THE ORDER of TEMPLATES / 2004

3D Animation SD / DV-NTSC 16:9

TRT: 00:10:00 / Color / Sound / Music by Ennio Morricone

Referencing external violence, and predetermined social behavior of individuals bracketed by society, I have generated the concept of Domestic Accident Investigator

Template. The traumatic violence is replaced by more symbolic domestic accidents, which are created by the blank template structure itself. The generated accidents mimic real life interaction between objects and individuals. The basic geometrical forms of the referenced templates build up the environment itself, and every object within it. Throughout the dramatic development of the animation, the template character (who causes the accidents, and imprint its collected data on his/her body), transforms from a comical, naïve creature to a tragical one. The character's body shape and movements morph by the weight of the accumulated data of accidents.

The completion of the template marks the climax of the animation, and leads to the breakdown of the system of the Domestic Templates. The structure of the template environment collapses on itself erasing all the predicted forms of accidents from the shape of the template, and creates a new 'accidental' one.

Traffic Accident, and Crime Scene Investigator templates, used to visually aid the collection of forensic topographical data. The merging of the inherently flat and two-dimensional drawings produced by the templates with digital animation formally posed a challenge to the medium's native 3D environment. The gory violence of crimes and accidents reduced to basic, standardized geometrical visual language corresponds to the 3D application's standardized and simplified scripted language, mimicking actions and tools inherited from real life. The concept of predicting the combinations of all possibilities that can produce human violence and tragedy within a crime or accident scene inspired me to generate a narrative around a template that does not exist yet (or cannot exist). Referencing external violence, and predetermined social behavior of individuals bracketed by society, I have generated the concept of Domestic Accident Investigator template. The traumatic violence is replaced by more symbolic domestic accidents, which are created by the blank template structure itself. The generated accidents mimic real life interaction between objects and individuals. The basic geometrical forms of the referenced templates build up the environment itself, and every object within it. Throughout the dramatic development of the animation, the template character (who causes the accidents, and imprint its collected data on his/her body), transforms from a comical, naïve creature to a tragical one. The character's body shape and movements morph by the weight of the accumulated data of accidents.

The completion of the template marks the climax of the animation, and leads to the breakdown of the system of the Domestic Templates. The structure of the template environment collapses on itself erasing all the predicted forms of accidents from the shape of the template, and creates a new 'accidental' one.

The original project was shown as an installation within a gallery environment. It included the ten minute long, projected digital animation loop, two 13" by 19" vellum computer prints and three, 2' by 2' 1/4" thick opaque plexi sculptures. The sculptures were fabricated out of plexi-glass, and were mounted on walls along with the computer prints. The animation was projected onto a silver screen, surrounded by prints and sculptures, which supported the content of the video loop. If the animation was presented without the accompanying installation elements, it should be presented away from any ambient light sources establishing an intimate viewing space. The video output of the animation was formatted to be playable in any NTSC DVD player, and to be projected by any digital data projector.