2D & 3D Digital Projects
by Canadian Figurative Artist
Golden Calf (2022)
Nuit Blanche Installation September 28, 2022
Collaborators: Allyson Glenn & David Sanscartier
Allyson Glenn (Art Director, Animation, Video Editing) Sandra Marteleur "Lily of the Woods" and "Is" (Music Courteously of Epidemic Sound) David Sanscartier (Animation) Kaleb Whittingstall (Animation) Alexis Fraser (Animation) Laurenne Trottier (Animation) Lucy Zhou (Animation)
Golden Calf, installation composed of a sculpture with two-channel video animation projections (hand-drawn, 6 min)
Central to the world’s economy, fossil fuels support most economic activities from transportation, agriculture to industry, and provides electricity and touches most of everyday household items. The multimedia installation titled Golden Calf investigates the complex intersection between society’s deep dependency on fossil fuels and its environmental impacts. Inspired by William Kentridge’s evolving landscape narratives and Krzysztof Wodiczkox’s Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection, this piece combines a sculptural object and a time-based media. While suggesting an analogy between the worship of a deity versus a natural resource, Golden Calf uses allegory and symbolism to narrate a story of this resource. The installation has the capacity to address topics around human-induced climate change and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals no. 13 (Climate action).
The full installation, composed of a sculpture with two-channel video animation projections (hand-drawn, 6 min) was first installed at Nuit Blanche Saskatoon (September 2022) behind a bike store that included a shipping container and adjoining wall. The sculpture, made from recycled materials included an oil barrel, repurposed and covered in gold leaf. To activate the sculpture, the two animations projected through it. While the base of the sculpture cast its shadow into one scene, the gold leaf surface of the barrel sparkled and reflected the shifting light.New paragraph
Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra (2021-2022)
Dimensions in Sound
Allyson Glenn (Director, Drawing & Video Editing), Paul Suchan and Silas Friesen (Music Composers) Shelby Lund/Lucy Zhou (Drawing), Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra (Music Performance), John Ogresko (Assisted with Video Editing), and Dean McNeill/David Hannah (Co-Applicants for Funding from Canada Council for the Arts).
Two short film animations Above the Deluge (5min) & In the Fray (8min) were developed for the Dimensions in Sound project, a multimedia collaboration with the Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra (SJO). This project was funded by a Digital Now grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
In collaboration with the Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra (SJO) I created two new animations (one in progress) simulating the phenomena of sound synesthesia. In late 2020, the SJO commissioned music scores from local musicians/composers Paul Suchan and Silas Friesen who met and consulted with me about synesthesia-specific responses. Once the music was developed, the members of the SJO recorded the music independently using new technology. The music was then mixed and put together digitally. Dimensions in Sound project builds on a 2018 collaboration with the SJO for which I created a 3D animation using the gaming technology that was projected behind the orchestra. To simplify the composition, I developed three 3D animated shapes to represent categories of instruments - percussion, brass, and wind, to simulate the movements that I could see in my mind's eye (timbre shape chromesthesia).
In consultation with me about synesthesia-specific responses, music composers Paul Suchan and Silas Friesen created music scores, which was then recorded independently using new technology, mixed, and put together digitally by the SJO. In 2021, I gathered open-source video footage to capture the floating, circling, and fluid shapes that resembled the visual sounds found in Suchan’s music titled Above the Deluge. For this piece I investigated the shapes and movements of deep-sea divers and underwater sea creatures (otters, seals, fish, and water snakes). With my studio assistants Shelby Lund (candidate for Master of Fine Arts, University of Saskatchewan) and Lucy Zhou (BSc, University of Saskatchewan), I used a rotoscope method to develop thousands of drawings transcribed from video footage of the animals. Above the Deluge was released in mid-October has made official selection for eleven film festivals including Cift and has received five awards (best animation, experimental film short, first-time director, best music score) by London Movie Awards (UK), Five Continents Film Festival (Venezuala), Independent Shorts Awards (USA), and IndieX Film Festival (USA).
The second animation
In the Fray explores early film making mediums and digital technology. With Alice and the rabbit, the viewer is lured down a hole and into a tunnel where they experience series of analogue and digital abstractions. Like the phrase ‘internet rabbit hole’ where infinite search engine paths lead to disorientation, the title phrase “In the fray” can also suggest a struggle, a deconstruction and re-arrangement of form. This idea is captured by transitions between scenes where geometrical shapes morph and change. Like the title and themes in Carroll’s iconic story Alice in Wonderland, what and who emerges from the hole is inevitably different and forever changed.
In the Fray
was released in early December 2021 and is now a semi-finalist for the Niagara Falls International Short Festival (USA), and has made official selection for the New York Movie Awards, Hollywood Gold Awards, and Independent Shorts Awards (USA).
For the Dimensions in Sound project, the SJO will perform in front of a live audience and the short animations Above the Deluge and In the Fray will project behind the musicians. The concert is re-scheduled for June 2022 at the Broadway Theatre (Saskatoon, Canada) and will be livestreamed and available on the SJO website to ticketholders. The presentation of the animations and later live performance is an opportunity for audiences to learn more about synesthesia and contemplate their own experiences of music.
