Forms won the prestigious Golden Nica (highest prize) in the Prix Ars Electronica 2013 Animation category.
Forms is a collaboration between visuals artists Memo Akten and Quayola, a series of studies on human motion, and its reverberations through space and time. It is inspired by the works of Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton, Étienne-Jules Marey as well as similarly inspired modernist cubist works such as Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase No.2”. Rather than focusing on observable trajectories, it explores techniques of extrapolation to sculpt abstract forms, visualizing unseen relationships – power, balance, grace and conflict – between the body and its surroundings.
The project investigates athletes; pushing their bodies to their extreme capabilities, their movements shaped by an evolutionary process targeting a winning performance. Traditionally a form of entertainment in todays society with an overpowering competitive edge, the disciplines are deconstructed and interrogated from an exclusively mechanical and aesthetic point of view; concentrating on the invisible forces generated by and influencing the movement.
The source for the study is footage from the Commonwealth Games. The process of transformation from live footage to abstract forms is exposed as part of the interactive multi-screen artwork, to provide insight into the evolution of the specially crafted world in which the athletes were placed.
Process (Layers)
Credits & Acknowledgments
The video installation was commissioned by and exhibited at the National Media Museums ‘In The Blink of an Eye’ Exhibition, 9th March – 2nd September, 2012, alongside classic images by photographers such as Harold Edgerton, Eadweard Muybridge, Roger Fenton, Richard Billingham and Oscar Rejlander as well as historic items of equipment, films and interactive displays.
Quayola and Memo Akten – Artists
Nexus Interactive Arts – Production Company
Beccy McCray – Producer
Jo Bierton – Production Manager
Matthias Kispert – Sound design
Maxime Causeret – Houdini Developer
Raffael F J Ziegler (AKA Moco) – 3D Animator
Katie Parnell – 3D Tracker
Eoin Coughlan – 3D Tracker
Mark Davies – 3D Tracking Supervisor
Commissioned by the National Media Museum for the ‘In The Blink of an Eye‘ Exhibition 2012; with the support of imove, part of the Cultural Olympiad programme.
With thanks to BBC Motion Gallery and Commonwealth Games Federation
