Brazilian Animation takes over Times Square

It’s not every month that New York City, a foundational birthplace of street art, gets to witness Brazilian graffiti artists and animators at work.

Enter the Times Square Advertising Coalition and Times Square Arts’ “Midnight Moment” showcase, currently screening Parallel Connection — an animated piece by Sao Paulo-based studio Birdo based on the artwork of Brazilian graffiti brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, better known as OSGEMEOS — on a widescreen canvas like no other.

We are very happy to try new media, because it was always exciting. This is the first time that we created something of this scale, using screens and a longer animation. it is a dialogue between two worlds, where the viewer is in the middle of the stage, and establishes a conversation between the imaginary and the real world, a break in time to reflect and daydream.

OSGEMEOS

The piece, explained OSGEMEOS in their artistic statement, is an attempt to tap into the creative and joyful side of people’s personalities which can be visualized through dreams. “The dream world is the one place where every person in the universe can be connected if they can just break the barriers between imagination and the physical world.”

Parallel Connection can be seen in Manhattan’s Times Square through the end of August on 45 screens across 14 blocks, screening nightly at 11:57pm.

Birdo also helped to recently bring to life director Fons Schiedon’s motion-comic reimagining of Mozart’s timeless The Magic Flute, which Cartoon Brew examined. But exporting the well-known iconography of Brazil’s OSGEMEOS to the Big Apple’s sprawling electronic billboards is something of a next-level crossover.

“This is a huge achievement for Brazilian art and animation in general, and we are so happy to be part of it,” Birdo co-founder Paulo Muppet told Cartoon Brew. OSGEMEOS shared their thoughts with design boom.

This post was originally published on Cartoon Brew. Words: Scott Hill. Images courtesy of Cartoon Brew & Design Boom.

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Posted on Aug 20th, 15 by | Twitter: @lisahassell

Founder & director of Inkygoodness, Lisa is a published writer and arts journalist, focusing on creative business, graphic art and illustration and design education. Her words regularly appear in Computer Arts, Creative Bloq, Digital Arts and IdN.

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