Travis “Moving”

Wriggles & Robins directed the music video for the single Moving by UK band Travis using a technique they had created and developed in an earlier piece called Love is in the Air. Filming in temperatures cold enough that you could “see your breath”, Wriggles & Robins projected animations into the mist from the warm breaths of the band members using a projector. This technique enabled them to animate a story without the need for any CGI or special effects whatsoever, as the visual effect was created “in camera”. The animations were carefully developed over a period of weeks, as the directors tested hundreds of variations, breathing each version and tweaking them to get the best image clarity. The film wasshot in an artificially chilled, subzero degree studio using multiple projectors and plenty of hot tea to keep the band warm.

This year a lot of entries were “projection” works. While many of these emphasized a sense of scale and extremity, using high output projectors to “overwrite” a thing or a space powerfully, Moving stood out above all for the way in which it calmly examined the appearance of small animations being delicately projected onto breath in the cold. The projected animations were all simple and minimal, and yet they contributed to drawing out the richness in the act of breathing and changes in air circulation.
Today we are increasingly besieged in our daily lives by abstract surfaces like monitors and screens. Moving really hit the bull’s-eye as to what lies behind the recent rend for projections: An inclination to return to things, spaces and places that feel more familiar, and to create new connections by turning these into media. (NAKAMURA Yugo)