Ivar Zeile

Animations Commissioned for Denver Digerati between 2012-2022

The following artworks are all animations I had the great fortune to commission through money budgeted within the various projects I developed across an entire decade that represent the heart and soul of Denver Digerati during this period. These works are by a wide range of artists ranging from all over the world, many whom I came to revere and some I consider amongst the absolute best in their field. The page is structured from earliest to most recent, with additional text at the end concerning the opportunity to commission artists creating this type of work towards a new purpose when there were few if any models to draw from.

Click on the title of the video to be directed to the work as hosted on Youtube

One of my proudest achievements within the entire context and history of Denver Digerati was being able to develop and implement protocols that could provide funding to artists towards the creation of new animations to debut in our programming. As far as I knew there were few if any models towards this at the time, certainly none that I could directly reference. My work towards this commenced in 2012 with our the first curated reel of short films and animations that I developed to present to the public on the 14th and Champa Street LED screen for the program titled Urban Encounters: SightLine, during the City of Denver sponsored Create Denver Week as a grand focal evening capping the week’s forum. The thrill and success of the commissions led to implementing seven new commissioned animations each year as the finale of Friday Flash, a singular initiative of summer programs taking place on the same screen, all created to the specific pixel frame of this brilliant, well situated screen in the Denver Theater District. Friday Flash continued for three solid years, each concluding with the release of seven new commissioned animations. Artists were chosen based on a mandate that allowed commissions to be divided amongst a wide pool of talent that included Colorado, National and International artists.

As Friday Flash gave way to an even bigger initiative in 2016, the launch of Supernova Digital Animation Festival, funds for commissioned animations had to be sidelined for several years in order to focus on the heftier task of bringing guests artists to Denver for the annual festival as jurors and educators, as well as committing an even more significant dollar amount from our budget towards Cash Prize Awards that represented the very best of the festival, as determined through the central competition program. But I was once again able to implement a decent chunk of our budget towards commissions once again starting in 2020 with the dawn of Night Lights Denver, a new video mapping initiative that allowed artists to create works that would be presented nightly throughout the month of September on the Daniels and Fisher Clocktower, one of Downtown Denver’s most iconic buildings. This continued under my term with the project through 2022.