From the Fifth Annual New York Digital Salon:

Richard "Doc" Baily
Trailer from The Game, 1996, Courtesy Propaganda and Polygram Films An exotic marionette that first appears to be calmly drifting through darkness is gradually subjected to violent invisible forces. The figure becomes increasingly agitated and suddenly snaps to a startling conclusion. The trailer portends a story of deceit and revenge. In creating this trailer for the film The Game, Bailey took an unusual two-step approach. After animating the first seven scenes, he then composed a soundtrack, and finally created the eight final scenes to match his soundtrack. Bailey used the software Wavefront Explore for this eerie animation.

Doug Pfeifer
Jack, 1997, 2:43
Jack recounts the story of a jack-in-the-box who realizes his life's dream -- only to have it snatched away from him. The artist sees this as a metaphor for life's greatest sorrows, which most often follow on the heels of triumphs.

Michael McCarthy and Jason Zirpolo
Sharing, 1997, 2:14
Sharing presents a short story of two siblings who discover the concept of sympathy for and sharing with each other. The artists use shapes resembling children's blocks and toys to construct their characters.

Martin Grebing
Ten, 1997, :47
In his animated short, Grebing provides a metaphor for living in a chaotic paradigm shift. He demonstrates that though one experiences panic in situations where there is uncertainty, unknowns, and inhibitions and that though chaos may ensue, oftentimes success is the final result. Patience, perseverance and dedication will resolve fear.

Pablo Valle
Candela, 1996, 2:45
Inspired by the way the lighting of a scene can alter the mood of a filmic sequence, Valle unfolds an emotive story without using words. Candela focuses on the cinematographic effects of lighting. Without narrative, Candela relies on the graceful movements of a candle and a monk and illuminating effects - both spiritual and natural - to tell a tale of perseverance.

Michael Clausen
F8, :37
F8 presents the classic tragicomedy of man versus machine. An old man struggles with a vending machine that refuses to release to him a much coveted bag of pork rinds.

Jason Giddings
A Dummy Affair, 1997, :42
Jason Gidding combines Murphy's Law with the dark romantic tenor of Romeo and Juliet to create A Dummy Affair. The artist describes his story as one of last-minute desperation where his characters must develop a solution at the eleventh hour. Without designing features for his figures, the artist cleverly conveys his characters' expressions through articulate motion.

James DeRuyter
Flux, 1997, 1:10
Flux is an energetic composition of rhythm and motion. It combines dynamic animation of unusual organic forms, bold cinemagraphic angles and enlivening music.

Steven Roselle, Uri E. Dotan
Creature of Creation, 1997, 1:55

Amanda Hoeltke
Nurturing Self, 1996, :44
Nurturing Self is an elegant composition of delicately crafted forms. Hoeltke unravels the tale of a girl's hesitancy in leaving her mother's nurturing care. By believing in and trusting her own abilities, the girl learns to nurture herself. In overcoming her fears of life outside the comfort of the womb she reaches the outside world.

Thomas Barter
The Box, 1997, :21
The Box emphasizes the inborn need to find fulfillment. It plays upon the human tendency to seek meaning to lead the way to clarity. The artist's lighting techniques delicately convey the emotions of the figures.

Serena Lin
Visible Traces, 1997
The artist finds that communication with others is largely driven by a need to affirm one's existence. The proliferation of computer-based virtual environments and on-line communication has intensified the need to convey thought and intention in ways other than through physical presence. Visual Traces investigates the role of virtual spaces in communicating emotions. Without a shared physical presence, subtle cues may be omitted or misconstrued. Lin sees her work as creating a perceptual theater for emotional call and response. In Visible Traces, she creates visual gestures correlating to common reactions of fear, anger and love. Her work is a journey through a collage of sound and layered images.

Paul Kevin Thomason, Jodi Whitsel, Randy Hammond, and Pat Malloy
The Green Man, 1995, 2:55
Simple stylization can produce strong emotional results. In The Green Man, an attempt to conceal one's identity is thwarted. As the larger populace glares down upon the man's differences, he is rescued by the innocence and perhaps naivete of a child.

James Duesing
Law of Averages, 1996, 15:00

D.J. Cassel
10,000 Feet, 1997, :32
Cassel describes the story of a bear sky-diving as a metaphor for one of life's lessons -- that all of the hours of learning and studying theories cannot make up for actual experience. The artist also raises the grim possibility that failure in one's first attempt may not leave opportunities for future experience.

Steve Baker
Galaxy Guardian, 1997, :38
Baker examines the trying moments of sibling rivalry in a lighthearted way. His animated short shows us that growing up is difficult and that sharing living space can be even more trying. Armando Lluch

Play Ball!!, :28
In Play Ball!! a young child finds himself in the uncomfortable position of being in the spotlight. This animation clearly shows that being the center of attention may at times overwhelm and terrify.

