applications)

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Catname:Multimedia

Wide Sky by Marcus Eckert

Pick of the Week #83

This week’s pick is Wide Sky by Marcus Eckhert, an iphone game app.

 

Marcus Eckert is a freelance iOS Developer and Motion Designer. He describes Wide Sky as “A game and experiment in design”. The objective in Wide Sky is to bounce and swing your hedgehog from clouds using a rope, in order to to smash orbs hanging in the sky. As you progress in the game, your hedgehog gains new powers and new challenges to complete.

 

 

 

“I wanted the experience to go beyond just playing a game… It might even be an experiment and then a game.

It’s a game but it was also my playground for a year t...

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Catname:Multimedia

Carp and Seagull

EVAN BOHEM

An interactive film that explores narrative and interactive spaces. A man encounters the spiritual world after spending his days fishing the waters near his village seeking out a quiet, structured life.

Directed by Evan Boehm at Nexus Interactive Arts, the film doesn’t need to be downloaded but it can be viewed from a browser. It brings together narrative, modeling, animation and it has an original score and sound design by Plaid.

GO TO THE FILM.

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Catname:Multimedia

Energy Flow

FIELD

Energy Flow is a non-linear interactive experience that tells 10 stories from a thousand perspectives. The project was created by FIELD with the support of Creators Project and is available to download fron the Apple store and the Google Play store.

The app explores the flow of energies in our world and it includes a bespoke algorithmic system of interlinking the stories into different film experiences.

From a quick dream rush to a meditative impression, each iteration presents a different abstract narrative full of crosslinks and connotations; reflecting that there is never just one perspective on our...

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Catname:Multimedia

Kingyo Kingdom by Cohen Van Balen

Pick of the Week #82

This week’s pick is Cohen Van Balen’s film ‘Kingyo Kingdom‘, a documentary on the selective breeding of Ranchu Fish.

 

Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen are London based Designers and Artists that work together under the name Cohen Van Balen. Their experimental approach to art which sits between science, technology and design, leads them to beautiful and thought provoking projects that ”test the ethical parameters of biological design”.(Transformism exhibition)

Ranchu fish, ”King of the goldfish”, are a variety of Goldfish from Japan that are selectively bred for their shape, and are ...

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Catname:Multimedia

data.scan [nº1-9] by Ryoji Ikeda

Pick of the Week #81

This week’s pick is  data.scan [nº1-9] by Ryoji Ikeda, an audiovisual installation currently exhibiting at MU in Eindhoven.

Born in 1966 in Gifu, Japan, Ikeda lives and works in Paris, France.

His work is described as focusing on “the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light, by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.” Ikeda website

Often using frequencies at the edge of human hea...

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Catname:Multimedia

Adam Martinakis

Pick of the Week #80

‘Last Kiss’

Born in Lubań, Poland, in 1972, Adam Martinakis studied at T.E.I. Of Athens, Faculty of Interior Architecture, Decorative Arts, and Industrial Design, and since 2000 has been working in the Digital Arts. He has also taught Digital Graphics & Arts, Interior Design and Ceramic Design, and is a member of CultureInside, slashTHREE and Art.lica international art collectives.

Martinakis’ range of Computer-Generated visual media works with themes surrounding the organic and the digital, often exploring the human form by deconstructing it to vein-like layers. Described as a mixture...

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Catname:Multimedia

Consumption by Li Liao

Pick of the week #79

This week’s pick is ‘Consumption’, a performance by Li Liao.

Liao entered the work force at the Shenzhen Foxconn factory for a total of 45 days, before using his earnings to purchase the same iPad Mini he was assembling on the factory line. He exhibited the relics of his experience at UCCA’s ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice; his white coat and ID badges contrasting with the gadget he had worked to produce.

Born in 1982  in the Hubei province, China, Liao’s art is described as “based on experiments with social systems that use his own person as the key sub...

