NY-based photography/animation duo Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader, aka Reed and Rader, like cats, AR, and p-i-z-z-a—their favorite kind is a pepperoni and mushroom slice from Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge. They’ve made their love of pizza the theme of their latest animation, which started off as a hack for 319 Scholes’ @arthackday event a few weeks ago.We also thought it was apropos that the project depicted a model eating (and enjoying) pizza… considering New York Fashion Week kicks off on Thursday. We wanted to know more about their inspiration, collaborators and technique so they let us grill them over email yesterday (unfortunately, sans pizza).The Pizza Machine installation @arthackdayThe Creators Project: What was the inspiration behind the variation/installation you developed for @arthackday and how did this animation come out of it?
Reed and Rader: ArtHackDay was a crazy whirlwind experience. Essentially, participants had 48 hours to produce, hack, and program a project together culminating with a gallery show at the end. For The Pizza Machine we started planning early and shot all the footage a few days prior, then spent the entire time at ArtHackDay editing the footage, collaging, compositing it together, and programming and building the physical pizza machine. The user scenario for the pizza machine was that they would walk up to a mini pizza parlor set with a big red button on the table and a hungry digital friend living on a screen above. Pressing the button feeds our digital friend delicious satisfying noms.Also on the table was looped footage of our digital friend in various absurd pizza-related scenarios. We like to think of it as her pizza commercial or pizza anthem. After ArtHackDay, we went back and reworked the footage to make this video combining the commercial footage with the pizza machine and some meme-inspired pizza tunes. The inspiration was simple, it's because we love pizza.
Let’s talk about the actual video itself… it seems to land somewhere between a GIF and a traditional animation. How did you cut it all together and who did what?
Even though this is a piece of video, the aesthetic of the GIF is in everything we do as we predominately work with that file format. The collection of kooky scenes works well with that glitchy, loopy aesthetic. We made all the collage and composited the scenes at ArtHackDay, and after that collaborated with our friend Michael Colombo for the tunes, unifying our pizza love under the glory of P….I….Z….Z….A….We’re the outfits digitally created? What was real and what was not?
We collaborated with our amazing stylist Aki Maesato on the costumes for The Pizza Machine. All aspects of the costumes were completely real. The collage in the video is physically handcut and pasted paper, scanned, with the model digitally composited on top.Do you usually just work with other designers’ fashion, or ever create your own virtual lines?
Almost always we work with real designer clothes or costumes. We are beginning to toss around ideas of digital clothing via augmented reality and making real people into avatars where anyone can be anything and anyone they can imagine.The Pizza MachineEditor’s note: Yes, the music you hear was inspired by 2010’s Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen-themed Pizza Meme.@kfloodwarning
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Reed and Rader: ArtHackDay was a crazy whirlwind experience. Essentially, participants had 48 hours to produce, hack, and program a project together culminating with a gallery show at the end. For The Pizza Machine we started planning early and shot all the footage a few days prior, then spent the entire time at ArtHackDay editing the footage, collaging, compositing it together, and programming and building the physical pizza machine. The user scenario for the pizza machine was that they would walk up to a mini pizza parlor set with a big red button on the table and a hungry digital friend living on a screen above. Pressing the button feeds our digital friend delicious satisfying noms.Also on the table was looped footage of our digital friend in various absurd pizza-related scenarios. We like to think of it as her pizza commercial or pizza anthem. After ArtHackDay, we went back and reworked the footage to make this video combining the commercial footage with the pizza machine and some meme-inspired pizza tunes. The inspiration was simple, it's because we love pizza.
Even though this is a piece of video, the aesthetic of the GIF is in everything we do as we predominately work with that file format. The collection of kooky scenes works well with that glitchy, loopy aesthetic. We made all the collage and composited the scenes at ArtHackDay, and after that collaborated with our friend Michael Colombo for the tunes, unifying our pizza love under the glory of P….I….Z….Z….A….
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We collaborated with our amazing stylist Aki Maesato on the costumes for The Pizza Machine. All aspects of the costumes were completely real. The collage in the video is physically handcut and pasted paper, scanned, with the model digitally composited on top.Do you usually just work with other designers’ fashion, or ever create your own virtual lines?
Almost always we work with real designer clothes or costumes. We are beginning to toss around ideas of digital clothing via augmented reality and making real people into avatars where anyone can be anything and anyone they can imagine.The Pizza MachineEditor’s note: Yes, the music you hear was inspired by 2010’s Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen-themed Pizza Meme.@kfloodwarning