The Markus Wormstorm Diaries :: The Black Heart Gang In The Netherlands

Jannes, Ree and I, as in The Blackheart Gang, were recently invited to speak at a conference in The Netherlands. I was exposed to some really cool stuff that I thought would be cool to share with you.

We have been asked to speak at these types of conferences before in places like New York, Mexico and once even in Serbia. But this particular festival, the Playground festival, was different.

There was none of the clutter that usually hang around at events like these. There were no media invited to the event and no Agency-types lurking in the shadows; Which is strange if you consider the line up:

• Rex Crowle one if the creators of Little Big Planet: The ground breaking Ps3 game.
• Mark Walsh Animation director of Pixar
• Tokyo Plastic
• UVA
• David O’Reiley.
• Champagne Valentine

To name but a few. Now before I post any links to these nerds work I should probably explain what happens at these types of festivals…

Directors are flown in from all over the world to speak about, well, whatever that particular conference is about. Playground was mostly concerned with Animation, design, gaming and Real time rendering.

This is the little town of Tillberg were the festival was held.

This particular conference was aimed at students. Through the days we’d watched talks and at night the hand full of speakers would go for dinner together and we’d all get blind drunk after.

Here’s a snap from one of the dinners. That’s Matt Lambert flicking us the bird. Next to him is Dave from UVA, and Jannes, looking uncharacteristically happy, in the foreground.

It’s strange that as you get older and you begin to meet all your heroes and you find that they are all, usefully, just really normal people. Well, nerdy normal people.

David O’Reilly

David O’Reilly is this 24 year old Irish genius who, to my mind, makes deeply provocative yet simple animation. Though he is probably best known for his work with M.I.A. I’d like to show you two of his pieces. First up Octocat. This is what Wiki has to say about this interesting project:

On March 13, 2008, a YouTube user named RANDYPETERS1, a 9-year-old boy from Chicago, submitted a hand drawn animated video about Octocat, a red cat head with eight long legs looking for his parents. The videos featured crude MS Paint animation and a loud, high-pitched, child-like voice narrating. On September 7, the fifth, final episode was released, but featured an unexpected twist – about 20 seconds into it, the crude sketchy animation switched to intricately crafted 3D with an orchestral soundtrack; the whole Octocat story (and as such, the Randy Peters persona) was revealed to be by David O’Reilly

“please say something.” Is another one of his peculiar animations that has received critical acclaim.

UVA or United Visual Artists.

This company specializes in the research and development of various new media techniques. Basically what that means is that they can take a space and make it feel like it’s the year 3000 or something.

They use heat receptors and complex led systems to a dazzling effect.

biff

I didn’t really get half of what these three French guys were saying, but their works amazing. Have a look at their site [click].

My favourite movies on there are Raymond and 90 degrees. Watch Raymond then try deal with the fact that that is a student film.

Radical Friend

say no more, right?

These kids are from LA. They’ve made a lot of cool music videos and new media videos for black moth super rainbow. I love this video. Apparently they took a troop of young actors into the desert got them high and naked.

Matt Lambert.

This guy is cool.

In his talk he spoke about distilling images to its most iconic state. And then showed us some Porn and some other scary stuff.

We became friends and hung out in Amsterdam after the festival for a while. Him and I are working on a project at the moment for my song Uiltjie

Uiltjie by Markus Wormstorm

A friend of ours has a boat so we spent most of our time in Amsterdam drinking on the boat)

Matt’s part of a collective of artists who call themselves Bare Bones. They are mostly commercial directors who use Bare Bones as a medium to express themselves.

Tokyoplastic.

If you don’t know them, you probably cant “internet” good.

We use to have some of their prints at my old office; check out their site [click].

Matt, Sam (TokyoPlastic) and Mine

So yeah, I guess I have to conclude this somehow, so, lets give it a bash. Three things.

1. I had the distinct impression after the festival that new media is going to explode in the next few years. Whether its Champagne Valentine with their idea for bus stops that can sense your mood, to the futuristic cities envisioned by the UVA: The future is here.
2. The amount of cool stuff out there is daunting, but its all made by people like you and me. They are all just normal nerds (except for Matt Lambert who is a punk rocker.)
3. And lastly, in media, it really doesn’t matter what you’ve studied or for how long, it all comes down to what you can do.

Markus Wormstorm

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