Dream Machine Project is Live

Full details on submissions at www.bangdreammachine.com

Let me introduce the main character and inventor of the Dream Machine, Dr William Hobton:

Our doctor, once a youthful inventor and a leading light of the Royal Society, has staked his reputation on a radical new method to make humanity better. In 1792 he dedicated his life to ridding people of “fear” and retreated within his sleep hospital, the Old Steine’s Marlborough House, to begin his bold dream experiments. There he has remained jealously guarding his discoveries (and his patients!) for the last three hundred years or so. His only companion is his incredible Dream Machine, the contraption by which he keeps his patients in their eternal slumber.

As you can imagine by 2010 his youthful zeal has faded to bitter old age, disillusioned and distracted, unable to complete his experiment, the Doctor dwells within the mansion. There is something he is missing. And his patients, well, they want to wake up...

How will his experiment end? And just how long has he gone without sleeping?

The wonderful 18th century Doctor character design has been created by comics artist Andy P. The image above shows the Doctor at the beginning of his experiment, standing proud with his patented Dream helmet.

NB. Just a note to people submitting comics, the only submissions that need to incorporate the Dr character is the 3rd root, the colour newspaper commission of a vision on the streets of Brighton. For any other submissions go wild with your own content, and don't tie in the Dr character, just create your own dream comics or enlightenment wonders. For those tackling the colour newspaper, please make contact first as these spots are being commissioned and we wouldn't want to disappoint.

Visit our website for all the details on the comics or animation call out and get creating. Deadlines are end of September and early October respectively.

Dream Machine: What's it all about then?

Just finished holding page for our Dream Machine site. I put together an image and the wonderful illuminated style font was created by mooshpie. Seems like a good time to explain what this project is all about...

Dream Machine is the 2010 White Night / BANG commission, there will be opportunities for animators, comics artists, illustrators and musicians to get involved. The building the project hangs around is the Old Steine’s Marlborough House. Our idea was to see if a group could tell a story around this building, using a variety of media. We’re laying down a backstory in two comic’s newspapers, which gives the scoop on what’s been going on inside Marlborough House. The newspapers will be distributed around Brighton in October, and the story will be brought to life on the night with a big live animation finale.

The story itself is a fun, shlocky take on the festival theme of Illuminations. We used the 1790s and scientific invention as a jumping off point for a narrative about a Doctor who has retreated into Marlborough House with his Dream Machine to experiment on the sleep of his patients. The patients have all slumbered on through to the present day, it’s 2010 outside, though still very much 1792 inside, and now they want to wake up. As well as visualising the inside of Marlborough House, the newspaper re-imagines Brighton as a dream city: we’ve already commissioned a giant Octopus on the sea front, the North Laines as a tropical jungle and a hoarde of naked people on London Road!

The comics narrative ends on a cliffhanger which the animation event will pick up and bring the story to it’s climax using the front of Marlborough house itself. If you come down on the night you’ll see animated dreams and visions pour out of the façade of the Georgian mansion. The event will be soundtracked by a specially commissioned radio show, that we hope will go out live on the night too: it’s a re-take on HG Wells’ War of the World, except instead of aliens invading, the live broadcast will report on the dreams and visions stalking the Brighton streets.

It’s a really exciting project and born out of a love for animation, comics and cephalopods. Keep an eye on the website as the callout will go live real soon: www.dreammachine.com

New Personal Site

My personal site is over at Wordpress for the time being: http://kategenevieve.wordpress.com/

The Mutual Itch blog will soon be re-born as a space to showcase examples of and debate around large-scale arts collaborations. It will also serve as a space to chart the development and production process of the next BANG collaboration: Dream Machine. Following on from the 2009 Future Machine, this year's project will mix comics, projected animation, radio broadcast and live actors and culminate in a live event at Brighton's White Night Festival on the 30^th October.

Flickers premiers at Brighton Festival

We've just finished filming the final footage for Flickers: Off the Path. It is going to be strange not to have a reason to run around Stanmer Park in a smock anymore!

I've been working on this project as animator / performer. You can see the results and wander the flick book trail in May. Tickets are selling out, so get along to the Festival Website if you would like to venture into the animated woods.

BAFTA win at Plug-in Media

Big and Small wins the 2009 Children's BAFTA in the interactive category.

The folk at Plug-in Media are slightly shell-shocked, but there’s photographic evidence, so it must be real: have a look at the surprised Plug-inites taking it in turns to grip the face of gold. It’s been a great pleasure working on such an ambitious project with this talented bunch.

Production on Plug-in's next big, interactive adventure is well underway. I’m enjoying getting stuck into some 3D animation. It’s another one for the BBC - due for release next March.

Future Machine = been & gone

Last Saturday, Brighton entered the White Night. Night time in the city was given over entirely to experimental artistic capering. It was one impressive autumn evening.

The Future Machine projection event drew massive crowds, well into the wee hours. We've set up a Future Machine youtube group for videos of the event. The whole programme was filmed, so we'll post the bally lot up early next week. 42 animations in total.

There are also photos of the hilarious and chaotic, light animation workshop on the Future Machine website. We designed a workshop for ten people, around a hundred ended up wandering through. We were pretty relieved when we could step back and let artist Jake Spicer take up the reigns at 11pm, as he skillfully lead the assembled masses through a life drawing for animators workshop. Learnt an important lesson about whisky and my skill wielding a pencil: as one increases, the other decreaseth. Finally, after we had packed up the monster Projector and put it under lock and key, we got down to the Ocean Rooms. The Beatabet Collective had made it their own and Bunty definitively rocked out.

Had word from the council that they want more animation next year. Already excited.

FUTURE MACHINE Collaboration

The gems at Brighton Council have taken up a BANG collaboration project I took to them. FUTURE MACHINE is due to be unleashed on the streets of Brighton at this year’s White Night. BANG animators want to get all Nostradamus and look to the future. How do you begin to imagine what is to come?
During the night of Saturday 24th October, the animations created for the project will be projected directly onto the façade of Brighton's Unitarian Church. I love the idea of beaming a totally diverse collection of visions onto the walls of the city. A 30 second alien attack might be followed by a utopian 10 second loop, a grey dystopia, pixel madness, stopmotion spy-bots shimmying down the front of the building, abstract jangle- it’s going to be interesting.

Abbie Stanton’s made a little animation with the Future Machine mascot she built- it's on the BANG site. That there is Toc, he’s a little pod, who’s travelled a long way - and he’s going to be travelling all over the world in the next few months.