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Catname:Multimedia

Save Food From The Fridge by Jihyun Ryou

Pick of the week #78

“Observing the food and therefore changing the notion of food preservation, we could find the answer to current situations such as the overuse of energy and food wastage. My design is a tool to implement that knowledge in a tangible way and slowly it changes the bigger picture of society. I believe that once people are given a tool that triggers their minds and requires a mental effort to use it, new traditions and new rituals can be introduced into our culture.” - Jihyun Ryou

Jihyun Ryou’s design project ‘Save Food From the Fridge’ re-evaluates our relationship with what we eat, and pro...

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Catname:Multimedia

The Always-On Telephone Club

Pick of the week #77

Arcade is an an interdisciplinary design studio formed of William Coleman, Keiichi Matsuda and James Alliban. Arcade work at the intersection of physical and virtual, to expose new problems and opportunities from emerging technologies. They design apps, interactive installations and immersive environments.

Arcade met through Alpha-ville during the commission for CELL in 2011. The interactive installation brought designer and film maker Keiichi Matsuda together with artist and interaction designer James Alliban, who finally teamed up with William Coleman from Microsoft for their new de...

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Catname:Multimedia

DOWNLOADED BY ALEX WINTER

Pick of the Week #76

This week’s Pick is the upcoming documentary by Alex Winter, ’Downloaded’. Premiering at SXSW 2013, this documentary focusing on Napster and the advent of digital file sharing investigates the digital revolution; “the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.”

Napster, founded in 1999, was originally a file sharing service and has more recently become an online music store. The introduction of peer-to-peer sharing and illegal downloads created a technology paradigm shift, upended the music business and changed th...

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Catname:Multimedia

aPITAGORAS BY ALBA CORRAL

Pick of the Week #75

This week’s pick is Alba Corral‘s ‘aPitagoras‘, a free Art App which creates concentric circles at the user’s touch. The interactive app allows the user to make their own wallpaper for their mobile device.

The app is an extension of Corral’s artistic practice which uses code to create visual tools in real time, giving life to abstract digital landscape. She also teaches visual programming.

“For a while people have been asking me to create wallpapers for their mobile devices from my artworks,” Corral says, “so I decided to give people the opportunity to create their own wallpapers from g...

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Catname:Multimedia

3D Printed Record by Amanda Ghassaei

Pick of the Week #74

We inaugurate the 2013 weekly selection with a project that takes inspiration in the past to build to the future. The 3D printed Record by Amanda Ghassaei is an exploration of the current possibilities and limitations of the 3D printing technology. Although the record doesn’t meet the audio quality standards yet, it opens many questions about the future of product making with new technologies and how we will be able to customise products to our likes and needs. Ghassaei is interested in developing physical interfaces for the manipulation of digital media. We believe that this is going to ...

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Catname:Multimedia

ACCIDENTAL INCEST

Pick of the week #73

Genetic Analysis Device

What role will genetic technology play in our future sexual and personal relationships?

‘Accidental Incest’, the work of korea-born, UK-based Jae Yeop Kim, shows and questions a future scenario where many more people are born using sperm or egg donors and accidental incest. Jae’s works examines how new biotechnologies, and the companies that develop them, might lead to new types of relationships between friends, families and lovers.

Tens of thousands of people are conceived every year using donated sperm. A single sperm donor can anonymously father multiple child...

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Catname:Multimedia

TOMTEN

Pick of the week #72

Graphset‘s Tomten is a 3D animation film and part of a new exhibition at Centre des arts d’Enghien-les-Bains, Projections video dans l’espace public (Video Projections in Public Space).

Graphset, aka Mikkael Doczekalski, designed the excellent Alpha-ville logo for us in 2009 and has designed most of the festival images. His Paris based design studio breaks the norm in prints, video trailers, web design, and live stage installations.

21 films were entered into the competition under the theme “The city of a thousand lights, a Christmas story.” Tomten is one of the final three up to wi...

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