INTERVIEWS / REVIEWS Daniel Althausen pictoplasma conference LINKS Favoriten & Freunde Illustratoren Index   review PICTOPLASMA CONFERENCE here you get my review of the 1st international conference on contemporary character design and art in Berlin, Germany / October, 28th -30th 2004. all began on thursday with the characters at war exhibition. the exhibition started at the Zentralburo. There everyone got his pictoplasma pass and further informations about the conference. it was nice to see a lot of characterdesigns printed out big on cardboard, i think a picture of it will give you the best impression of it. i recognized some very nice pieces like a helmet bird by flying fortress, the modified gundam by 123klan, the smelly by buro destruct and many many more. i think i wasn't the only one who had loved to take some of them with him. After i met dirksen and anne at the zentralburo, and after getting my pass, we went together along the character walk. you have to know that the characters at war exhibition wasn't only at the zentralburo but also at several shops in the city (for your information: we had a map about "who's exhibiting where"). Next beside the zentralburo there was the titus skateshop, and at it's windows you could see those really cool handdrawn heads by Berlin based korean artist Ohyun Kwon. i won't tell you about every single station at the character walk, so i'll go on to our last stop at the carhartt store. There was the exhibition of the 100 best pieces of the pinky design contest initiated by tom thrasher and steven house productions. Dirk showed us which pinky has won the contest, but anne and i liked another one much more, inspite of the winner was really good. after a short coffee anne, dirk and me decided to visit another non-pictoplasma exhibition about 40 years of skateboard culture, the exhibition was mostly about deckdesign, but between the decks you could read stories about skateboards, skaters, and historical facts, like the story about "Gator" which you maybe know. Personally, i liked the modern deckdesigns like the decks of flyings fortress much more than these oldschool illustrated ones. friday on friday the conference started at the Kino International, a wonderfull (i think) fifties architecture, and because it was a cinema it was the ideal place for a conference, everyone could see the screen and the seats were very comfortable. All began with a short and nice hello by Peter Thaler and Lars Denicke (the curators of the conference) and went on with the Annlee project on the screen. Annlee is a character bought from a charactergallery for a very low price. She became alife by the work of Phillippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe and Liam Gillick. At this shortanimation she gets directly in contact with you. She tells you her story about having no story and about beeing a product. It was a story about indentity and the role of characters in our society and about their creators who have the power to give them soul, peel, and a story, or just let them born dead, like annlee was supposed to. At the end, she dies again, and the circle is closed. After this, the screening started. the screening was a show of many different shortanimations. the most funny animation was the title 'rejected' by Don Hertzfeldt , it was just so smiple but so effective by it's jokes, i still have to giggle like a little girl when i remember this "silly hats only" scene, just awesome. the first lecture after the screening was by Andrew Ruhemann the managing director and executive producer of Passion Pictures. some projects of them you surely know were "who framed roger rabbit" and the creation of the virtual band called "the Gorrilaz". Passion Pictures regularly collaborates with designers and illustrators from allover the world, like Soandsau from france. People from europe will know their "we will rock you" advertisement for evian, which they made in just two weeks. After a short lunch break the lectures went on with Rinzen from Australia and the really mad Friends With you. Rinzen were impressive by their huge output. They have shown a lot of their rmx projects, which began with digital artworks, where someone started by designing an artwork sending it to another participant who work over that piece and send it further on to the next. Later they made the same with simple white textile dolls which were more and more modified. At the cafe moskau they made a workshop with the same concept with white pillows later that day. 'WE ARE FRIENDS WITH YOU YOU YOU' that's how Friends With You started their presentation. they were dressed up in full body suites in which they danced (very wicked) to their intro. you had to be there. a really fun raising action, which ends with throwing packages of stickers into the crowd. after a short redressing they began with a presentation of their work, like a really really weird nike advertisement and a public art installation in manhattan. A short break later, the lectures went on at the cafe moskau where it was just not so comfortable like at kino international, but it was ok, just ummm these plastic seats were not good for my untrained back, you know. Gary Baseman began with makin some fun about Friends With You by playing with his own toy in front of the camera and saying 'I am the wizzard of happiness' what was a quote from the Friends With You presentation. Baseman started his presentation with old pictures of his parents who were u.s. emigrants from europe. Further on he shows a bit of his feature film "Teacher's pet" which he created for "a small company you probably know, called Disney". Derrick Hodgson showed us many of his scribbles and screenprinted characters. it was interesting to see how his life took influence to his art, for an example he told us a story were he was at some place