3’41’’ · cgi · b&w · 2009 · Barcelona, Spain

The subject is the ambiguity and difference between the original premises of the film. Line and dot as “forms” modify each other, and stretch their flat nature to the limit through movement. The dot and the line constitute both, the forefront shapes and the background surface, one becoming the other from time to time.
The soundtrack is linked to the visual movement. Created with a computer using still images designed by the author and animated in FinalCut.

Soundtrack by María Maynar

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María Maynar García
[Zaragoza, Spain 1959]

María Maynar is a visual artist. She studied Fine Arts at the Sant Jordi University of Fine Arts, Barcelona. She currently paints and creates animations. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries throughout Spain and in Helsingborg (Sweden).

www.maynar.org

1’39’’ · drawing · color · 2009 · Austin·TX, USA

I aim to use the combination of simple lines, dots, color, and music to evoke a feeling.
The animation is hand drawn, on a computer.

Soundtrack by Dave Merson Hess

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Dax Norman
[Houston·TX, USA 1980]

Born and raised in Houston·TX, Dax Norman began drawing at a young age, and never stopped. Always looking for new ways of creative expression, Dax hopes to redefine what a 21st century artist can be. He holds two bachelor degrees: one in Advertising from the University of Texas - Austin, and the other in Computer Animation from Ringling School of Art and Design.
Dax's paintings are currently showing in galleries in San Francisco and Houston, while his animations have been shown at numerous festivals worldwide. Dax currently resides in Austin·TX with his lovely wife, Karen.

http://daxnorman.com

3’03’’ · cgi · color · 2007 · Ludwigsburg, Germany

Herbstlaub is a coming-of-age-road-movie of a dot. During my studies, some colleagues and I sometimes met in the afternoon/night to sing, clear our heads from the projects and annoy other students with our voices. It was a short endeavor, but still fun. When I decided to make my own diploma film (in panic - I had 3 weeks left, because my main focus were two other, non-personal projects), I thought it would be a nice idea to gather the "choir" one last time. Two of the singers and I did some initial musical experimentation, then Philipp came along. He did the final score, and even agreed (reluctantly? ;) ) to using our non-professional voices for it. The rest was freestyle 3D animation...

Soundtrack by Philipp Noll
Philipp Noll plays piano, some cello and sings from time to time. He studied classical piano, music theory and new media at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, and after that, filmscoring and sound design at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. He composes and arranges for film and television.

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Oliver Vogel
[Karlsruhe, Germany 1979]

After an apprenticeship as a media designer, Oliver worked for a year as a sound engineer. Until 2007 he studied Animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Next to some weird short films he created, he specialized in VFX and enjoys playing with simple graphics and visual compositions. These preferences and the surprising rise -and unsurprising fall- of the Animation Institute's Choir 'Hölle, Hölle, Hölle, Hölle' led to the graduation film "Autumn Leaves".

www.dreidee.org

8’30’’ · cgi · color · 2008 · Leicester, UK

The continuous animation of nearly 12,000 individual points and the transformation of one feedback synthesis process render delicate states hovering between visibility and invisibility, audibility and silence, order and uncertainty. A critical mass of stability and pattern coalesces into solidity, only to melt away. The visuals were created with a custom-programmed plug-in for Apple's Motion 2 software. The music was created with custom SuperCollider code implementing specially modified digital feedback loops, controlled by algorithms written in MAX/MSP.

Soundtrack by Bret Battey

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Bret Battey
[Seattle·WA, USA 1967]

Creates electronic, acoustic and multimedia concert works and installations. He has been a Fulbright Fellow to India and a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and he has received recognitions and prizes from Austria's Prix Ars Electronica, France's Bourges Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique, Spain's Punto y Raya Festival, Abstracta Cinema of Rome, and Amsterdam Film eXperience for his sound and image compositions. He is a Senior Lecturer with the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre at De Montfort University, UK.

http://BatHatMedia.com

3’54’’ · cgi · b&w · 2009 · Barcelona, Spain

An abstract piece about a hypothetical visual contact with raw-data streams. Adobe AfterEffects was used to create the dot·line looping movements. Then the piece was played in real time applying some audio and video effects on the created loops. Each video loop contains its corresponding audio layer to facilitate the synchronicity. Some of the applied effects in the video loops react to the soundwaves. The sound files were chosen from the loop-libraries provided by Future Music and Computer Music. The real-time software is Resolume Avenue, running on Macintosh.

