FarmKids 2007 – 2008

Farmkids (styled as FARMkids) is an Australian animated comedy series about a bunch of pampered zoo animals accidentally being shipped to a dude ranch. 13 episodes aired in Series 1 and another 13 in Series 2 (2007-2008)

Understanding the Aquifier : 3D Visualisation and Groundwater Time-Series Animation in Lockyer Valley

The Lockyer Valley, southeast Queensland, hosts intensive irrigated agriculture using groundwater from over 5000 alluvial bores. A current project is considering introduction of PRW (purified recycled water) to augment groundwater supplies. To assess this, a valley-wide MODFLOW simulation model is being developed plus a new unsaturated zone flow model. To underpin these models and provide a realistic understanding of the aquifer framework a 3D visualisation model has been developed using Groundwater Visualisation System (GVS) software produced at QUT.

Groundwater visualisation system (GVS) : a software framework for integrated display and interrogation of conceptual hydrogeological models, data and time-series animation

Management of groundwater systems requires realistic conceptual hydrogeological models as a framework for numerical simulation modelling, but also for system understanding and communicating this to stakeholders and the broader community. To help overcome these challenges we developed GVS (Groundwater Visualisation System), a stand-alone desktop software package that uses interactive 3D visualisation and animation techniques. The goal was a user-friendly groundwater management tool that could support a range of existing real-world and pre-processed data, both surface and subsurface, including geology and various types of temporal hydrological information. GVS allows these data to be integrated into a single conceptual hydrogeological model. In addition, 3D geological models produced externally using other software packages, can readily be imported into GVS models, as can outputs of simulations (e.g. piezometric surfaces) produced by software such as MODFLOW or FEFLOW. Boreholes can be integrated, showing any down-hole data and properties, including screen information, intersected geology, water level data and water chemistry. Animation is used to display spatial and temporal changes, with time-series data such as rainfall, standing water levels and electrical conductivity, displaying dynamic processes. Time and space variations can be presented using a range of contouring and colour mapping techniques, in addition to interactive plots of time-series parameters. Other types of data, for example, demographics and cultural information, can also be readily incorporated. The GVS software can execute on a standard Windows or Linux-based PC with a minimum of 2 GB RAM, and the model output is easy and inexpensive to distribute, by download or via USB/DVD/CD. Example models are described here for three groundwater systems in Queensland, northeastern Australia: two unconfined alluvial groundwater systems with intensive irrigation, the Lockyer Valley and the upper Condamine Valley, and the Surat Basin, a large sedimentary basin of confined artesian aquifers. This latter example required more detail in the hydrostratigraphy, correlation of formations with drillholes and visualisation of simulation piezometric surfaces. Both alluvial system GVS models were developed during drought conditions to support government strategies to implement groundwater management. The Surat Basin model was industry sponsored research, for coal seam gas groundwater management and community information and consultation. The “virtual” groundwater systems in these 3D GVS models can be interactively interrogated by standard functions, plus production of 2D cross-sections, data selection from the 3D scene, rear end database and plot displays. A unique feature is that GVS allows investigation of time-series data across different display modes, both 2D and 3D. GVS has been used successfully as a tool to enhance community/stakeholder understanding and knowledge of groundwater systems and is of value for training and educational purposes. Projects completed confirm that GVS provides a powerful support to management and decision making, and as a tool for interpretation of groundwater system hydrological processes. A highly effective visualisation output is the production of short videos (e.g. 2–5 min) based on sequences of camera ‘fly-throughs’ and screen images. Further work involves developing support for multi-screen displays and touch-screen technologies, distributed rendering, gestural interaction systems. To highlight the visualisation and animation capability of the GVS software, links to related multimedia hosted online sites are included in the references.

"Re-imagining animation : the changing face of the moving image by Paul Wells and Johnny Hardstaff" (Book Review)

Advances in digital technology have caused a radical shift in moving image culture. This has occurred in both modes of production and sites of exhibition, resulting in a blurring of boundaries that previously defined a range of creative disciplines. Re-Imagining Animation: The Changing Face of the Moving Image, by Paul Wells and Johnny Hardstaff, argues that as a result of these blurred disciplinary boundaries, the term “animation” has become a “catch all” for describing any form of manipulated moving image practice. Understanding animation predicates the need to (re)define the medium within contemporary moving image culture. Via a series of case studies, the book engages with a range of moving image works, interrogating “how the many and varied approaches to making film, graphics, visual artefacts, multimedia and other intimations of motion pictures can now be delineated and understood” (p. 7). The structure and clarity of content make this book ideally suited to any serious study of contemporary animation which accepts animation as a truly interdisciplinary medium.