Rosemary Killen
The Maestro Plays, 5:00

Chieh-Cheng Chung
Woa (excerpt), 1997, 1:00
Woa tells the ancient Chinese fairy tale of the woman who sacrificed her self to save her world by using her own body to fill a hole in the broken sky. Chung's animation style is uniquely imbued with visceral color.

Matthew Lewis
Burn, 1996, 1:20
In a stunningly crafted animation, Matthew Lewis points to the perhaps overeager need to automate everything and the ever-growing myth of the powers of artificial life. The star of Burn is a deserted artificial life machine that originally was fabricated to automate an arcane fire ritual. The machine or creature must endlessly perform a cycle of life and death: it grows a plant, ignites it and douses the flame. The plant crumbles to ash and the cycle begins anew. Machines it seems, says the artist, have been replacing humans for many mundane tasks for centuries. But what about the more spiritual tasks? Will we implement machines to do those tasks? Technically, the artist puts his software (Houdini) through its paces: he employs particle systems, dynamic l-systems and expression-driven lighting and motion as well as standard modeling and rendering.

Shih-Wei Wang
Wonder, 1997, 2:15

Raquel Coelho
The Tapir, 1997, 4:10
This award-winning animation is based on a story told by the Tupari Tribe of the Amazon rain forest. The story, integral to the Brazilian Indians' mythological heritage, explains the origins of the Amazons, the tribe of warrior women known to the West primarily through Greek mythology. Coelho derived her design of The Tapir from her work in children's book illustration and puppet theater. The work is structured on the concept of the superimposition of layers. As the camera travels into the three-dimensional space, the nine different scene "layers" come to life. The figures are also constructed by the layering of polygons. And finally, the sound track layers electronic sound, Indian songs, water, wood and wind murmurs.

from SIGGRAPH Video Review Art and Animation Program I

ENSAD/Aii
The Roulette
Making love without a condom is like playing Russian roulette.

Lewis N. Siegel
Mandelbloom
Mandelbloom explores the relationship between fractals, flowers, and form. The film demonstrates the evolution of the Mandelbrot set as it evolves through is first several iterations. A new rendering technique, utilizing texture mapped roses, displays the set at fractional iterations to reveal the connections between the Mandelbrot and its closely related Julia sets.

Cynthia Beth Rubin
Inherited Memories
Inherited Memories explores the intertwining and transformation of photographic 2D compositing as it is extended into animation. Based on photographs from Prague, Warsaw and Krakow, it is a documentation of my imagined cultural past.

Barbara Schwarz, James Deloye
A Drug Against War
In bold comic book style, A Drug Against War speaks out against the ills of war.

Masa Inaka
Phantom
This computer animation expresses one's unconscious mind as collages of segmented memories. Graphics and sound were produced by the artist. A 3D sound system was employed. Infinite reflection technique was used to create the surrealistic scene and image processing techniques were added to create the abstract effects.

Kazuma Morino
Runners
Expressing the beauty of interacting objects over the time continuum, Runners features dolls composed of geometric shapes that rush around and intertwine other objects.

Scott Carroll
human nature
About mankind's relationship with nature, human nature focuses on one man's personal transformation.

H-Gun Labs
DJ Asylum
This animation looks at a fictitious utopian world and its constructivist style.

Emiko Miki
Rave Art
Like a therapy treatment with a blasting sound track, Rave Art replaces a linear storyline with a hypnogogic dream state. Set to heart wrenching techno music, it is for the "Generation X," who grew up on Rave culture.

Joshua Mosley
Lindbergh, oo, and the Trans-Rational Boy
A young boy constructs a perpetual motion machine powered by mice.

John Francis
Tug Wilson
Bulldog Tug Wilson teams up with other dogs to solve a problem that a nasty property owner has started: Building apartment buildings all over town, he has put signs on the warning "NO PETS/NO DOGS ALLOWED.'

Joji Hayashi
Faces
Forty-two shapes and thirty-nine expressions were used to animate these three characters.

Alison Colman
Deadly Mister Misty
A story about a little girl, her grandmother and an icy cold drink.

One Fine Night in Istanbul
Cemil Turun, Telesine Istanbul
This sneak preview of a live show to be aired on a Turkish TV channel features a belly-dancer model (Arzu).

Doug Pfeifer
Jack
Some of life's greatest sorrows snap at the heels of what should be life's greatest triumphs. So it is with Jack, a jester who finds that all good things must come to an end. No motion capture was used in this animation.

Jonah Hall
Open-Mike Night
Each character in this animation reads a poem to an unseen audience. The five characters appearing on stage at the "Red Ridge Hotel" are The Farmer, The Hipster, The Old Woman, The Nerd, and The Bellboy.

Jason Giddings
A Dummy Affair
Murphy's Law contends that if something can go wrong, it will. Combine this with the dark, romantic mood of Romeo and Juliet and you have the theme of A Dummy Affair. The scene presented here is a "must adapt" situation that requires a desperate last-minute solution.

Fantome Animation
The Giraffes of Mordillo
Based on characters created by the famous cartoonist Mordillo, this animation features smart and funny giraffes. 3D computer animation magnifies and adds to Mordillo's original vision.