Soundtrack by Joel Martínez Villena

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Joel Martínez Villena
_Sphunkgrafix
[Badalona, Spain 1967]

BA in Computing Design and Multimedia at the ESI (Escola de Sistemes Informàtics) in Barcelona. MA in Digital Video at the Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. MA in Motion Graphics at BAU (Barcelona). He’s also undertaking several seminars and Workshops by renowned specialists in different disciplines. He performed as a Vj with Eloi (Telonoika) & David (Lectrovision) at The Loft (Barcelona), together with renowned Dj Phil Hartnoll (ex Orbital). He worked at the Pacha Club in Barcelona and performed as a Vj at several parties.

www.myspace.com/sphunkgrafix

0’31’’ · stop-motion · color · 2008-09 · Bilbao, Spain

Stop-motion animation with lights. Non-infographic pixilation using a beam of natural light.

Soundtrack by Xabat Lertxundi

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Zaloa Ipiña Bidaurrazaga
[Bilbao · Spain 1986]
BA in Fine Arts from the UPV Bilbao, where she collaborated in the Drawing Department, lithography area. Interested in Fine Arts, she underwent many courses in Lithography, Calcography, etc., under artists such as Baroja Collet and Don Herbert. MA in Contemporary Graphic Art at the Fundación CIEC in La Coruña. Her work has been shown in many individual exhibitions like Getxoarte: "Salón de las artes emergentes" (2007), and in collective ones, like INGRÁFICA (Cuenca) and Arteleku (San Sebastián) in 2008. She’s been a finalist for the IX El Mundo’s “El Cultural” Photography Award.

2’28’’ · cgi · b&w · 2009 · San Francisco·CA, USA

Interstices 8.17.09 is from a series of pieces created using PSHIVA, a real-time performance system for audio-visual improvisation/composition. A particle system simulation is manipulated using a control interface, to evoke the rich tactile and nuanced gestures typical of non-idiomatic music improvisation. While the PSHIVA software is also able to import and work with images, Interstices 8.17.09 adheres to the restrictions of the Punto y Raya Festival in avoiding figuration.
Dedicated to Irving Rosenthal; from Sheeper: "I lift mine arms and cause the Northern Lights to glow and spiral with my magic finger.

Soundtrack by Bill Hsu

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Bill Hsu
[San Francisco·CA, USA 1962]

Bill Hsu has built systems, tools, installations and compositions in collaboration with Peter van Bergen, John Butcher, James Fei, Matt Heckert, and Lynn Hershman, among others. Recent performances include at NIME 2007 (New York), MIX Festival 2007 (New York), Fete Quaqua 2008 (London), and Harvestworks Inside Festival 2009 (New York). An earlier piece in the Interstices series premiered in July 2009 at the Sound and Music Computing Conference in Porto, Portugal.

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~whsu/art.html

3’05’’ · cgi · color · 2009 · Buenos Aires, Argentina

The film was created using Adobe Flash CS3. Vector graphics were animated; the film composition was improvised while listening to the soundtrack.

Soundtrack by Nortec Collective, Average White Band

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Lucas Gonzalez
[Buenos Aires, Argentina 1993]

Lucas Gonzalez was born on January 27th 1993 in Ituzaingó, Buenos Aires. He’s the youngest director in the competition :)

2’15’’ · cgi · color · 2002 · Altadena·CA, USA

This video is a piece of pure visual music: a synchronous visual and musical canon. I composed the music and visuals simultaneously with the intention of creating a visual sequence that mirrors a musical sequence and form. "Canon" is my first proof of this visual music theory, of closely matching visual and musical gesture. Each musical phrase corresponds to a visual movement: in this case, a filling of the visual plane with a color. The color fields are flat, corresponding to an unadorned melody, and the animated transitions give a visual form to the musical form. The animation is offset in time and composited atop itself to create a visual analog to a musical canon. Each visual layer fills the plane just as each musical tone of each voice is heard. Harmony of counterpoint is achieved visually with these overlapping layers. Is this what chords look like?