ArtConnexions series

The exhibition consists of a series of 9 large-scale cotton rag prints, printed from digital files, and a sound and picture animation on DVD composed of drawings, sound, analogue and digital photographs, and Super 8 footage. The exhibition represents the artist’s experience of Singapore during her residency. Source imagery was gathered from photographs taken at the Bukit Brown abandoned Chinese Cemetery in Singapore, and Australian native gardens in Parkville Melbourne. Historical sources include re-photographed Singapore 19th and early 20th century postcard images. The works use analogue, hand-drawn and digital imaging, still and animated, to explore the digital interface’s ability to combine mixed media. This practice stems from the digital imaging practice of layering, using various media editing software. The work is innovative in that it stretches the idea of the layer composition in a single image by setting each layer into motion using animation techniques. This creates a multitude of permutations and combinations as the two layers move in different rhythmic patterns. The work also represents an innovative collaboration between the photographic practitioner and a sound composer, Duncan King-Smith, who designed sound for the animation based on concepts of trance, repetition and abstraction. As part of the Art ConneXions program, the work travelled to numerous international venues including: Space 217 Singapore, RMIT Gallery Melbourne, National Museum Jakarta, Vietnam Fine Arts Museum Hanoi, and ifa (Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen) Gallery in both Stuttgart and Berlin.

The fishtown series

Fishtown is a series of mediated animated works which embody artistic conceptions of ambience and explore the interplay between foreground and background. The series draws upon a representation of natural patterns and rhythms in the ambient environment and is produced using a hybrid style of animation process that incorporates motion capture, dynamics and keyframe animation to construct a biomemtic peripheral rhythm. The display of the work is a crucial part of the project, and contributes a considerable amount to the reception of the work. Based on the ambient conceptions defined by Cage, Eno and Bizzocchi, ambient animation should incorporate some form of ambient display. As Eno (1978) states, it should be as ignorable as it is interesting. The ultimate intention is to place the work outside the gallery setting, to provide a more neutral ambient setting for the viewing of the work, and therefore the use of an ambient display is necessary if the work is to be situated in an ambient setting. Craig Walsh is a contemporary artist producing work for large scale projections in ambient settings. Completing Walsh's masterclass in 2011 (Tanawha Arts and Ecology Centre) has been an important factor in arriving at a strategy for the display of the Fishtown series. The most recent work in the Fishtown series was developed during a residency at the Crane Arts studios in Philadelphia USA in August 2012, and is comprised of a screen based animated work, utilizing large scale digital projection. Documentation of this work can be found at the Crane Arts Residency Website: http://cranearts.qcagriffith.com/crane-arts-residency-chris-denaro

Made by motion, Series one

“Made by Motion” is a collaboration between digital artist Paul Van Opdenbosch and performer and choreographer Elise May; a series of studies on captured motion data used to generating experimental visual forms that reverberate in space and time. The project investigates the invisible forces generated by and influencing the movement of a dancer. Along with how the forces can be captured and applied to generating visual outcomes that surpass simple data visualisation, projecting the intent of the performer’s movements. The source or ‘seed’ comes from using an Xsens MVN - Inertial Motion Capture system to capture spontaneous dance movements, with the visual generation conducted through a customised dynamics simulation. In this first series the visual investigation focused on manipulating the movement date at the instance of capture, capture been the recording of three-dimensional movement as ‘seen’ by the hardware and ‘understood’ through the calibration of software. By repositioning the capture hardware on the body we can effectively change how the same sequence of movements is ‘seen’ by the motion capture system thus generating a different visual result from effetely identical movement. The outcomes from the experiments clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of using motion capture hardware as a creative tool to manipulate the perception of the capture subject, in this case been a sequence of dance movements. The creative work exhibited is a cross-section of the experiments conducted in practice with the first animated work (Movement A - Control) using the motion capture hardware in its default ‘normal’ configuration. Following this is the lower body moved to the upper body (Lb-Ub), right arm moved onto the left arm (Ra-La), right leg moved onto the left leg (Rl-Ll) and finally the left leg moved onto a object that is then held in the left hand (Ll-Pf (Lh)).

Apprehending the void: Using animation to interpret the genius loci of the Peel Island Lazaret

This practice-led research project harnesses the plasmatic nature of animation (Eisenstein 1989) to embody the in-between state of being of the Peel Island Lazaret on the island of Teerk Roo Ra in Moreton Bay, Queensland. In this project the genius loci of this place is expressed through the development of a series of creative works that employs the unique transformative quality of animation to push and pull at the boundary lines between what can be apprehended as the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’. Drawing on the physical approach of Czech surrealist animator Jan Švankmajer and cultural theories from Australian writer Ross Gibson, this study re-members and re-imagines the site of the Lazaret as a liminal, uncanny place. This study investigates how conceptions of place are overlaid by aspects of history, memory and the imagination and these discoveries contribute to the currently limited academic discourse around place and place-making in animation practice in Australia.