Max Hattler - Experimental Animation Done Right

"I am interested in the space between abstraction and figuration, where storytelling is freed from the constraints of traditional narrative. While my films tend to be without dialogue, they explore the relationship between sound, music and the moving image." —Max Hattler I am going to post a little about one of my favorite video artists/ experimental animators, Max Hattler, as he is one of my influences. Max Hattler is an experimental animator and moving image artist based in London and Germany. Many of his pieces create relationships with artifacts of the past and present, or the relationship between form and living beings. Max Hattler performs live audiovisual works at festivals, in art spaces, and sometimes in clubs. Max Hattler was educated in London at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at Tenderpixel Gallery, Playgrounds Festival, Lumen Eclipse, Media Art Friesland, and Someonesgarden Tokyo, and retrospectives at Go Short Nijmegen, Image Forum Festival, Fredrikstad Animation Festival, Lago Film Fest, Branchage Film Festival and International Short Film Festival Detmold, among others. His works have been shown at hundreds of film festivals as well as in museums and galleries such as Erarta Museum, MOCA Taipei, the Marl Video Art Award, Yota Space and Gasworks Gallery. Awards include Multivision Festival, St. Louis Film Festival, Premio Simona Gesmundo, Visual Music Award, Animate OPEN Digitalis, London International Animation Festival, Videofestival Bochum, Videologia and many more. Hattler's films have been included in the touring programmes of Videoformes, Videoholica, onedotzero, the European Media Art Festival, Euroshorts, Shorts Attack, Fairecourt, 700IS, The Animation Show, L'Alternativa, Animac, AURORA, and the British Animation Awards. Max collaborates with other visual artists like Noriko Okaku, Robert Seidel, Motorsaw, i.m.klif and Protey Temen. Max also creates concert visuals or works live with sound artists and music acts as diverse as Basement Jaxx, Diplo, Jovanotti, Ladyscraper, The Egg, Kraan, Ocusonic, Mikhail Karikis, Dollskabeat, Fried Dähn, Mehmet Can Özer, Pablo Gav, Hellmut Hattler, and Vesper On. Let me add that I love Diplo. Awesome beatz. He has presented his audiovisual live performances around the world, including the Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo, Electrovisiones Mexico City, the European Media Art Festival, Cimatics Festival, Donaufestival Krems, Filmfest Dresden, SuperDeluxe Tokyo, The Big Chill Festival and London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. He teaches in London at Goldsmiths and the University of the Arts, Chelsea, and is studying towards a Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of East London. Max Hattler has also been on movie projects such as 28 Weeks Later working as a digital compositing artist. For more, see www.maxhattler.com

Max Hattler creates his work using a variety of techniques and methods, depending on the project. He creates works that are stop-motion such as AANAATT, 2008, and also works with 3D and 2D graphics programs. He also has experimented with hand-created animation as well. The images are usually projected either in a gallery as a loop, museum, in a club or concert venue, or in one particular instance, X, projected onto mist at the Kings Cross Filling Station in London (2012).

HIGHLIGHTED WORK - 1923 a.k.a. Heaven

After watching several of his videos, it is apparent that he prefers to work with dark backgrounds and impossible objects and patterns made of bright, neon colors that briefly pass through the screen or loop quickly. In one of his most prominent pieces, 1923 a.k.a. Heaven is a loop based on the outsider artist Augustin Lesage’s painting A Symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World from 1923, and is one piece out of a series (the other loop is called 1925 a.k.a. Hell, based off of another one of Lesage’s paintings). The original piece created in 1923 is based on spirituality and the ornamental traditions of various cultures. This version also captures the sense of a spiritual virtual world, with the entrancing visuals and sound effects.

Neon patterns of light dance and seem to wrap around ancient architecture in a digital space. The manner in which the bright patterns that form and move on the surface of the 3D objects insinuate 3D architecture that is too dark to actually discern. On Max’s web site, a reviewer describes the piece as a “building that is a machine – a chapter of Tron occurring in Ancient Egypt.” The patterns that form are that of technology; symbols for stop, play, pause, circular dials. The forms change colors from a warmer color scheme to cooler, more analogous colors, and the camera movement occurs by zooming deeper into the complexity of the architecture. The beat of the music is simple drum beat, mixed with a more synthetic digital beat reminiscent of old video games. The depth the piece creates in virtual space is spectacular and this contemporary version of Lesage’s piece serves as an infinitely complex, technological homage to a very important but lesser known modern artist.