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 is dedicating his life to solving the problems of “fear” and "uncertainty" and has retreated into his sleep hospital, the Old Steine’s Marlborough House, to begin bold dream experiments. However, centuries have passed, and he has remained jealously guarding his discoveries (and his patients!) for over three hundred years. His only companion is the incredible and ingenious Dream Machine, the contraption by which he keeps his patients in their slumber.

In 2010 his youthful zeal has faded to bitter old age, disillusioned and distracted, unable to complete his experiment, the Doctor dwells within the mansion still. There is something he is... missing.

And, his patients? Well, they're done with this shit. They want to wake up...

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

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

Visit our website for all the details on the comics or animation open call to artists. We would love you to create with us. Deadlines are end of September and early October depending on what stream you enter.

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: these short narratives can communicate your own dream comics or illuminated wonders on your own terms (as long as it fits the size templates!) For those tackling the colour newspaper, please reach out and contact us, as we are commissioning key parts of the narrative, and would love to be in contact.

Dream Machine: Brighton Illuminated

Just finished the holding page for the Dream Machine site with a beautiful illuminated font by mooshpie. It's a good time to explain what this project is all about...

Dream Machine is BANG's 2010 White Night commission. Our idea was to see if a collective could tell a story around a place using a variety of media. We’re laying down a backstory in two comic’s newspapers, which imagines the goings on inside Marlborough House, an Edwardian Mansion house in Old Steine, Brighton. Then we open invitation to animators, comics artists, illustrators and musicians to respond.

The story itself is written as a fun, schlocky take on the festival theme of Illuminations. We used the melting pot of the Enlightenment era as inspiration: a time of invention and expert explanation of biological processes, discoveries that laid the foundation stones for the development of science and technology, yet—at the same time—there was wide public interest in the mysteries: in intuitive, mythic and imaginative life. The spiritual works of Swedenborg circulated around Europe in the late 1700s, Henry Fuseli's painting "The Nightmare" vividly captured the weird alternative reality of dreaming, and William Blake and his wife in Lambeth bore witness to hosts of angels in the trees of Peckham Rye. We grew the story of the Dream Machine from the historical interplay and brewing tensions between scientific rationalism and collective imagination.

The story we are inviting people to create is an alternative history for Marlborough House. As our story goes: 

The dream Doctor has retreated into the Brighton mansion with his invention - the "Dream Machine" - pushing away mundane relations, he dedicates his days to his important experiments that will discern and explain the dreams of his patients, and thereby provide a definitive explanation for everything. However, the experiment has gone on a very long time. The patients have slumbered through to the present day: it’s now 2010 outside, though very much still 1792 inside. The Doctor still works away, dutifully repeating his tests, yet deep inside, a fear is growing: perhaps his original premise was flawed? One thing is certain: the dreamers want to wake up.

Comics newspapers will develop the narrative; these newspapers will be distributed around Brighton in October. As well as visualising varieties of histories for Marlborough House, our collective story re-imagines Brighton as a dream city inhabited by many beings: sea creatures on the waterfront, the playful fun-loving cats of the North Laines, and stranger creatures too, lights in the skies above Brighton, presences by the old well of St Ann's Well Gardens. The comics narrative ends on a cliffhanger...

And the story is picked up and brought to life during the White Night festival with a live animation projection finale. If you come down on the night you’ll see animated dreams and visions pour out of the windows of the Georgian mansion onto the facade, and perhaps even meet the dreamers as they escape the building after so long.

The event will be soundtracked by a specially commissioned radio show, that we hope will go out live on the night: we are remixing HG Wells’ War of the World radio takeover, except instead of an alien invasion, the streets of Brighton are visited by the dreams and visions of its inhabitants.

This is a project born out of a love for animation, comics and cephalopods.

Keep an eye on the website as the callout will go live here: www.dreammachine.com

New Personal Site

My personal site is over here: http://kategenevieve.com

This Blog will serve as a space to chart the development and processes of the BANG collaborations. 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 Rachel Henson's Flickers: Off the Path. It is sad not to have a solid reason to run and leap around Stanmer Park in a smock anymore.

I've been working on this project as an animator / performer. You can see the results and wander the flick book trail in May. Tickets are selling out, so please visit 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.

My incredible colleagues at Plug-in Media are all shocked, but it must be real as we have photos: here are Dom, Juliet and Seb taking it in turns to hold the face of gold.

It’s been a pleasure working on such an ambitious project with this talented bunch. Fun too to make sound effects with my daughter in the bath. The Big and Small House is really an impressive world.

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

Brighton White Night: Future Machine

Future Machine flyer image by Mooshpie and "Toc" by Abbie Stanton

Last Saturday, Brighton entered the White Night. Night time in the city was given over entirely to experimental future visioning. A playful Autumn evening.

The Future Machine projections drew huge crowds. 42 animations in total. We've set up a Future Machine youtube group for videos of the event.

You will also find photos of the hilarious and chaotic light animation workshop on the Future Machine website. At 11pm, artist Jake Spicer took up the reigns, and he skilfully lead the assembled masses through a life drawing for animators workshop. Finally, after we had packed up the monster Projector and put it under lock and key, we got down to the Ocean Rooms for the Beatabet Collective takeover and Bunty.

We have had word from the council that they would like more animation next year. Already excited.

FUTURE MACHINE Collaboration

Sarah Bird and I pitched a BANG animation projection project to Donna Close at the Brighton Council, and we are happy to report that they have taken it up. 

FUTURE MACHINE is due to be unleashed on the streets of Brighton at this year’s White Night.

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

So, how can we imagine what is to come?

During the night of Saturday 24th October, "future" animations 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 vision of a healed earth laden with flowers and food, metallic dystopias, pixel madness, stop motion characters, sourcing inspiration from Buckminster Fuller, Hildegard of Bingen and SunRa.

Open to BANG animators and all who want to join in, and make like Nostradamus and look to the future. We encourage working with the details of the architecture in inventive ways. You'll find more info in the open call guidelines.