Animal
film
21 min, 2023

Image 59: Music

It’s time to leave the city. I have a train early in the morning.
I manage to sleep for a couple of hours.
I wake up, sweating, in the middle of the night.
I hear dogs barking loudly, outside my window.
I perfectly remember the dream I was having.
I was in some kind of natural history museum.
Among the animal skeletons, there were machines.
They were moving on their own.
They were playing music.

Installation view, EPFL Pavilions, Lausanne, 2023

“Animal explores the concept of animation. Creating a parallel between the “uncanny valley” of the ancient tradition of puppetry and recent technological developments in robotics and artificial intelligence, the film is inspired by a series of conversations with scientists and researchers from the robotics lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Footage from the EPFL alternates with images from the longstanding Carlo Colla & Figli Marionette Company in Milan and other sources from the artist’s archive.

The piece has grown out of two simultaneous endeavors: an analysis of the idea of the uncanny and an exploration of institutions dedicated to manipulating, animating, and giving life to objects—namely the Carlo Colla & Figli Marionette Company and the EPFL laboratories—including a series of conversations with researchers in areas of artificial intelligence and robotics that are closely related to the artist’s interest in animation through puppetry.

The structure of the film resembles both an inventory of images and an audiobook, as the images are introduced by the voice of a narrator. Combining the metallic, aseptic atmospheres of the scientific universe with the ancient dimension of puppetry, weaving together these images and pauses and punctuating them with black frames and a meticulous soundscape, Giacconi gives life to an exquisitely sophisticated tale.

As Jamie Paik states in one of the conversations Giacconi conducted at EPFL: «I always believe ourselves as science-fiction makers. We make what the future is going to be. So, even if we work with reality, we always have a vision of the future. That’s how we write our science fiction, how we see it being made.»”

– Giulia Bini

Commissioned and produced in the framework of EPFL CDH Artist in Residence Program 2022, 'Enter the Hyper-Scientific', Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), curated by Giulia Bini.

In collaboration with: Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RRL), Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob), Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA), Compagnia Marionettistica Carlo Colla & Figli, Milan.

Inspired by conversations with: Jamie Paik, Auke Ijspeert, Anastasia Bolotnikova, Alessandro Crespi, David Gonon, Kevin Holdcroft, Lukas Huber, Xiangxiao Liu, Mete Mustafa, Fabio Zuliani, Franco Citterio.

Screenings:
Visions du Réel, International Film Festival Nyon, Switzerland; Bellaria Film Festival (Gabbiano Award); Kasseler Dokfest; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; Seoul Animal Film Festival; Filmmaker Festival, Milan (2023)