Parallel I
2012 | 00:15:53 | Germany | English | Color | Stereo | 16:9 | HD video
Collection: Single Titles
Tags: Art History, Environment, History, Image Processing, Landscape, Media Analysis, Technology, Video games, Video History


The four‐part cycle Parallel deals with the image genre of computer animation. The series focuses on the construction, visual landscape and inherent rules of computer-animated worlds.
“Computer animations are currently becoming a general model, surpassing film. In films, there is the wind that blows and the wind that is produced by a wind machine. Computer images do not have two kinds of wind.”
-- Harun Farocki
Parallel I opens up a history of styles in computer graphics. The first games of the 1980s consisted of only horizontal and vertical lines. This abstraction was seen as a failing, and today representations are oriented towards photo‐realism.
"For over one hundred years photography and film were the leading media. From the start, they served not only to inform and entertain, but were also media of scientific research and documentation. That’s also why these reproduction techniques were associated with notions of objectivity and contemporaneity -- whereas images created by drawing and painting indicated subjectivity and the transrational.
Apparently today computer animation is taking the lead. Our subject is the development and creation of digital animation. If, for example, a forest has to be covered in foliage, the basic genetic growth program will be applied, so that “trees with fresh foliage”, “a forest in which some trees bear four-week-old foliage, others six-week-old foliage” can be created. The more generative algorithms are used, the more the image detaches itself from the appearance as found and becomes an ideal-typical.
Using the example of trees and bushes, water, fire and clouds we compare the development of surfaces and colourings over the past thirty years in computer animation images. We want to document reality-effects such as reflections, clouds, and smoke in their evolutionary history."
-- Harun Farocki
Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.
Premiere
2012 WeltausstellungBerlin
Exhibitions + Festivals
Internationale Kurtzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany, 2014
Athens Internation Film/Video Festival, Athens, Ohio, 2014
Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, Germany, 2013
Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldernburg, Germany, 2013
Argos Center for Art and Media, Brussels, Belgium, 2013
Belo Horizonte Film festival, Brazil 2014
Festival Du Nouveau, Montreal, 2014
BFI International Film Festival, London, 2014