Tuesday 26 February 2013

Finding Pixar


I recently visited Pixar, 25 Years of Animation at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. Gewerbe means “industrial arts” and I enjoy seeing the arts in this context, something appreciated for its craft and application in the world. It is certainly less intimidating, and you don’t have to spend the majority of your time trying to get the idea behind the artwork!

Pixar Animation Studios has produced such well-known films as Finding Nemo, Toy Story and Up, developing its own groundbreaking software to render computer generated animation. Before I saw this exhibition then I imagined that this digital world would only be created of itself within a computer. But the exhibition is mainly comprised of hundreds of drawings and sketches involved in the character development, in all media, charcoal, acrylic, watercolour as well as clay sculptures.
Surprising too was the degree of collaboration involved in creating the characters. Many different animators and artists drew up initial sketches and models of the same characters while deciding on the final look.

Although I appreciate the craftsmanship, I can’t say that I am a fan of Pixar. In the exhibition it is continually stressed how important it was that the characters and the world that they inhabit are believable, if not realistic, and how much effort was put into that. I saw a trailer for Cars, wondering whether to buy it for my son. But the idea of watching anthromorphised cars falling in love, adhering to or straying from the American dream, coming together as a community or dropping out just doesn’t interest me. I couldn't care less if the characters and the world they inhabit in this case are believable. They make perfect sense within their own world, too much so for my liking.

Contrast that then to Studio Ghibli and its creator, Harao Miyazaki director of films such as My Neighbour Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. The idea of collaboration and creative democracy sound appealing, but in Gibli studios, Miyazaki takes a leading role as director and writer and that perhaps bears upon the result, an uncompromising artistic vision. In his films there are struggles between nature and technology, the unpalatable and repulsive contrasted with innocence and beauty, the whimsical alongside the solemn. The characters are also believable within their own world but they also touch ours in their complexity.

 Despite this, I was not disappointed by the Pixar exhibition. There is a very clever HD projection, for example, onto a 10 metre by 4.5 metre screen showing Pixar’s landscapes. The film starts off as a wall of pictures each containing a world of a Pixar film. As the film takes you into a frame your eye moves between 2D and 3D worlds, the pastel strokes lift and separate into planes as you literally are led into the landscape of Cars, for example, or a 3D landscape of an army of two dimensional ants from the film A Bug's Life. This film illustrates well the unique approach and research put into each landscape aesthetic by Pixar. The film, The Impossibles, is reduced to moving collage of stark angular black, red and white graphic shapes, the accompanying soundtrack sounding like welding steel. The film continues to take you though highly stylised versions of Pixar’s films for 12 minutes. 

The other highlight of the show is The Pixar Zoetrope. Based on the Zoetrope in the Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo, the Pixar characters from Toy Story appear to come to life on this 3 dimensional Zoestrope.  Using 18 sculptures each slightly different to the last one, a strobe freezes the movement in space creating the illusion of movement for the viewer. 

I also found out at the exhibition the reason why the actor's who speak the voices get so much credit on the Pixar films, as the script is recorded before the animation is made. This is in contrast to the films by Miyazaki where the animation is made first and the voices added afterwards, making the movement of the mouths is more stylised.

In the exhibition I got the feeling more than once though that Pixar was trying to justify animation and its own particular form of animation as an art form. There is no doubting the amount of craftsmanship and talent involved, but why play down the fact that it sprang out of a computer division of Lucasfilm and the huge contribution it made to computer animation technology? 

It could have told another story, less of a chronological presentation of Pixar's films but a focus on how the technology it developed changed animated filmmaking. A story which would be more believable. 
























Wednesday 20 February 2013

Lido in Limbo












I photographed this lido in Bielefeld a few years ago. On the day I went by, a lot of hard work was being put into the pool before the start of the new season. Sadly, it is now closed and the council want to tear it down because they say they cannot afford to renovate it. There is a Facebook page to save it (in German).

Tuesday 12 February 2013

You Know You Know



"Hey, what do you think of the David Bowie single? Is this a subject due for exploration on Compartmentsee........?"

I do not normally respond to reader’s requests, partly because I haven’t had any yet. So I was thrilled when one of my long term readers, Louise, emailed me this with this request to explore the new David Bowie single, Where are we Now.


But as I am not a Bowie expert, reviewing this could prove to be difficult.

I turn to my friend Joe. Joe is my musical tastemaker. He supplies me with musical inspiration with his sublimely crafted compilations. If faced with a tricky music trivia question where my life depended on it, I know Joe would come through for me.

I send him a message on Facebook asking him what he thinks of the new single, to which he replies:

"I Love it and all of its Berlin references "


If he likes the song I know it will only be a matter of time, then, before I like it.


I first hear it premiered on early morning BBC Radio 4. I am trying to hear it over the general din of my kids having breakfast. (While my kids eat breakfast I am in the habit of dashing over and turning down BBC Radio 4 at the mention of rape, child abuse and serial killings. On some mornings I am up and down quite a bit, begging the question as to why we listen to it at all).

Bowie’s voice sounds all at once fragile,lamenting, haunting and haunted. It could break, it is old, but sings true and endures with powerful emotion to the end of the song.

I get up, this time not to protect my kids from the content of Radio 4 but to put my ear up close enough to the radio to hear the song at all. I have the feeling that a lot in my life is mediated in a way that is distracted, including friends and family, which is a terrifying thought.