Soundtrack by J-Walt

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J-Walt
[Evanston·IL, USA 1965]

J-Walt is an interactive designer, filmmaker, graphic artist, and composer. He has been at the forefront of interactive art and computer performance, expanding the uses of computer animation into uncharted territories. He performs his cutting-edge Spontaneous Fantasia shows in theaters worldwide. He is an award-winning pioneer of computer-generated puppetry, having created many digital puppets over the years. In March of 2006, he won a Technical Academy Award for his development of a real-time pre-visualization system.

http://spontaneousfantasia.com

2’04’’ · cgi, video comp. · b&w · 2009 · Barcelona·Spain, Porto·Portugal

This video is about the communication between man and machine. It’s the visualization of machines’ impulses, actions and language. It consists of the algorithmic generation of straight and curved lines in Processing, which were later edited and sync’d with the soundtrack.

Soundtrack by Andre Sousa
http://soundcloud.com/agent-boogie
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Rodrigo Carvalho
[Porto, Portugal 1983]

Graduated in Design from the Aveiro University in Portugal, 2005. After studying Communication and Media Arts with the Leonardo DaVinci Program in Madrid, he was invited to stay working as a graphic designer. After living for three years in Madrid, he moved to Barcelona to undertake a Master in Digital Arts.

www.visiophone-lab.com

3’24’’ · cgi · color · 2008 · Edmonton·AB, Canada

The film is based on a series of changing patterns generated by a computer program using the Java. The patterns evolve from one into another based on mathematical rules or algorithms. The sequence of images where then captured as single frames and further enhanced and manipulated using Adobe After Effects. A sound track was composed using open source sound loops and the changing images synchronized to a music track. The film attempts to visualize sound.
Other screenings to date:
 - Official Selection, The International Festival of Cinema and Technology, Feb, 6-8, 2009, Los Angeles·CA, USA.
 - Official Selection, Fear no Film Festival (Utah Arts Festival), June 25-28, 2009, Salt Lake City·UT, USA.

Soundtrack by John Osborne

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John Osborne
[London · England 1944]

My formal training is in Chemical Engineering and I have retired from a career in research with a multinational chemical corporation in Canada and the USA. However, I have also pursued personal explorations in art and animation since 1968. I began working with computer animation in London (England) in the early 1970's on a hybrid analogue computer. Much more recently I began exploring pattern generation using evolutionary algorithms programming in the Java language to create computer images. I have used these patterns for 2-D art and am now working on using animation techniques with the generated patterns. I compose most of the sound tracks for my films.

 

5’12’’ · cgi · b&w · 2008 · New York·NY · USA

"Pneuma" is based on growth patterns generated by cellular automata software, processed in Adobe After Effects to create constantly changing structures ranging from the crystalline to the architectural. The soundtrack is a live improvisation on the Buchla 200e analog modular synthesizer, controlled by the Haken Audio Continuum Fingerboard fretless keyboard controller. This HD version was rendered in May, 2008.

Warning: "Pneuma" displays an intense, periodic flicker pattern that some may find uncomfortable. Those subject to seizures should not view this film.

Soundtrack by Richard Lainhart

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Richard Lainhart
[Vestal·NY · United States 1953]

Richard Lainhart is an award-winning composer, author, and filmmaker - a digital artisan who works with sonic and visual data. Since childhood, he's been interested in natural processes such as waves, flames and clouds, in harmonics and harmony, and in creative interactions with machines, using them as compositional methods to present sounds that are as beautiful as he can make them. Lainhart's animations and films have been shown in the US, Canada, Germany and Korea, and online at ResFest, The New Venue, The Bitscreen and Streaming Cinema 2.0. He won awards in several categories at the 2002 International Festival of Cinema and Technology in Toronto.

http://www.otownmedia.com

4’42’’ · cgi · color · 2007 · London, UK

A graphic response with line and geometric shapes that react and respond to the composed soundtrack by Rob Lord.

Soundtrack by Rob Lord
Award winning composer for film, television and commercials, based in London.

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David Daniels
[London, UK 1960]

BA and MA in Graphic Design. Graphic Designer and Animation Director represented by Tandem Films in London. Director of TV commercials for Honda cars, Nike, Nat West Bank, HSBC and Toyota, amongst others. Recent work includes design and animation of screen projections for the Led Zeppelin concert at the o2 in London. Away from his commercial work, he develops graphic books and films dealing with the relationship of sound and image. Imagine your ears as eyes.

www.davedaniels.co.uk