Parallel I

Harun Farocki

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 History, Video games

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.

 

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Premiere

2012 Weltausstellung
Berlin

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

Related Titles

Parallel II
Parallel III
Parallel IV