Winner of the Best Animation award at the British Academy Scotland Awards, as well as Best Animation, Best Visual & Film of the Night at the Limelight Film and Arts Awards earlier this year.

Take a look at this clip from Jessica Ashman’s Fixing Luka and find out what all the fuss is about.

There are 38 days left – get yourself featured in our 50×50 promotion and in the running for cash prizes. Find out how here.

Irreverent dispatches from the frontline as comedian Phil Kay lands on Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2010.

Central Station captured the Scottish comedian as he discovered exhibitions, performances, happenings, clubs, gigs and  radon encounters and ‘did GI’. His antic were caught on camera and made into a series of comedic shorts, released daily throughout the festival and seeded through the comedy networks like Chortle, The Humor Blog and rereleased on Central Station Facebook and Vimeo.

We asked our members to get involved via Twitter, telling us the most exciting exhibitions and events that Phil should cheek out and giving them the chance to meet the man himself.

@Censta would #GIPhil like toe meet at Kelvingrove to check out Shrigley this avow?

“Leave me a comment or tweet us an invite @Censta and tag #GIPhil. That’s me – for this weekend I’m an artistic soldier. Sir yes sir.”
/philk

“Today we’re going in search of a white bike, looking at collages, making some flickboos and probably playing my guitar. Rumour has it, we’re also going to be followed by a BBC reporter. Stalker.”
/phlk

“We’re going to someone’s flat…a lady called Janie Nicoll. She invited us by tweeting at us. I hope she has tea. You’d think she would, since she’s invited 15 artists into her living room, plus all the GI visitors too. Might put a wash on while I’m there.”
/philk

“Exhibitions, performances, happenings, clubs, gigs and random encounters, Phils going to be doing the lot with Central Station”
/Censta

///

Watch Phil Kay doing GI here.
Browse our Top 5 dispatches from Phil here.

Read through these blogs for more insight into the weekend:

Thoughts from Phil:
And so it begins…
Art and bicycles

Thoughts from folk who experienced Phil:
Phil Kay Does G.I – Title Sequence Funtimes by Jessica Ashman
Sunday Somthings… by Kirsty Swain
Those were the days… by Kirsty Swain
My GI with Phil Kay & The Film Crew Pt. 1 (Sat) by Heidi Kuisma
Openning of GI with Phil Kay by Mathieu Sagnet
Very Funny by Kirsty Swain

Hello! Just thought i’d do a little blog post about a piece of work i’ve done recently for Central Station: a title sequence for Phil Kay Does G.I. Or Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, but that’s quite wordy. I made a little, lo-fi cutout animation combining my scribbly illustrations and After Effects, trying to get across the manic personality of Phil Kay and the idea of him zipping around Glasgow, experiencing bits and pieces of G.I.

It was a lot of fun to do and hopefully accurately reflects the spirit of Mister Kay’s adventures. Stay tuned for the videos! I’m quite intrigued to see what antics he gets up. The tweets from Central Station’s Twitter as they whiz around Glasgow with the man himself sound like they’re having fun.

///
See Phil’s insights from GI 2010 here.

One music video that automatically springs to mind is Autechre’s, Gantz Graf:

This video, directed by Alex Rutterford, focuses on a random collection of abstract objects, which move and shift to the pulsating beat of the track. Which is nothing revolutionary. What makes it stands out is the level of programming skill that has gone into the piece. Apparently the director stated that there’s “no generative element to the imagery; every three-dimensional object in the agglomeration was painstakingly and manually synchronised with a specific element or frequency range within the track”.

Almost as if he’s given each individual layer of the track a personality, like a weird form of A.I. But would taking away the track make it “lifeless”? It reminds me of electronic music instruments, mainly sequencers like the Tenori-on which merge visuals and audio so seamlessly that one simply can’t function without the other.

Another video that I thought of was Radiohead’s, House of Cards:

In this video, “Geometric Informatics and Velodyne Lidar” technology (or in lamens terms, motion capture with lasers) was used to scan the movements of Thom Yorke and his surroundings. There are no cameras involved and the images we are presented with are just data. You can see a ‘Making Of’ video here.

Radiohead are no strangers when it comes to innovation in their videos, but I think this is one of their most intriguing ones, just due to the complex work processes the artists and scientists had to undergo, resulting in something quite ethereal.  And I quite like the idea of presenting raw computer processes as something tangible, before our eyes.

One last video I’ll mention, before I stop waffling is Björk’s, Wanderlust:

A departure from the obviously computer based works of art mentioned above, this video was filmed in “stereoscopic 3D” and merges quite traditional techniques like puppetry with CG, producing psychedelic imagery seamlessly. The sense of depth in this video blows my mind and shows how old school skills can mix with technologically advanced techniques to create something completely new and exciting.

Anyway, something to ponder on!

Find out more about Jessica Ashman here.

/////

Mix-Blog: A bit like a mix-tape but with blogs instead. Read more from the series here.

But I will blog about one more thing from the day, which was the tour around the DCA’s Print Studio.

It proved a fantastic opportunity to check out what facilities they have to offer and what classes too. I never knew you could get workshops in Japanese Woodcut Printing!

The example work they had on display was lovely and really inspired me to consider screen and/or lino printing it up at this studio. I remember dabbling in it in college and naively looking into the prices of owning a screen-printing machine. So, I got the impression that this is a really good environment to develop those skills, amongst talented professionals.

/////

To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.

Hello CenSta-ers!

Myself, the Central Station Team and a whole load of other Central Station members are here at the Dundee Pop-up day and so far it’s proving to be pretty interesting. Art mixed with a sort of Anneka’s Challenge ethos, as we jump from venue to venue. Anyway, here i’ll be trying to fit in blog posts of the events and exhibitions I’ve seen.

Just came from the Cooper Gallery to check out the Public Image exhibition and was especially taken by the work by Liu Wei. His video installation was focussed around challenging the censorship of images in China, taking that particularly arresting photo of the person standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square and seeing if students of Beijing University remember this event. Their responses are certainly intriguing and makes me think how much we take our freedom of speech for granted, in the Western world.

Another one of the exhibits I enjoyed was the Patricia Esquivias’ work. In a video installation, Esquivias details the connections between King Phillip II of Spain and Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias. Examples of the connections included how many albums Iglesias has sold compared to how much land Phillip conquered. And the fact that Phillip had a traitor son as did Iglesias, in the form of Enrique, who tries to deviate from the Iglesias sound by being trendy (that was my favourite connection). The similarities between the two are strangely strong. It was a wonderfully odd exhibit, delivered in a humourously deadpan manner which put a wry smile on my face.

The event is still on at The Cooper Gallery, from 6th February to the 6th March 2010. Check it out for sure!

/////

To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.