On this years’ Monday classes, we’ve going to meet with very talented artists to give us lectures. These lectures are specifically going to revolve around Q&A’s, animation examples, artworks and presentations.
Katerina Athanasopoulou
Katerina is a multimedia animator and filmmaker who uses both traditional analogue and new digital media to tell poetic yet highly researched stories. She creates works for screen and gallery space and outdoor installation.
During our class time, Katerina presented her presentation and her animations. She has an amazing sense of ideas and she creates her work based on a powerful background story. “Branches of Life” was the first animation of her which we’ve watched during class time and I got amazed by it. She collaborated with a singer called Andreya Triana who sang a song about the lungs. They were involved in a project where several people sang songs about different parts of the body.
She also mentioned that they gave Katerina access to the operating room while a patient were having their lungs operated.
As I was watching this animation, I felt as if I was inside of the operation room, and in some scenes, flying through the lungs. The animation style which Katerina adapted on is really powerful as each scene is a different artwork on itself.
Reference: Katerina Athanasopoulou(2016) Branches of Life, Available at: https://www.kineticat.co.uk/Branches-of-Life, (Accessed: 4th of October 2021)
Her Voice
As the second animation, we’ve watched “Her Voice” by Katerina. This animation was about a ghost, which was talking throughout the animation. It talked about topics like how typical grandmothers would read stories to their grandchildren, but the ghost inside of the animation tells that her grandmother would tell her about auditory perception and how the human body has over 50.000 receptors on the ears, but only sending signals of 3.500 to our brains.
As I was watching this animation, I was kind of scared by the spooky aesthetic but really enjoyed it overall as it was very creative. I really liked how Katerina animated the ghost.
Reference: Katerina Athanasopoulou(2019) Her Voice, Available at: https://vimeo.com/337538618 (Accessed: 4th of October, 2021)
Immigration Problem In Greece
While chatting with us during the lecture time, Katerina also mentioned about the immigration problem in Greece in 2012. She said that she was heavily affected by it so she decided to reflect it onto an artwork. She then created birdcages on her artwork and told us that these cages actually represents the buildings.
While listening to her, I was really amazed by how she can turn a territory problem into an artwork.
Katerina’s website: https://www.kineticat.co.uk/
Dominica Harrison
Dominica is a Russian born artist uses 2D animation, Printmaking and a host of collaging techniques to bring to life stories from literature and actuality.
Illusions
The first work which we’ve looked from Dominica Harrison was named “Illusions”. It was a collaboration project with two Scottish voice actors and she did everything in terms of animation and directing. She made this animation with the screen-printing technique so she hand-drawn everything.
Reference: Dominica Harrison(2016) Illusions, Available at: https://vimeo.com/164769476, (Accessed: 11th of October, 2021)
Tarot Collabration
Dominica collaborated with one of her colleagues and created these amazing tarot designs, inspired from the original tarot cards.
I really liked these designs as they are pretty detailed and intriguing.
FriendRed Peng
Friendred Peng is an installation and computational artist currently based in London focused on disciplines crossing arts, technology and sciences.Â
Touch Me
In 2017, FriendRed created a touch and gesture controllable clothing which the performer could control. The lights were being changed by the sensation and the movement of the performer.
the installation video was pretty interesting as it was all up to the performer. The lights, the gesture movements created an artwork overall.
Baptism Anewage Ritual
Originally, Baptism is a performance ritual in which aims to heal the person. In this installation, FriendRed created a Baptism ritual by creating sensored clothing which would detect the performers’ movements and change the colour within.