MAY NEWSROUND 2009
Dunlop’s Pedal Powered Time Machine
As part of the Dick Institute Museum & Art Gallery’s summer exhibition Ayrshire Innovators, artists Guy Bishop, Alan Brown & Matt Hulse have been commissioned to create an interactive exhibit, Dunlop’s Pedal Powered Time Machine.
Participants will be invited to sit upon & pedal a hand-built bicycle, powering a series of visual effects including moving imagery produced by a zoetrope, which rapidly rotates static images to create one of the oldest forms of optical illusion.
The work is inspired by Ayrshire-born John Boyd Dunlop’s invention of the ‘practical pneumatic tyre’ & his contemporary, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, credited with the invention of the pedal bicycle, or ‘velocipede’. Matt proposed the original idea for the exhibition & the three Scottish-based artists developed the idea collaboratively, designing & constructing devices that could be used to explore the emergence of the world’s most popular form of sustainable transport.
The exhibit will be set within an imagined workshop-come-drawing room, creating a sense of the ‘hive of activity’ in which inventors such as Dunlop may have worked, with experiments, half-finished inventions & new ideas spilling over into the domestic environment.
The materials used in the exhibit will be sourced from scrap yards & recycling centres, ensuring that the project stays true to its aim of re-using where possible. Some of the Dick’s own museum artifacts will be incorporated to help set the scene. The complex network of handle-bars, tyres, wires & spokes will create a sense of playful experimentation, reminding us that innovation is often the result of a seemingly chaotic & untidy process of trial & error.
The show runs from May 30th – September 12th at the Dick Institute Museum & Art Gallery.
Matt Hulse has been keeping a blog: http://anormalboy.wordpress.com
Something Suspicious
It’s been a busy month for Suspicious Productions!
As well as working on the relaunch of Channel 4’s animation site
4mations, they have a new showreel and will be heading to Annecy as part of the UK delegation to the festival and market, supported by South West Screen in partnertship with UK Trade & Investment.
Come say hello at the UK Animation Stand!
Roses for Ink
ink.digital has two commercials currently in production: Miller Homes for the Union and Borro for Gatefilms. Ink also won bronze for best use of animation at the Roses for our national debt Line spot, our second Roses win.
Healthier Scots
Jason Wagner has just completed an advert for The Bridge working with NHS Scotland. As part of the healthier Scotland bowel screening program the ad required a graphic style while at the same time being informative and engaging. It will be broadcast over the coming months on STV.
www.paperbubble.com
Happy Duckling wins at Stuttgart
The Happy Duckling, directed by Gili Dolev, has won Best Children Animation at Stuttgart International Animation Festival.
The film was awarded by a jury of 6 kids and the prize was sponsored by Nickelodeon.
New Animation Commissioned
Stewart Comrie’s short animation Battenberg has recently been commissioned as part of Scottish Digital Shorts 2009 after 3 months of intensive workshops and development.
Battenberg is an adult animation akin to the traditional morality tales of Aesop’s Fables. Animal protagonists tussle with the complex and at times oppressive psychological and literal dilemmas.
A stranger unwittingly enters the claustrophobic world of a kleptomaniac hoarding squirrel residing in a house where all is not what it appears. Servile beings creep through a dwelling that reeks of hidden despair, turmoil and a cloying feeling that escape may be impossible, or treacherous.
www.stewartcomrie.com
Nuclear Disaster
Flaunt co-directors Stephen and Dave were given the task of creating an entertaining branded short film to promote awareness of the importance of Digital Preservation. In the first of two films, superhero character, Digiman, leads Team Digital Preservation to save the world from nuclear disaster caused by the work of baddies, Team Chaos. Stay tuned for Team Digital Preservation’s next adventure…
www.flauntproductions.com
You can also watch the full animation here