Choreography for Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha Cha) is a four-minute experimental animation film by independent filmmaker Chel White. [1] [2]
Choreography for Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha Cha) is a four-minute experimental animation film by independent filmmaker Chel White. [1] [2]
All of the film's images were created solely by using the unique photographic capabilities of a photocopier to generate sequential pictures of hands, faces, and other body parts. It achieves a ghostly, dream-like aesthetic with elements of the sensual and the absurd. [3] Completed in 1991, it is widely considered the first noteworthy animated film to use this technique. [4] [5] (See Xerox art for historical context.)
For the film, Chel White developed a customized set up that could achieve the level of detail he was looking for in the images. After removing the platen cover, four side lights were added along with a top light that would shine through a sheet of frosted glass, allowing for his subject peoples’ silhouettes to be visible. In order to avoid potential eye damage from the bright light of the scanner, he instructed his performers not to open their eyes as they were being scanned. Instead, White painted eyes on their eyelids. [6]
The Washington Post describes the film as a “musical frolic which wittily builds on ghostly, distorted images crossing the plate glass of a copier.” [7] Filmfest DC calls it, "true art in the age of mechanical reproduction; a rhythmic celebration of a photocopier’s cinematic potential." The Berlin International Film Festival describes the film as “a swinging essay about physiognomy in the age of photo-mechanical reproduction. [8] The Dallas Observer says, "(The film) takes a game we've all played with our hands, faces, and other body parts and raises it to the sublime." The Austin Chronicle writes, "(The film) pulses with a grinding sort of ghostly sexuality.” [9] Alive TV says, "Your relationship to your copy machine may never be the same.” And Entertainment Weekly says, "Chel White’s (Choreography for Copy Machine) ”Photocopy Cha Cha”, featuring rubbery, photocopied images of faces and assorted other body parts, is a reflection on the way technology alters our perceptions."
Xerox Holdings Corporation is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, though it is incorporated in New York with its largest population of employees based around Rochester, New York, the area in which the company was founded. The company purchased Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion in early 2010. As a large developed company, it is consistently placed in the list of Fortune 500 companies.
Rank Xerox Limited was formed in 1956 as a joint venture between the Xerox Corporation of United States and The Rank Organisation of the United Kingdom, to manufacture and market Xerox equipment initially in Europe and later in Africa and Asia. A further joint venture between Rank Xerox and Modi Group in India formed Modi Xerox to manufacture and sell Xerox equipment in the Indian subcontinent.
Xerox art is an art form that began in the 1960s. Prints are created by putting objects on the glass, or platen, of a copying machine and by pressing "start" to produce an image. If the object is not flat, or the cover does not totally cover the object, or the object is moved, the resulting image is distorted in some way. The curvature of the object, the amount of light that reaches the image surface, and the distance of the cover from the glass, all affect the final image. Often, with proper manipulation, rather ghostly images can be made. Basic techniques include: Direct Imaging, the copying of items placed on the platen ; Still Life Collage, a variation of direct imaging with items placed on the platen in a collage format focused on what is in the foreground/background; Overprinting, the technique of constructing layers of information, one over the previous, by printing onto the same sheet of paper more than once; Copy Overlay, a technique of working with or interfering in the color separation mechanism of a color copier; Colorizing, vary color density and hue by adjusting the exposure and color balance controls; Degeneration is a copy of a copy degrading the image as successive copies are made; Copy Motion, the creation of effects by moving an item or image on the platen during the scanning process. Each machine also creates different effects.
Xerography is a dry photocopying technique. Originally called electrophotography, it was renamed xerography—from the Greek roots ξηρόςxeros, meaning "dry" and -γραφία-graphia, meaning "writing"—to emphasize that unlike reproduction techniques then in use such as cyanotype, the process of xerography used no liquid chemicals.
The EURion constellation is a pattern of symbols incorporated into a number of secure documents such as banknotes, checks, and ownership title certificates designs worldwide since about 1996. It is added to help imaging software detect the presence of such a document in a digital image. Such software can then block the user from reproducing banknotes to prevent counterfeiting using colour photocopiers.
The Photostat machine, or Photostat, was an early projection photocopier created in the decade of the 1900s by the Commercial Camera Company, which became the Photostat Corporation. The "Photostat" name, which was originally a trademark of the company, became genericized, and was often used to refer to similar machines produced by the RetinalGraph Company or to any copy made by any such machine.
