Kirschner presented a curated sampling of Machinima film live via skype from Berlin. Machinima, machine animation cinema, creates narrative film with avatars or objects via the virtual environment of computer gaming.
FRIEDRICH KIRSCHNER is a filmmaker, visual artist and software developer. He repurposes computer games and real-time animation technology to create animated narratives and interactive performances. His work has been shown at various international animation festivals and exhibitions, including the Laboral Gameworld exhibit in Gijon, the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Ottawa international Animation festival and the Seoul Media Art Biennale. In addition he curates machinima film screenings all over the place and was the director of the Machinima Filmfest in New York in 2008. He is currently working on the open-source real-time animation software “moviesandbox”.
In his own words, BOB’s career started as an unlockable character for the game “California Games” on the Commodore 64 that sadly, no one ever unlocked. It really took off though as a Ragdoll in Unreal Tournament 2003 and developed since then. Bob since turned down to work as the square Tetris Block to pursue a career as Talkshow Host in his self-produced “Bob Block Machinima Show” which successfully made the jump from 32 bit to 64 bit recently and had him appear on German Television and miscellaneous live performances. His favorite ice cream flavor is strawberry.