The Today programme presenter perhaps wonders for a moment how to create the right mood with his voice to introduce the new song by David Bowie, that is being officially introduced to the world. The presenter, let’s call him Jon, is tired, beat. His children kept him up last night. He had a row with his wife. Reading the news everyday is getting him down. Is the world really so bad? Is it so terrible?  Let us imagine it for a minute his internal monologue as he hears the Bowie song he has just introduced:

Here comes Bowie, yeah yeah, and soon we will be back to financial news, wars and death. God I am tired. Bowie, you hit it on the nail, mate. This is how I feel. I should be reading the news as you are singing your song. Please God, give me the courage to read the news with your voice. This news is sad, and I want to remember or imagine a better time when there was hope. Your voice has a sadness to it, but in your voice there is also hope. You sing about Berlin, a city destroyed by bombs, divided by a wall, lives blighted by political circumstance. But you also sing about the constants in our lives, if we might just look for them. As long as there’s sun, as long as there’s rain, as long as there’s fire. Bloody poignant stuff, mate. You know it has really got me thinking about my wife and our row. The line, as long as there’s me, as long as there’s you. …..

Well. That was, “Where are we now?”  by David Bowie so let’s move on the financial markets……..

Don’t they know that I am dying inside? I met my wife when I was working as a correspondent In Berlin. God, what an exciting time that was, just as the wall was coming down! What a great fucking story that was!!!


On Facebook, I later see that Joe has 'liked' a cover version of David Bowie’s,Where Are We Now by musical experimenter and artist extraordinaire Momus. Clicking then onto the Momus website I discover that he is soon to play in Berlin in the district of Wedding, where I used to live!

Everything just seems to come together and I feel able to review the song. From Louise, to Joe, to BBC Radio 4, from Bowie, to Berlin, to Momus, to Wedding, it feels like the circle has closed. And all this via email, Facebook and the internet, without exchanging a single word with anyone.

So soon I will be returning to Berlin, with David Bowie’s lyrics ringing in my ears channeled through the medium of Momus. Or will I? The Momus concert is a secret gig, though advertised as taking place in Wedding. Curiously it may cost either 5 Euros or be free. 

The concert begins at 10pm but even if I don’t manage to find it I will be accompanied by a now familiar soundtrack as I wander around my old stamping ground reminiscing about what just might have been.

Where are we now?
Where are we now?
As long as you know
You know you know.

As long as there’s sun
As long as there’s sun
As long as there’s rain
As long as there’s rain
As long as there’s fire
As long as there’s fire
As long as there’s me
As long as there’s you


And I may not be in the know You know You know, but between Bowie and Momus and the city of Berlin, I do know what I can be grateful for.


Thanks are due to Mr Momus 

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Level Headed

Hungry Horace by William Tang ca. 1982



My 7 year old son has just got into computer games. It is a little scary how quickly it has turned into an obsession. But I can remember quite clearly my own fascination with computer games, so should I or can I really stop him?

I was older than him when I started getting into computers. It was the early 80s, and I was given a ZX Spectrum for my twelfth birthday in 1982. I used to buy computer magazines with pages of code on them, comprising of numbers, dots and dashes. I would spend hours typing these into my computer, even though the result would be a stick figure moving across the screen. After 4 hours of imputing, the computer might show up an error, which meant I had made a tiny mistake somewhere. Then I would have to scour through what I had done once more to find the mistake. Sometimes I never found it and had to give up.

Games were on tape cassettes. You would have to put them into a cassette recorder which was plugged into the computer. The screen would flash red to blue to the sound of a wavering high pitched frequency until, after about ten minutes or so, the game might load, if you were lucky.

A few weeks ago I showed my son an online computer game after he entreated me for weeks to play. Not long after this he was able to type in the website by himself and go to the game he wanted. Then on Saturday, I got up in the morning to see him and my 3 year old in front of the computer playing "The Hobbit", a computer game tied in with the Lego website. It is quite violent. Gandolf, the main character clubs everything in his path to the last inches of their pixels and I wonder if I have made the right decision. I see my son animatedly thrashing the keyboard. How quickly he has mastered this game, I think, and how natural it has come to him to play computer games.  What is happening now in his brain, I wonder? As he pulverises goblins, is the thrill in hitting the target no more harmful that hitting a target in archery, say, bringing with it a sense of achievement or satisfaction? Or is there there danger that being the master of this digitalised kingdom may give him a sense of power that he is unable to achieve in the real world, and thus make him feel safer sitting in front of a computer screen.

The scary thing is that in a few minutes I am as deeply enthralled by the game as he is. You cannot pause the game, and there are three levels to play. The soundtrack to the game comes back to me at other times of the day. I even find myself humming it as I go down the street. If you ever hear the music to the Hobbit game on the lego site, then you will find the idea of a 42 year old singing this in public hilarious.

The games that I played as a child come flooding back to me as I watch my son playing his. My favourite game, which looks so primitive now by today's standards was  Horace goes skiing. A friendly hooded character wants to go skiing. But first he has to cross a busy motorway to get to the ski slope and not get run over and taken away in an ambulance. Then he gets to ski down a slalom track. Not violent, but not exactly green cross code either. I don't know how this game affected me. I didn't feel the compulsion to run across busy roads after having played it, or else I wouldn't be here today. I don't believe that what is enacted on the screen desensitises children from rash behaviour or violence for that matter.

I do think though that those hours of playing computer games did perhaps have a negative affect on me, though I cannot be sure. The computer game used up quite a lot of my time where I could have been doing more creative hands-on activities. It created a routine and boundaries that existed within the game, and not which I could learn to develop myself. I had the feeling that I was doing a lot, whereas I was just sitting in front of the screen.

Today it is impossible to think games, computing and the digital world away. I just hope that I can help my son strike a balance between these two, very real, worlds.

What is your experience of your kids computer playing habits?
My first computer, ZX Spectrum from 1982