Salut from Video Mapping workshop
by Mika Koskinen
One month after the EURANIM Video Mapping workshop in Lille it´s good to reflect once more the course.
Workshop week was very busy and we learned much. During five days five group of international students worked hard developing pieces of art to get them ready for Monday, 14th September when exhibition was to be opened. Cheerful English, French and many other languages was heard when students were working with their computers. Luckily daily lunch hours gave a breathing space to talk about some others subjects than projects on hands. Students were interested in different schools and study programs and works they have done so far during studies. And of course all the funny details of different cultures were discussed.
Workshop was climaxed with video mapping exhibition on September 14th. Exhibition was held in L´Hybrid which was a local cultural center.
The theme of the exhibition, History of the Future, was present in various ways; some works were realized with traditional drawn animation, others were more abstract. But also the objects on which works were projected were diverses in many ways – sofa, clothes hanging, Guitar Hero guitar, Nintendo on base and bidee.
We were very surprised to see so many people waiting the opening of the exhibition in L´Hybride. The venue was full when the doors finally opened at 19.00. It was a success! Too bad we didn´t know French so well and we couldn´t understand what people were discussing about art works and how they liked them.
But people seemed to enjoy and the feeling was good. The director of the festival gave a short speech and he mentioned that we all came from the best animation schools in Europe. That made us very proud and we realized that we will be the professionals in the field of animation in the future.
The workshop was a great experience. At the beginning there were some organizational problems and maybe the content was not exactly what we expected it to be. But at the end it was succesfull and positive experience.
Maybe we Finns are more organized and work oriented so that we sometimes felt a bit frustrated because of the slow schedule. But this harm was quickly forgotten and after all we had also time to enjoy the city of Lille.
