The edited recording of The Dog of Zone (2019) interactive projection.
On March 7th, 2019 I finally defended my thesis and received PhD degree in Fine Arts from Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland. It was almost 9 years long journey since I passed the initial doctoral studies exams in mid 2010.
DOG OF ZONE is a practice based PhD. The practical part is the interactive projection, the dissertation is titled “DOG OF ZONE. Gesture in digital interactive environment”. The project is mainly about finding a means of digital expression that draws from abstract expressionism (in particular from Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell) and to do it using both traditional medium (drawing) as well modern digital ones (computer animation and programming). I’m attracted to traditional mediums and workflows as well as modern means of expression (such as programming) so this project was an attempt to fuse all of the above in one, coherent form.
When I was starting the project I just wanted to broaden my horizons and explore personal interests concerning art, animation and programming. I didn’t think much beyond that. I worked a lot in the animation industry at the time and I felt I got myself into a narrow corner. I did not want to stay there, it was simply not enough. I started developing initial DOGS OF ZONE graphics between commercial projects. This was towards end of 2009. Around the same time I was encouraged to pitch DOG OF ZONE as PhD thesis by my former professors from Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. I went with it since I thought that having this project as formal one, with requirements and deadlines would help me in pursuing it to the end.
It certainly worked that way… I was close or on the edge of dropping it many, many times. I remember especially one moment in January 2017. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was bound by doctoral requirements I would have definitely dropped it then. Today I’m obviously glad that I fought through it. The whole experience turned out to be pivotal one and helped me in understanding myself and my interests in art, animation and computer graphics much better.
Now, the circle is complete. Today is the starting date for Siggraph 2020 - the most important conference about computer graphics that’s been there every year since the dawn of this field and DOG OF ZONE is part of its Art Gallery program. I couldn’t be more proud.
As you might have guessed, Siggraph is an online event this year. Unfortunately, it’s hard to present DOG OF ZONE online since it cannot be shown fully unless you experience it directly within the exhibition space. It doesn’t help that it’s troublesome to record proper video of the running projection too. The animation can be fast paced and quite stroboscopic with lots of sudden changes in brightness and that is challenging for cameras. I still hope I will be able to exhibit this work in real space but I’ve also started working on a “conversion” in VR which, I have to say, turns out to be quite close approximation of the real experience.
My Siggraph presentation will give a little bit of background and then show some behind the scenes of DOG OF ZONE but at some point I would also like to translate parts of the dissertation into English and publish it online. Siggraph presentation itself will go public once the event is over so look out for it in a few weeks.
