Lectures & Talks

Synaesthetic Syntax: Panel II

Birgitta Hosea (UK), Alexandra Antonopoulou (UK), Eleanor Dare (UK), Jack Caven (UK), Andrew Starkey (UK), Kate Steenhauer (UK), Eliane Gordeeff (PT)

Can music become visual? How did pioneers of visual music such as Oskar Fischinger and Mary Ellen Bute translate melody, harmony and rhythm into the form of animation? And can moving drawings become music? How can historic and / or contemporary practice demonstrate synaesthetic syntax?

Synaesthetic Syntax: Panel I

Juergen Hagler (AT), Birgitta Hosea (UK), Harry Whalley (UK), Dirk de Bruyn (AU), Alberto Novello (IT) , Lilly Husbands (US/UK)

In an age of digital synthesis and screen-based connections, is there a craving for a return to the material? Do we long for haptic feedback and analogue experience: the touch of guitar strings, the feel of charcoal smearing under the fingers, banging a drum, painting on film? Is this simply a form of nostalgia, or might it be thought through in new ways? How can it be brought together in the audio-visual?

Expanded Animation: Synaesthetic Syntax - Keynote Refik Anadol

Refik Anadol is a media artist, director and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. His body of work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. In taking the data that flows around us as the primary material and the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol paints with a thinking brush, offering us radical visualizations of our digitized memories and expanding the possibilities of architecture, narrative, and the body in motion.

Synaesthetic Syntax: Sounding Animation / Visualising Audio

Coming together as a series of online events, this year’s Expanded Animation symposium continues a dialogue about relationships between the senses, in particular the auditory and the visual. What are the rules, principles, and processes that govern correlations between sound and animation? How might these embodied sensations be explored, unpacked and reassembled in our age of virtual communication intensified by COVID-19?

Tectonic Shift Panel Discussion

Casasola Merkle (DE), Moritz Schwind (DE), Ivelle Jargalyn (CA) - Tendril

Manuel Casasola Merkle and Moritz Schwind form the creative tech duo Entagma. After having worked commercially for clients like Nike, Audi, IBM or BMW, both decided to pursue their interest in generative design, algorithmic art, proceduralism and teaching. Tendril is a design-driven animation, vfx, and digital innovation studio, creating beautiful and thoughtful visuals across all mediums. They believe that smart, beautiful stories should inspire new ways of looking at the world.

Art & Industry

Casasola Merkle (DE), Moritz Schwind (DE), Christopher Bahry (CA), Ivelle Jargalyn (CA), Mary Anne Ledesma (CA), Alexandre Torres (CA)

Manuel Casasola Merkle and Moritz Schwind form the creative tech duo Entagma. After having worked commercially for clients like Nike, Audi, IBM or BMW, both decided to pursue their interest in generative design, algorithmic art, proceduralism and teaching. Tendril is a design-driven animation, vfx, and digital innovation studio, creating beautiful and thoughtful visuals across all mediums. They believe that smart, beautiful stories should inspire new ways of looking at the world.

Tectonic Shift II

Jesper Juul (DK), Philomena Schwab (CH) 

Jesper Juul is a video game researcher interested in the myriad of ways in which video games are meaningful to players. Philomena Schwab is a game designer and community manager from Zurich, Switzerland. She wrote her master thesis about “Community Building for Indie Developers” and went on to co-found the indie game studio Stray Fawn in 2016.

Tectonic Shift I

Sabine Laimer (AT/NZ), Annegret Richter (DE), Tobias Trebeljahr (DE)

Sabine Laimer is a digital compositor and compositing supervisor (Weta Digital) for feature film and episodic content. Annegret Richter is the executive manager of AG Animationsfilm, the German Animation Association and a founding member of the initiative Women in German Animation. Tobias Trebeljahr lives and works as a freelance Visual Development Artist in Leipzig, Germany, where he’s currently developing several animation projects.

Artist Position II

Nonny de la Peña (US), Peter Burr (US)

Nonny de la Peña is one of the of the most influential pioneers in developing virtual reality as a modern means of expression. Peter Burr is an artist from Brooklyn, NY, a master of computer animation with a gift for creating images and environments that hover on the boundary between abstraction and figuration.

Artist Position I

Imge Özbilge (TR), Sine Özbilge (TR) , Matthias Winckelmann (DE)

The sister directors duo Imge Özbilge and Sine Özbilge work together as each other’s mirrors. They experiment with the medium of animation, the 16:9 screen, digital installation art and the use of mixed media, exploring new connotations and stylistic forms. Matthias Winckelmann is a creative director and digital artist, currently based in Berlin, Germany. He is former creative director and managing partner of the creative ensemble foam Studio Berlin and former head of 3D of the internationally acclaimed design & branding studio ManvsMachine London. Since 2020, he has been working as an independent director and designer for leading brands around the world.