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Computer Animation Anerkennung - Honorary Mention 2020

Serial Parallels

Max Hattler
Hong Kong is defined in no small part by its dense and architecturally extreme high-rise housing estates. This has been much-documented through still-image photography--an ideal medium to convey a sense of scale of the repetitive patterns of buildings. Photographic documentation presents a fixed reality of the built environment, which has become a stereotype of Hong Kong, ready to be consumed by tourists and instagrammers. To create a novel engagement with Hong Kong's cityscape, this experimental animation approaches the built environment of Hong Kong from the conceptual perspective of celluloid film, by applying the technique of film animation to the photographic image. The city's signature architecture of horizon-eclipsing housing estates is reimagined as parallel rows of film strips: Serial Parallels. High-resolution digital photographs of entire building facades are re-animated through vertical/serial and horizontal/parallel movements, with each floor or window corresponding to a film frame. As a consequence of this process of alienation through abstraction, new visual and temporal relationships are forged, and new movement is created, through which an entirely different perspective on the city emerges. What was fixed becomes fluid, through the spatiotemporal sequencing of repetitive patterns. What was literally set in stone in the single image becomes a re-animated film sequence of architectural flow.

Links: www.maxhattler.com/serialparallels, www.vimeo.com/maxhattler/serialtrailer
Director: Max Hattler
Animation: Zhang Riwen, Iresa Cho
Photography: Iresa Cho, Zhang Riwen, Max Hattler
Sound: David Kamp
Additional sound: Sky Kung
Sound research: James Banbury
Production: Relentless Melt
Supported by grants from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project No. 21609017)
Max Hattler (DE) is an artist and academic who works with abstract animation, video installation, and audiovisual performance. He holds a master's degree from the Royal College of Art and a Doctorate in Fine Art from the University of East London. His work has been shown at festivals and institutions such as Resonate, Ars Electronica, ZKM Center for Art and Media, MOCA Taipei, and Beijing Minsheng Museum. Awards include Supernova, Cannes Lions, Bradford Animation Festival, and several Visual Music Awards. Max has performed live around the world including at Playgrounds Festival, Re-New Copenhagen, Expo Milan, Seoul Museum of Art ,and the European Media Art Festival. He lives in Hong Kong where he is an Assistant Professor at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.