Artist’s note: The installation Estranged Relations was inspired by the an area of Swedish bourgeois villas, in Helsinki, that had been left in ruin since the 1940s, called Kruununvuori. The piece consists of an assemblage of materials collected from the site, combined with a photo of a hallway, melted together with a projected still image, blurring the lines of representation.
(Images follow)
Artist’s note: Hair in my soup began with a random selection of ideas or scenarios – things that popped into my head or that I noticed in my immediate environment. While I was starting to turn them into little bits of animation, some of the elements started to tie in and make sense together. Though there were no logical connections in terms of narrative, I started to understand why these things had come into my head in the first place and that they were related. The sub-conscious mind is always one step ahead. The one thing I enjoy most about the process of making videos is to figure out various ways to animate my ideas. As my ambitions often exceed my technical resources, for me it’s all about being creative with the materials I have. One single technique never fits all the elements in the video, and I often end up with collages of still photography, drawing and video footage.
Vera Klute lives in Dublin
Artist’s note: I was approached by the editor of Some Blind Alleys with the idea of a collaboration: create a visual interpretation of a story by regular contributor Nick Zelasko that might accompany the text. Zelasko’s story is a serious piece of writing, but absurd. I made a few decisions on the basic aesthetic: to keep “the palette” small and compact, and to make the stroke making, in the illustrations, gestural and fleeting – I felt the story was rhythmic and, in ways, unhinged, and I didn’t want my drawings to stifle this. The original drawings are still together on one sheet of paper about 2m high and almost 3m long – it as a large, silent, standalone piece, and it makes no sense at all. Another decision we made, early on, was not to present the static written text alongside the images, mostly because that suits comic book art, and neither of us are comic book artists. – AD
Nick Zelasko (story), Gabriela Ailenei (voice) and Adrian Duncan (illustrations) live in Dublin
Artist’s note: Fish Freezing Plant was created during an artist’s residency I undertook this year, in Northern Iceland, sponsored by the Arts Council. The residency took place in a small fishing village called Skagastrond, situated on a northerly peninsula close to the Arctic Circle. I have projected images of my work onto an abandoned fishing plant at night. The village has many derelict buildings and factories due to the disappearance of the fish shoals during the 1980s. The work is also influenced by Icelandic mythology and the Northern Lights. The audio contains sounds I recorded in Iceland and also features a sample from Icelandic band Múm.
Lucy McKenna lives in Kilkenny
Artists’ note: we set out to make a simple short film, with emphasis on strong storyboarding, design and animation. The idea had been brewing for about a year before we arrived at a story we were both happy with. We only had five months to produce the piece, and we agreed on a more visually economic aesthetic. We spent two months in pre-production – designing, storyboarding and doing technical research. We spent the following three months producing the film, spending as much time as possible on animation. The work throughout was divided equally between us, both taking responsibility for each of the characters and the direction of each shot.
Ben Harper and Sean Mullen live in Dublin
Artist’s note: I went away for a year, and apart from cycling countless solitary kilometers, I used this time to sketch ideas for stories and characters. One particular lonely figure popped up again and again. During this time, my girlfriend sent me a half-English, half-Spanish arrangement of “Moon River” that she and her brother had recorded. I listened to it a lot. Many months later, back at home, the piece of music and my lonely character came together. The story serves simply to explain how a piece of music can be a nice way of remembering home. The result is a romantic-monster-Latin-twist Flash short.
Dara Smith is currently studying for a MSc in Interactive Digital Media in Trinity College
