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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Snail Trail
Philipp Artus
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A snail invents the wheel and goes through a cultural evolution to finally get back to its origin.
The basic idea of the _Snail Trail_ is inspired by processes of exponential acceleration, which can be observed at different levels. Thus the evolution of life proceeds at an extremely slow pace for more than three billion years, until it suddenly seems to explode in the Cambrian period. The tools of human beings progress relatively little during the Stone Age until there is a rapid cultural development during the Holocene.
Nowadays, a similar acceleration process is generated by the exchange of information through the Internet. From this perspective, the exponential spiral on a snail shell may almost appear like a miraculous wink of nature.
The animation is based on a laser sculpture (https://vimeo.com/27659555), which has a somehow purer and darker feeling than the film. For me the challenge was to find the right tone for the film, to make it into something other than a mere copy of the laser installation. It took me some time to realize that I had to free my mind from the original character and to give space to an evolution. Finally, the film turned out much brighter and more colorful than I had imagined in the beginning.
Links: www.philippartus.com
The basic idea of the _Snail Trail_ is inspired by processes of exponential acceleration, which can be observed at different levels. Thus the evolution of life proceeds at an extremely slow pace for more than three billion years, until it suddenly seems to explode in the Cambrian period. The tools of human beings progress relatively little during the Stone Age until there is a rapid cultural development during the Holocene.
Nowadays, a similar acceleration process is generated by the exchange of information through the Internet. From this perspective, the exponential spiral on a snail shell may almost appear like a miraculous wink of nature.
The animation is based on a laser sculpture (https://vimeo.com/27659555), which has a somehow purer and darker feeling than the film. For me the challenge was to find the right tone for the film, to make it into something other than a mere copy of the laser installation. It took me some time to realize that I had to free my mind from the original character and to give space to an evolution. Finally, the film turned out much brighter and more colorful than I had imagined in the beginning.
Links: www.philippartus.com
Philipp Artus (DE), born 1982, grew up in Bremen/Germany and began studying art at the École des Beaux Arts in Nantes, France. He continued his autodidactic studies of animation and music theory in Portugal and is currently finishing his graduation project at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. His experimental animations and site-specific installations explore the manifestations of life through movement, sound and imagery. He composes audiovisual experiences that unite playful elements with minimalist structures, timeless themes with contemporary observations, turbulent acceleration with contemplative silence. His projects have been shown in various museums, festivals and galleries around the world.