Elwood College Semester One
Teacher
"The classes are curriculum friendly, engaging, innovative, entertaining, high quality and flexible. The tech and materials needed are provided and the mix-and-match style of building a program to suit our school's needs and budget was wonderful. We would whole heartedly recommend these workshops to any school considering an arts program"
Teacher
"The students line up at lunch time to get into the studio space to start their work. This is a unique experience - we haven't seen such enthusiasm for any other subject!"
Teacher
BiggerPictureAnimation's work style is flexible and demonstrates clear links to the Victorian Curriculum and we foresee that the project not only stimulating new ideas but that it will also generate future pre and post-program discussions.
Elwood College: Semester One
There May Be A Bird
Created as part of a BiggerPictureAnimation residency at Elwood College - 50 middle school animation students were taught foundational level stop motion animation skills and were required to create short animated self portraits and lip-syncing pieces. The full project is described at www.theremaybeabird.com and is two pronged, including augmented reality embedded artwork and projected animated self portraits narrated by an AI which is accompanied by an original score and foley. Augmented reality embedded artworks showcased the student's secret messaged to the world and are currently being exhibited at IN.CUBE8ER Gallery in Fitzroy and toured multiple Bayside locations (JMC, ASTOR, ALEX THEATRE) as part of the 2021 St Kilda Film Festival.
The Elwood College residency project saw BiggerPictureAnimation successfully branching out into creative event exhibition, providing PD to teachers, new technology and interactive installation across multiple locations.
Words cannot express how proud we are of these students - they rose to the challenge and have exceeded expectations. We believe we will see many of them continuing on into various positions in the creative industries.
Please enjoy their animated self portraits and production photos below.
AN INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION created onsite and in COLLABORATION with ELWOOD COLLEGE, through residency with Regional Arts Vic and supported by the St Kilda Film Festival.
A 2021 interactive collaborative installation created by a pandemic, an artificial intelligence an an artist and 50 young people in Melbourne's south.
There May Be A Bird delivers meaningful meaninglessness to the forefront of its reason for existing, celebrating absurdity through examination of the self.
Within one installation augmented reality, artificial intelligence and abstract art come together to form an absorbing narrative which reflects a collective state of being in surprising and engaging modes of delivery.
Embracing the experiencing of organic patterns and stories emerging from unrelated sources, whilst blurring the lines between the real and the artificial - There May Be A Bird and, there may not be a bird.
Some 30 young people were asked to write on a post-it-note, their secret messages to the world summed up in one or two sentences.
And place them anonymously in a closed box.
Upon collecting their words it was discovered one note contained the enigmatic message "There May Be A Bird"
There May Be A Bird: We Tell The World displays the words they wrote through Augmented Reality in an attempt to mirror the strange and surreal reality our youth are inheriting alongside a projection of animated self portraits the students created which is narrated by an Artifical Intelligence which was given the sole prompt: There May Be A Bird.
Please navigate to www.theremaybeabird.com for more in-depth information on how this project was created with the student participants, to view the augmented reality artwork and to read our special thanks section.
