Glenn Gear is a multi-media artist who currently finds his passion in experimental, low-budget animation, digital video, and as of late, DVD authoring. He is a member of the media arts collective, Volatile Works (www.volatileworks.org), and has been producing independent animated shorts employing a wide range of techniques for the past four years. His animations have screened in Canada, USA, Mexico, Argentina, Poland, Romania, Croatia, and Australia. He has an MFA from Concordia University and has exhibited his installations, photographs, and book works in a number of group and solo shows throughout Montréal and across Canada for the past 15 years.

Born and raised in Newfoundland, he has explored the connection to this land through his installation, web and video work. Much of his artwork has focused on family history as it articulates larger
questions of migration and cultural background, intermarriage between Settler and Inuit populations, technology and sexuality.

Abstract

Ikuma Siku

Ikuma Siku (literally, fire & ice in Inuktitut) is an experimental animation exploring the growing friendship between an Inuk and an English immigrant set in and around the rugged coastline of northern Labrador in 1849. It unfolds as a poetic narrative with roots stemming from family history in a land suffused with magical realism. Ikuma Siku employs a wide variety of techniques, including stop-motion animation, paper silhouette animation, computer generated 3D landscapes, video footage, and green screen compositing. This diverse source material was filtered through a number of complex digital processes and recombined to produce the final visual style – a style perhaps best described as a painting in motion.