Below are select materials and program previews relating to the 2nd annual Supernova Digital Animation Festival, presented in 2017 in Denver, Colorado. While the festival’s programming proved outstanding in the second year, featuring a plethora of new artists that would become festival favorites for years to come, the focal live presentation was marred by inclement weather and a few technical difficulties, neither severe but mildly challenging. Nevertheless it proved to be a year of tremendous progress, with artists showing up from out of state for the first time to attend, and a very wide slate of auxiliary activations both proceeding and following the weekend event, which I profiled in an elaborate Year in Review report in order to detail the initiative as a brand that could elevate opportunity and community engagement in a much broader capacity than originally anticipated. It was a crucial year for learning, development and advancing Denver Digerati and Supernova as one of Denver’s most singular and innovative art-based assets as well as a more far reaching beacon for artists to acknowledge and participate in.
Supernova 2017 Featured Program Previews
Supernova 2017 Focal Competition Award Winners
Grand Prize: Max Hattler / Divisional Articulation
2nd Prize: Jack Wedge / Tennessee
3rd Prize: Nikita Diakur / Ugly
Honorable Mention: Seishi Irimajiri / Borderline
Honorable Mention: Emily Sasmor / Strangers Cowboys
Supernova 2017 Marketing Campaign Materials and Festival Catalog Excerpts
Supernova 2017 Impact Report delineating a year’s worth of interrelated activations and community engagements
Denver Digerati submitted concepts to AEG Live for their massive New Year's Eve extravaganza "Decadence" taking place at the Colorado Convention Center in 2016. The annual new years eve celebration is the largest in the state of Colorado, a massive venue with two live-music stages and numerous other stimulating interactions in-between. This year's theme was "City of Dreams," so Digerati proposed a selection of short-form animations that were presented at this year's SUPERNOVA festival, ones that directly and diversely tie into the theme. The working title for our portion is called "Trip City," a reference to the impact of the visuals and artists who created them, including Aujik, densuke28, Chris Coleman, Zhang Wang and Keichi Matsuda, as well as Claudia Mate's recent composition of a woman walking as if on a fashion runway, and ultimately tripping and disintegrating into the ground. This document shows snippets of the looped project, presented on three LED screens within the convention center near the entrance to the event. The project is another example of digital animation's broadening impact within our culture today, using visionary artists producing content that is complex, meaningful, fun and with a much greater visual impact than what is normally found in the context of such events. LED Screen setup and interface provided by rythmefx.com
