(Live) Translations from tom burtonwood on Vimeo.
Translations, projected / performed live at Three Walls as part of Chasing Two Rabbits. Thank you to Jacob C. Hammes for his awesome musical accompaniment / score. Big thank you to Andrew Rigsby, Travis Saul and R James Healy for their help with all things animation, Maya & Final Cut. Also many thanks to Shannon Stratton and Sonia Yoon for organizing the event and asking me to take part.
Translations from tom burtonwood on Vimeo.
Final version. Titled “Translations.” Come to Three Walls on Friday Feb 26th, doors at 6pm to see it in person.
first draft of the new animation for threewalls screening on friday, i’m really happy with some bits of this, other bits need to be tweaked, but i’ve got like 3-4 more sequences ready to plug in and a few more that haven’t been made in maya yet, but i’m liking the retro, glitchy feel to the visuals and loving the unfolding cubes….. now if only i could make these in real life… if you wanna see this finished and projected on a wall with awesome musical accompaniment hustle on over to threewalls on friday.
here’s a sneak preview of one of the sequences for the upcoming screening at Three Walls on friday, it cuts off a bit a the beginning and runs a bit fast but i’ll fix that for friday. Events details are as follows:
Friday, February 26th, 2010.
Doors at 6pm, Program starts at 7pm
Suggested Donation: $10.00
Chasing Two Rabbits is a special event curated by Sonia Yoon and Shannon Stratton that pairs animators with live performances by sound artists and musicians. Inspired by the experimental films of Norman McLaren, who combined abstract imagery (including scratching and painting into the film stock in earlier work, as well as paper cut-outs and live action and dance) with imaginative music and sound, Chasing Two Rabbits, acts to pair artists in both genres to produce a unique event where, rather than leaving art to illustrate a story, perhaps sound and vision will illuminate each other.
The program for the evening will include animations by Gracen Brilmyer, Peter Burr, Tom Burtonwood, Dana Carter, Jodie Mack, Tracy Taylor, and Rebecca Schoenecker with sound by The Chicago Phonographers, Chris Hammes, Eric Zeigenhagen, Steve Lacy, Frank Van Duerm, Kotoka Suzuki, Cait Stevens, George Monteleone and Broken Chooser.
“If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.”
New drawing / sculpture, as yet untitled. Pastel on paper, laser cut plywood, paint. Approx 16 x 30 inches. 2010
Holly and I have new pieces in a show opening at a new space called — The (Con)Temporary Art Space – in the Loop tomorrow (thursday the 18th) night. “An Evening with your Contemporaries” features art works from artists including Ed Marszewski, Rachel Marszewski, Emily Clayton, Theordore Darst, Henry James Glover, Serena Himmlefarb, Sara Louden, Chris Roberson, Andrew Rigsby, Douglas Burns and Holly Holmes. Opening is from 4.30 – 8.30pm. (C)TAS is located at 208 South Wabash, Chicago, IL. For a sneak peak of the show / space check out my flickr set.
(C)TAS is brought to you by the folks who produce Proximity, Lumpen, Version Vest and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, The (Con)Temporary Art Space is a an avenue for discussion, research and action. The former retail space will be used as a working studio by cultural workers, producers, artists and designers for projects they are working on collectively and individually. The Public will be able to absorb these presentations as well as share their ideas about contemporary art. The (Con)Temporary Art Space will function as a information center and a place to learn about Chicago’s diverse art ecology.
Holly has some work in UnCommon Territories, opening Friday night (the 19th) at Heaven Gallery too! So we’re pretty crazed this week, but if you’re out and about stop by and say hi.
Holly Holmes, Grow Club. Seeds, Vacuum Formed Plastic. Dims var. 2009
Permutation_495 from tom burtonwood on Vimeo.
Half way thru uploading some new drawings to flickr produced this last month. I’m really happy with the direction the work is taking. it’s certainly giving me some pause as i circle around almost fifteen years in terms of interest and output, back to the humble cube and all the variants and possibilities it offers. Look out for new installations, animations, sculpture, video and drawings in the months to come.
The focus of these drawings has been two fold (ha! pun). first to make some schematics for custom sections akin to tetris blocks for new sculpture i’m planning, cut first on laser cutter and then assembled spore like in the studio and painted. second to continue to try and solve the problem of making a cube flatten completely to a square a conundrum i;d like to realize in both sculpture and time based medium > which gave rise to a good number of drawings riffing off tetris like patterning and then finally some drawings taking the square as building block rather than the cube per se and of course comnig bakc around to make patterns based on the square too.
stay tuned. all will be revealed!
Permutations 1.0 (second draft)
Wow. this took forever to get in a complete form, scanned in and sequenced. somewhere along the road i lost frames 52 – 55 prior to scanning them in. i’m sure they are around here somewhere but the fact they haven;’t surfaced in day to day activity suggests they may be gone… 
eventually i’ll add some noise to this and sign off on it once and for all. i’m pretty happy with this but it’s more important to me as a stepping stone, a marker leading to other cooler, more exciting and mind bending ideas.
inverting of ground came from seeing Alexander Stewart’s recent animations of a similar geometric / isometric direction.
i have to say after a month or so of working on this piece i;m not really all that happy with it. in the spirit of keeping this public “studio” honest and complete i decided to post the animation. it’s hard to say exactly what irks me about this, i think when i started out i didn’t really think about how the different frames would relate in sequence, each frame by itself is exciting and stimulating, but seen together in sequence they don’t really convey the idea i have been shooting for. i culled them down to 7 or 8 frames that seemed to work well together from a possible group of 50 or so. without much further ado i’m going to pull this one off the animation stand and start fresh.
stay tuned.
pyramid / beacon / node
drawing for sculpture. pyramid / beacon / node. i’ll be remaking this piece which was originally made in 1997 – 1998, and lost. also had some wild ideas for animations. got to get “Permutations #1″ finished and made a camera stand, so hopefully soon i get it all plotted in, key out a couple more frames and move on to adding sound, color sequences and so forth. additionally i’m hoping to start some new animations using the pastel / paper, again should have something to show soon.