OneDotZero hour

OneDotZero5 is the fifth annual outing of Matt Hanson and Shane Walter’s digital moving image festival. Firmly established as the leading showcase for pixel-based film-making, OneDotZero5 is spread across a series of programmes, grouping work by country and genre, as well as premieres, digital features, live VJ (video jockey) events and panel discussions.

Wavelength 01 is a selection of music videos and commercials. Antoine Bardou-Jacquet’s video for Zebda’s Qualardime is a smart and witty mélange of animation styles with characters from disparate genres converging at the climax. Screening alongside it, among others, are Tim Hope’s video for Coldplay’s single Don’t Panic, a melancholic, but beautiful mixture of live action and digital forms and Floria Sigismondi’s turbulent and stuttering tableaux for Amon Tobin’s Four Ton Mantis, taking the mundane into the surreal. A last-minute addition to the programme is a sneak preview of the latest video for Fatboy Slim.

Of special interest to designers and illustrators is Wow and Flutter 01, which features motion graphics from a group of film-makers drawn from a background of design and illustration. Ricky Fenwick’s RND#24: Artificial Worlds is an assembly of landscapes and seascapes that traverses the superficial and the artificial. Also screening is Fenwick’s RND#6 Underworld, where switching from “idyllic” to “comm” mode makes visible the cacophony of communication networks over the stillness of cityscapes. Run Wrake’s What is That superimposes graphics on live action, exposing the neurotic edge of contemporary urban existence.

Japan, home of manga and anime, has always been a country that has lead in the field of digital creation. J Star 01 is OneDotZero’s bow to the land of the rising Sony PlayStation2, bringing together the best of recent Japanese work. Among them, Gen Sekiguchi’s inspired White Surf Style 5, a live action with FX (effects and sound) interpretation of love in the post-modern world as girl beats boy. As a contrast, Satoshi Tomioka’s Coin Laundry is a crisp and luscious 100 per cent 3D animation that puts three characters; “X”, “Y” and “Z” through a “revolutionary” washday adventure.

There’s more on the menu, but anyone wanting extra helpings should also visit Extended Play JP, a special presentation of short, Japanese sci-fi films.

Cheap and powerful microchips games have now moved into the realm of real-time interactive drama and the quality of the graphics is phenomenal. Lens Flare 01 offers a glimpse of current and future game releases. Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast took five years and $60m (£41.5m) to create and it is only chapter one in a planned 16-chapter story. The action is detailed and dramatic as the character Ryo searches for ancient Chinese objects that harbour mysterious powers and hold the clues to a murder mystery.

Also previewing are Onimusha Warlords by Capcom, and Metal Gear Solid 2 by Konami. Both of these are spectacularly cinematic visions – the first of ancient feudal Japan and the second of a dark industrial future. A kitsch contrast is Space Channel 5, also from Sega, where television-journo-heroine Ulala gyrates her way through a Barbarella meets Austin Powers 1960s-style epic.

European premiere screenings include No Maps for These Territories, a documentary on the prophet of cyberspace William Gibson by Gibson himself, Stereo Future, a Japanese feature by Hiroyuki Nakano, and Paperboys, a documentary by Mike Mills. Also showing is Amarillo by Morning by fellow US video-innovator Spike Jonze. For insight into creative techniques behind the films and games there are talks and panel discussions covering music promo-direction, Flash animation, and even the eternal question of designer turning into director.

OneDotZero5 runs from 27 April until 6 May at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1. www.onedotzero. co.uk or www.ica.org.uk