La Chauvre Souris, Noe Prod.
Doberman Opening Credits
This 3D animation is cartoonish and provocative.

Vision International
Illumination
Illumination focuses on the relationships between desire, fear, and conflict.

Universite de Provence/Lakanal
Dustcity

Emre Yilmaz
Conscience
Using characters from Chocolate, a Protozoa short, this piece depicts the deep agony of being confronted by the Saussureian "Other" and the subconscious deconstruction of transpersonal identity that ensues.

John Lally, Valerie Mih
Pets
Eight different pets discuss their hopes, fears, interests and anxieties while answering the question: "What do you do when your owner's not home?" This three-minute computer assisted animation is based around a soundtrack of live interviews and other found sources.

from NYFA Computer Arts Fellows

Toni Dove
Artificial Changelings, 1997, 10:20
"I am interested in an immersive experience that triggers feelings of [viewer] engagement that can be used to intensify narrative and critique....What does it mean when a machine responds to you as a human being does, or when a machine produces a sensual engagement usually reserved for a relationship with another person?" Dove's installation-in-progress Artificial Changelings engages the body in an empathetic relationship to the virtual characters in a story. Changelings employs a technology called video motion sensing to track the location and movement of a viewer standing in front of a screen; the viewer's motion subsequently triggers unpredictable character reactions, changes in speed and color, and other mutations in video and sound sequences. The viewer can move back and forth between centuries in a universe with no linear direction, or can enter into a character's head, or into body, speech and memory segments by means of various physical behaviors.

John Knecht
301 Nails... No Air Loss, 1995, 7:00
"I have been making time-based visual art for the past 25 years. In 1985, I began working with a computer to process images and sound. I have been making digital animation with an Amiga computer that has resulted in a series of both single-channel tapes and video installations. My work has been concerned with issues ranging from television theory and militarism to a fictional construction of metaphysics.... I am in the early stages of a work based on the Buddhist scriptures, concerning the Six Lights of Rebirth juxtaposed with the art of shopping for a new car in 1949."

Alexander Rivera
Why Cybraceros? (excerpt), 1996, 3:00 and PAPA PAPç (excerpt), 1995, 4:00
"I am the son of a Peruvian and a Scottish-American New Jerseyan. Growing up on a bi-cultural, suburban, channel-surfing, post-Inca ranch forced me to rethink some of the basic assumptions about what it means to be a Latino, what it means to be assimilated and what it means to watch television. The computer is central, both technically and metaphorically, to my work, which addresses the politics of race in the 'information age' in a unique, humorous and ultimately surprising way. People of color are often left out of the dreams of the 'information age.' I therefore use the computer to carve out a place for people of color, particularly Latinos, in cyberspace. My body of work focuses both on current political issues within the Latino community, such as immigration, labor, nostalgia for home, and identity, as well as on the computer and its dramatic effects on American society as a whole."

from the Experimental TV Center

Peer Bode
A Few More Magic Words, 1993, 20:00
An accumulation of occurances... the spoken voice reinterpreting stone petrogylphs. Meandering across a find of electronic ruins. Text questionings across unknown cultures and bodies. Symbols, texts, layers. Electronic reinscriptions. Stones, bodies, electronic signals, video, digital, hand-written texts, sound, voice and computer diction... Peer Bode has participated in the Residency Program for over 20 years.

Jeffrey Lerer
Memory Box I, II & III
Memory Box 1, 1993, 3:00 Memory Box II & III, 1995, 6:00
Part I of Memory Box introduces the viewer to a machine that can sample imagery and construct fragments of memory. As we move to Memory Box II & III, the machine is made more elaborate, enabling it to handle an increasing amount of information. References to surrounding socio-political events and my evolving identity as a visual artist provide the framework within which the principal narrative develops. While not produced through the Residency Program, this work received awards from the Center's Finishing Funds Program in 1993 and 1994 and also a Media Production Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts in 1995.

Iron Horse, 1997, 1:00
Iron Horse is the first of three parts which will comprise No Scissors Salesman. My interest in painting has always been drawn to painters who produce what is generally considered to be non-painterly work. During my formal art studies as a painter (1964-70) I was influenced primarily by Rene Magritte, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and M.C. Escher. Reaching back to selected works from my early influences, 3D computer animation presents a new (and quite ironic) medium with which to manipulate the spatial concepts and object context found in these works. Made possible in part by funding from the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Artist's Video Category.

Kristin Lucas
Host, 1997, single channel video/installation, 7:36
In Host (1997), a young woman logs into an on-line therapy session hosted by the system operator of a streetside multi-media kiosk and under the eye of surveillance, she navigates her way through automated menu options, control panel at her side. My script dismantles the concept of the modular databody with dry humour, satirizing relationships between body and machine that are inherent within technical language (aging/obsolescence, implants/ upgrades, amnesia/memory loss). Kristin Lucas has participated in the Residency Program at the Center since 1995.