where he watched a couple of old people licking some soft icecream and when he came home he had to draw these grannies licking softice. In the same way it was interesting to see how he handle with his characters as a sort of shapes to form new images by combining them in several ways and compositions. the last lecture on that day was hold by Tei Ryosuke from Furi Furi Company, it was funny because his english was even worse than mine. his main message was that he want's to create characters that make people HAPPY. After a short introduction of the company's stuff he talked about the 'Girl Power Manifesto' project what has sadly failed. it was planned to be a japanese girlybrand with the targetgroup of 13 to 17 years old girls, but the girl power manifesto shop had to be closed not long after founding the brand. Tei Ryosuke was very sad about that so he just left that chapter behind him and went on by showing us several design-toys they made. At the following big break till the Party at the "Palast der Republik" started i met tom and talked a lot about the pinky design contest and about design-toys in general. The party was a real fun, i drunk a lot of becks and some caipirinha and danced a lot to electronic music and visuals by buro destruct. there i met dirksen and anne again, who left the party about an hour earlier than me. saturday After having just 2 hours of sleep the last day of the conference started again with screenings at the kino international. Philip Hunt from studioAka showed up several animations they've made. really cool stuff, you have to visit their homepage, where you can watch a lot of their animations. Very impressive and really awesome was their award winning shortanimation 'JOJO in the stars', which they made, in compensation of that colorfull commercial animations, in black and white, if you have the chance to see this short movie somewhere you have to watch it. you'll love it. Francois Chalet hold his lecture through an interactive character, while he was hiding behind the stage. Because he had some problems with english too, he just said the words he don't know in german, nevertheless i think almost everyone could understand him. he was one of the less who shows how he works with a recorded workflow in freehand. his animations he only makes with flash. he showed several of his latest work were he's combining his characters with architectural photographies. because dirk left the conference after the lecture of francois chalet i've got no pictures of the following lectures. Doma Collective is a design collective from argentinia. their logo is a cow in a circle, and they play a lot with the images of cows, because as everyone knows cows were the most 'produced' and exported 'product' from argentinia. They made this interesting project with the ronald mcDonald character to criticise their political sytem. So they printed a lot of stickers with ronalds head (with sun glasses and sharpedged teeth) and the claim "ronald for president". Also very interesting was to see how genevieve gauckler works. She collects interesting shapes from everywhere she can, like ornaments and symbols. These shapes she reorganizes and combines again and again to create many different characters. she showed us also some pictures of her book called "family tree". sadly it's only available in french, but the story seems to be really weird and interesting, i hope someday it will be translated into german. the lecture of christian montenegro i hardly couldn't follow, because he sadly can't speak english and had to be translated by several interpreters. as i sad, it was hard to follow, and i was very tired (because of having just two hours of sleep that night before) so i can't remember much of his lecture except of his wonderfull illustrations. The last lecture of the conference was by The London Police an artists' collective based in Amsterdam. Garret Chow and Stuart Chasmer were life drawing during their lecture to show how they developed their characterdesign. there intention was to create a simple character which is easily to recognize no matter in which abstract combination or variation they show it. later that day i spend my time with a really nice couple from munich, Mario and Alexandra, he was into experimental visualization of information with flash and she makes lovely nice chracterdesigns and illustrations, i love her badgets. a couple of days later after the conference i met kakenbok. with him i've visited Kai from eboy to get a top-secret package for fabu. Kai's home is very nice and full of lovely children who were very interested in what we had to do with their dad. thanks kai for the cool bronco-battle poster. So my Berlin visit ended with a real good pizza at the best italian restaurant with kakenbok and doob. the next morning i took the ICE train and went back to mannheim were i started to write this review for you, hope you enjoyed it and you weren't bored of all these "really cools", but, umm, everything just was really cool. finally it was the most inspiring weekend of my life. hope you enjoyed my review, cheers, Michael Fuchs thanks to: Peter Thaler, Lars Denicke and the whole pictoplasma team Lukas, for giving me a home for that time at Berlin Tom Thrasher, for giving me some "secret" contacts Dirksen, for sending me plenty of pictures he has shot at the conference (your shirt will be soon available, hehe ) Linklist: screenings, lecturers, exhibitors (not complete): pictoplasma Gary Baseman Francois Chalet doma collective Friends With You furi furi company genevieve gauckler derrick hodgson christian montenegro passion pictures rinzen studioAKA The London Police buro destruct mumbleboy neasden control centre boris hoppek Miss Van ohyun kwon eboy people i met and want to introduce to you: Alexandra Mario Anne Dirk koko testpresser .