To view trailers with sound, please visit SJO's Youtube Channel at: https://youtu.be/5hCA5NoWbtU
The Dimensions in Sound project is supported by the Digital Now Fund from the Canada Council for the Arts.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts
Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra (2018) Broadway Theatre
In 2018 I developed a 3D animation with Unity for a performance with the Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra. orchestra. The animation was made to simulate my own visual synesthesia experience of the sound of the song Bewitched, Bewildered, and Bothered (Richard Rogers, Composed 1941). The Unity project included a tick track for the conductor to listen to while conducting the ensemble. Projected behind the orchestra, the 3D animation played in sync with the jazz ensemble at the Broadway Theatre for a one-time event on April 28, 2028.
Andrei Feheregyhazi assisted me on this project with suggestions and by formatting my Tilt Brush objects for Unity.
Unity 3D Animation Projection during SJO Performance, April 28, 2018
Tech Art (2018) Ontario Science Museum: Virtual Reality
A virtual reality version of The Gate (Unity) was exhibited at the Tech Art show at the Ontario Science Centre, February 17-19, 2018. For this third exhibition, the project was expanded upon to be virtual and include more interactive elements. Using a Vive, visitors could navigate the space by walking or using the controllers. The project included two rooms, and order to access the second room participants would select an object using their controllers. If they chose the correct item, they could enter the second room, a garden oasis.
The first of two rooms was called
Purgatory. It was a simple design with three walls and a floor painted with my hand-made sketches and photography derived from
The Silver Road and
Passages. The structure floated in non-space (black and infinite) and the viewer could only walk in it and towards the doorway. In virtual space, the walls were approximately twenty to thirty feet and the back wall included two Sphinx sculptures at the top. Occupying the space were larger than life figures that moved from the front plank to the doorway. The ghostly and ethereal figures were sculpted using semi-transparent material in Tilt Brush. The ghostly figures were permeable and could pass through the participant if they did not move out of the way. The visitors were encouraged to walk towards the doorway, where words would be triggered and descend from the Spinx above. The first set of words stated "what am I?”…Human"…"Animal". They would be guided to choose one of the two words. If successful, they would appear in a new room, which I called
Heaven.
In Heaven the participant would discover they were very large in scale. However, when looking up they would see a much larger version of the wall with the doorway and Sphinx's from Purgatory. Participants would arrive in a beautiful garden that contained a fountain, trees, and benches. The participants were big and would have to look down at the garden, but could walk in and around the space. The garden was contained with trees surrounded by a chain link fence. This would discourage participants from wandering beyond the garden into the infinite desert-like space. The garden did not have anyone else in it, so it could generate a feeling of isolation. For this reason, the space was occupied by a small dog that moved in and around the structures. First built in Tilt Brush, the dog was then imported in Unity in two sections so that its movements appeared more life-like. The architecture of the space such as the walls, fountain, floor, and space around the garden was painted using my drawings and photography.
University of Saskatchewan Interactive Systems Design student Brandon Piller assisted me with programming to update the project and connecting the rooms.
Installation with Vive Equipment, Ontario Science Centre (2018)
Screen Shot of 1st Virtual Room Purgatory
Screen Shot of 2nd Virtual Room Heaven
Bliss and the Dreadful Sublime (2017) Art Placement: Augmented Reality
I am interested in the social divisions that occur between people, political ideologies, and nations. For this reason, doorways and walls reoccur as themes in my work. During a stay in Berlin, Germany I was interested in the most famous divisions: the Berlin Wall. I wondered what it must have been like for the people living on either side – were they consumed with thoughts about the other – did they wonder if it was better there? These ideas were explored when developing the two scenes for the Unity animation The Gate.
The augmented version of the project The Gate was first developed during a four-week intensive summer course at the School of Machines, Making, and Make-Believe, Berlin in July 2017, where I learned how to create augmented and virtual projects with cameras, Blender, Tilt Brush, and Unity. When it was first exhibited, the animation was seen as a projection on a paper architectural structure. As an augmented piece, it was interactive - viewers could move the mouse to change the direction of the movement and perspective of the projection.
For the second exhibition of
The Gate at the Gallery at Art Placement, an App was developed for a tablet. Using the App, through the screen the animation could be viewed as an illusion on the wall. It worked when the tablet would be lined up with a drawing which triggered the effect. When the gallery closed at night, a projection of the animation was made on the drawing and could be viewed through the front window. University of Saskatchewan the Computer Science Graduate Student Golam Mostaeen assisted me with programming the App for the tablet.
Augmented Reality App with Drawing at Art Placement Gallery (2017)
Augmented Reality App with Drawing at Art Placement Gallery (2017)
Painting Experiment (2017) 360 Video
Collaboration:
Louise Koch (Norway/Sweden), Rita Eperjesi (Hungary), Meredith Thomas (Great Britain), & Allyson Glenn (Canada)
At the School of Machines Making and Make Belief, Berlin, Germany we learned how to use a 3D camera. In order to simulate the experience of painting plein air (directly from the landscape) we created a device to protect the camera. As the painting is develops, the view of the park is obstructed.
3D Video and Performance in Volkspark Am Weinberg (Park), Berlin (2017)