Design Storytelling

Boy with toys and exploding phallic robot animations. This is the basic summary of the Robotica short film montage that I saw at onedotzero on Friday night (though there were a few fantastic exceptions). I do wonder that men never get tired of blowing up the world - real or imaginary.

Their love of flying debris knows no bounds, until there’s an explosion so great that it gets in the way of them destroying other things. This year’s ash cloud being a case in point, which pissed everyone off who was prevented from flying by the plumes of ash in our air space. (Ash Cloud Tales)

It is, therefore, with some considerable ironic delight that I can report the best thing about the onedotzero festival at the BFI, Southbank, this weekend, was not bombastic robots, but an animation inspired by that persistantly explosive volcano - Eyjafjallajökull.

Joanie Lemercier of AntiVJ created an incredible audio visual mapping installation which gave the impression of a 3D volcanic wireframe landscape through light mapping the wall’s 2D surface. Funnily enough, for the section that I experienced at least, the power of the piece was in the fact that the volcano did not explode, but just pulsated with energy and sound.

See short clip above, that I filmed in the space.

Beautiful, clever, captivating and funky, thankfully without an explosive armageddon. A deserved hommage to the powerful natural phenomenon that finally made the boys put down their toys.