AfterGlow: An award winning 3D real-time animation artwork, expressing a zoonotic malaria transmission scenario.

Abstract

boredomresearch, Isley and Smith’s artwork, AfterGlow received the Lumen Prize (celebrating the very best art created using technology) moving image award in 2016. AfterGlow is a 3D animated landscape which runs in real-time, charged by the research of mathematical modeller, Dr Paddy Brock (Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow), who uses analysis tools from ecology and epidemiology to explore an emerging zoonotic malaria, Plasmodium knowlesi previously thought only to infect long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques. In AfterGlow the landscape gradually becomes illuminated by glowing trails evocative of mosquito flight paths. These spiralling forms represent packets of blood infected with Plasmodium knowlesi a malaria parasite recently found to jump the species barrier from monkey to human. Animating the infection left in the wake of wandering macaques as they search the island for food, AfterGlow reveals the intimate relationship between disease and its environment. As an autonomous camera explores the dark mountains, the viewer becomes immersed in a blizzard of infection. Composed of delicate, spiraling, cells of colour, these combine to form a vivid expression of this dangerous disease. AfterGlow is a artwork commissioned for the Silent Signal exhibition programme http://www.silentsignal.org, an Animate Projects http://animateprojects.org/ commission, supported by the Wellcome Trust and Garfield Weston Foundation. This artwork toured as part of the Silent Signal programme in 2016-2017, tracking a total of 36 events involving approximately 10,400 people. The events comprised of artist talks, seminars, symposia, screenings and workshops, exploring the process of art and science collaboration, animation techniques and the scientific themes within the Silent Signal artworks. AfterGlow was exhibited at the following Silent Signal exhibition venues and festivals in 2016-17: Artience Daejeon 17, British Council exhibition, Daejeon South Korea; Vienna Independent Short Film Festival; Oberhausen International Short Film Festival; QUAD, Derby; VIVID Projects, Birmingham; Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton; Wellcome Collection, London; LifeSpace, Dundee and Phoenix, Leicester. Other international, invited or peer-reviewed exhibitions, include: Science of the Unseen, SIGGRAPH (2016) Online Exhibition, California (2016); Sony Center, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin (2016-17) - where the artwork received over 80,000 viewings; Data Aesthetics exhibition in conjunction with ACM Multimedia conference in Amsterdam (2016); Balance Unbalance Conference Exhibition, Manizales, Colombia (2017); Animex, Teeside University, Middlesbrough (2017); Lumen Prize exhibition tour (2017) at Winter Lights Festival, Canary Wharf London and Berlin Electronic Visualisation of the Arts Conference; Both Sides Now 4, UK tour to Fabrica, Brighton and HOME Manchester Cinema (2017-18). International curators continue to invite boredomresearch to screen AfterGlow in exhibitions and events world-wide.