Maja Gehrig on Average Happiness

Visual Music is one of the most historically rich subgenres of abstract audiovisual art. From its beginnings, women have always been working in this field at the intersection of technology, sound, and film, yet most of them do not appear in history books. In this masterclass, we honoured some of these pioneers, all of whom were obsessed with seeing sound or hearing images.

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• Non-narrative

In this MasterClass, the artist Aurora Gasull discussed her fascinating journey through what became known as Visual Music, abstract cinema, absolute cinema…; her personal motivations and tools at the beginning of this path, and their development until today, in chronological order.

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In this touching presentation, Pedersen describes the creative and visual processes behind three of his films produced by Mikrofilm: The folkloric anxiety of The Boyg (2016), The looping limbo of Zolle: Resign (2021) and the nuclear petri dish of Little Boy (2018).

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Interview with Olga Pärn, illustrator, animator, and director from Belarus who currently lives in Estonia.

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This lecture by Professor Maura McDonnell will give a light introduction to the emergence of visual music from early beginnings, through various technologies and mediums to present day practices.

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On her Masterclass “Unsung Women Heros of Animation”, the well known Animation Journalist, Nancy Denney-Phelps reflects why there is so few women in the animation industry, even though almost 65% of all animation students are female and why we all know the Fleisher Brothers and Walt Disney, but with a few exceptions, the women who blazed the animation trail are almost unknown to us. Denney-Phelps is a distinguished animation journalist and a well-known guest in many Animation Festivals. She writes an animation blog to the Animation World Network – AWN.

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Priit talks on the creation of his film HOTEL E (1992). How he got the idea, the structure of the film, filling the basic structure with events, solutions for style of animation and visual design as well as describe the work process. The master class is moderated by Ukrainian animation director Mykyta Lyskov.

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The festival’s creative director Hämid Shajarian interviews the participants of the National Competition category of Animatricks 2021: Tove Johnson – Jumalolento by Juho Maurinen (2019), Left Behind by Minna Eriksson (2020), Rinse and Shine by Iiris Korjus ja Katariina Haukka (2021), The Things I Saw: Monday by David Graham (2020), Bad to the boner by Robert Lönnqvist (2021), Tiedänkö mitä etsin by Ylva-Lii Wahlström (2019)

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The lecture covers animation in the context of new media and how it changes under the influence of other types of contemporary art, such as games, performance, installation. What kind of new animation tools emerged? How to use bugs and mistakes in search of innovation? How to use AI in contemporary animation?

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Candaş Şişman, an artist who manipulates human perceptions using different disciplines, talks about his multi-sensory installations that appeal to different senses at the same time, and the production processes of his experience-centered projects.

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In this presentation, experimental animator Jon Gillie will discue his early work in moving image, using analogue and digital mediums. Illustrating with examples, he discussed some influences in his work, approaches to abstraction, and the importance of sketching.

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Austrian animation director and media-artist Reinhold Bidner is working in the fields of animation, media art and games. In his Masterclass Encounters & Inbetweens, Reinhold talks about and discuss his artistic animated experiments in between various disciplines, formats and techniques. He will also present images and video excerpts. The session was moderated by Animatricks Creative Director Hämid Shajarian.

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