Thermo-Fax is 3M's trademarked name for a photocopying technology which was introduced in 1950. It was a form of thermographic printing and an example of a dry silver process. It was a significant advance as no chemicals were required, other than those contained in the copy paper itself. A thin sheet of heat sensitive copy paper was placed on the original document to be copied, and exposed to infrared energy. Wherever the image on the original paper contained carbon, the image absorbed the infrared energy when heated. The heated image then transferred the heat to the heat sensitive paper producing a blackened copy image of the original.
The International Tournée of Animation was an annual touring program of alternative animated films that started in 1965 as The First Festival of Animated Film with each selected and assembled from films from many countries around the world and which existed from the 1970s to the 1980s-90s.
Savin was incorporated in 1959 by Max M. and Robert K. Low, and the company was named after Max Low's son-in-law, Robert S. Savin. The firm was run by Low's son, Robert K. Low and E. Paul Charlap. It was known primarily for its unusual line of liquid-toner photocopiers, which set it apart from other companies that manufactured dry-toner equipment such as Konica, Xerox, Canon, Sharp, and Kodak.
A photocopier is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process that uses electrostatic charges on a light-sensitive photoreceptor to first attract and then transfer toner particles onto paper in the form of an image. The toner is then fused onto the paper using heat, pressure, or a combination of both. Copiers can also use other technologies, such as inkjet, but xerography is standard for office copying.
Chel White is an American film director, composer, screenwriter and visual effects artist. In his independent films and music videos, White is known for his stylized, often experimental use of images, unusual animation and narratives depicting an outsider's perspective. He often adopts darkly humorous and poetic sensibilities to explore topics of love, obsession and alienation; with dreams and the subconscious being his greatest influences. He describes his own work as “stories and images that reside on the brink of dreams, or linger on the periphery of distorted memories.” A Rockefeller Fellow, Chel White has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award-winning writer and radio personality Joe Frank.
Robert W. Gundlach was an American physicist. He is most noted for his prolific contributions to the field of xerography, specifically the development of the modern photocopier. Gundlach helped transform the Haloid Company, a small photographic firm, into the thriving Xerox Corporation. Over the course of his 42-year career with the company, he contributed over 155 patents, making photocopying technology more affordable and practical. In 1966 Gundlach was named Xerox's first Research Fellow, the highest non-managerial that could be achieved by a Xerox scientist. After his retirement in 1995, he was granted several patents associated with his hobbies, including a snow-making system and a special backpack.
BENT IMAGE LAB is a production company and animation studio specializing in story development, television, commercials, visual effects, music videos, short films, experimental techniques and tech development in augmented reality (AR). Located in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded in 2002 by partners David Daniels, Ray Di Carlo, and Chel White.
Buzzco Associates, Inc. is an animation studio that was founded in 1968 by Buzz Potamkin with Candy Kugel and Vincent Cafarelli as co-creative directors and Marilyn Kraemer as executive producer.
Sarah Jeanette Jackson, was an American-Canadian artist. Jackson first became known for her sculptures and drawings, and then for her photocopy and digital art. She was an early user of the photocopier to make art, and used this practice to embrace mail art.
Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are a Canadian animation duo. On January 24, 2012, they received their second Oscar nomination, for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short film, Wild Life (2011). With their latest film, The Flying Sailor, they received several nominations and awards, including for the Best Canadian Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and on January 24, 2023, they received a nomination for the 95th Academy Awards under the category Best Animated Short Film.
A thermal copier or thermocopier is a kind of photocopier based on the effect of heat. The original sheet feeds in conjunction with the "thermo-sensitive" paper, generating a copy on its specially treated surface. The black parts on the original sheet, once scanned, make the copier activate the heating elements that produce some chemical reactions on the "thermo-sensitive" copy paper that darkens its surface. After the process, a stable black-and-white image is obtained on the cooled film or paper.
Louise Odes Neaderland is an American photographer, printmaker, book artist and founder of the International Society of Copier Artists (I.S.C.A.) and the I.S.C.A. Quarterly, a collaborative mail, book art, and copy art publication. She was the organizer of ISCAGRAPHICS, a traveling exhibition of xerographic art.
Pati Hill was an American writer and photocopy artist known for her observational style of prose and her work with the IBM photocopier. While she was not the first artist to experiment with the copier, her work is distinguished by its focus on objects, her emphasis on the accessibility of the medium, and her efforts to unite image and text so that they may "fuse to become something other than either."
Klaus Urbons is a German photographer and xerography printmaker. He is a pioneer and leading figure of copy art in Germany and not only. He founded the Museum für Fotokopie, and is the author and translator of books on the history of Copy Art and photocopiers, as well as a curator and a collector.
