Dane Watkins, artist working in drawing and animation

Introduction
My work is a research-based, studio practice that examines how conventional drawing and animation practices can be developed and shown in digital environments such as the web or a computer driven installation. In the past few years I have developed a body of drawings and animations shaped by my response to a culture in which there is both an excess of imagery and a homogenisation of visual language.

Background
I trained in animation at Liverpool Polytechnic (graduating in 1993), concentrating on hand drawn animation for film. Since then I have developed my work through using vector-based digital tools, undertaking commissions and residencies, and by distributing my work online. More recently I have found that developing programming skills has allowed me to develop my practice, allowing me to work experimentally with timelines in my drawing and animation.

This experimentation with scripting has informed two projects which directly interacted with the audience
• LoveMatch, an interactive program for a personal digital assistant (PDA) designed to help the viewer find their perfect partner. Produced during a Clarks Digital Bursary at the Watershed Media Centre, Bristol, Jan-May 2004
.• TargetArt an interactive installation in the form of a questionnaire profiling users, originally designed for The Broadway Cinema, Nottingham and commissioned by Radiator 02, later shown in Prater, Berlin and at the Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, various dates, 2003.

Artistic Direction
From October to December 2003 I was in residence on a European Media Artist Residency (EMARE) at Werkleitz Gesellschaft, Tornitz, Germany. This residency enabled me not only to produce Empty Days IV but due to their extensive video libraryI was able to contextualise my practice within the history of experimental film. Two artists influenced my thinking on the development of movement beyond the cinema. The first was Robert Breer's mutascopes, small kinetic sculptures similar in design to roladexes with cards fixed to an axis and stuck to a base. He was making these at the same time as Len Lye and Nam June Paik were also experimenting with the presentation of persistence of vision as independent objects. The second was Moholy-Nagy. I visited the bauhaus archives in Berlin and was fascinated by Moholy-Nagy's kinetic sculptures. Both artists are concerned with composition through time and explore the use of repetitive cycles and recombinative loops as public sculpture.

The residency helped me to determine the direction of my artistic practice. I realised that I wasn't as interested in 'click' interaction or movie making instead I wanted to explore how animation could be used as an architectural device and exhibited in public spaces. Where cinema dictates a linearity to a seated audience full of expectations, viewers in public spaces are transient and their gaze wonders around the environment. This is a different expectation to the focused attention of theatre goers. In a public space a traditional story based movie with a beginning, middle and end would be lost or maybe glimpsed by a few. Instead animations should run on an endless loop with no conclusion, randomly moving through an internal database of actions, more similar to kinetic sculptures than linear narratives.

Rather than making one grande narrative (the movie) I wanted to make lots of petite narratives with the animations designed as a body of work. They would be exhibited simultaneously on a range of screens and not viewed in isolation but in relation to the other movements like a series of etchings. No one animation would become the centre of attention. This reduces the importance of each object. It becomes one of many. The whole statement cannot be trapped within one person's field of vision or comprehended as a single object. The objects can only be linked through visual association. The audience interacts with the animations by scanning the wall and determining their own order of events.

Recent Work
Over the last year, 2004, I have attempted to put these ideas into practice and develop my animations as sculptural objects for public spaces.
• autoerotic, a six screen installation produced at The Engine Room,Bridgwater, exhibited at The Watershed and funded by ACE SW,summer 2004.
• portraits, a two screen installation produced at PVA, Bridport, exhibited at the LabCulture Symposium and funded by ACE SW, summer 2004.
• officious, a six screen installation produced at Hull Time Based Arts during an exStream residency June 2004

Current Work
I live in Somerset, working both on my own and collaboratively with a network of animation and art practitioners in the South West.
Current projects include
• hiredHand an animation commissioned by Tyne & Wear FireService for the large screens on the front of their new Fire Stations.
• LabCulture facilitator for the touring residential LabCultureworkshops, facilitated by the arts organisation PVA and funded bythe Arts Council of England.
• Part time Lecturer at Surrey Institute of Art and Design teaching animation and interactivity.
• Animation mentor at Hull Time Based Arts, working with professional designers and helping them think through the implications of designing moving image graphics for public spaces, one outcomeof this project is to design a piece to be screened on the roof of the new Humber Centre for Excellence in the Built Environment.