In Cécile Babiole's work "Le Pépin Géant De Arp", an "Arpish Torso" lives through various scenes of a computer animated world.

"L'Art en Jeu" is a twenty minute program about works at the Musée National d'art Moderne at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. lt consists of 20 films of one minute each that introduce one work by a contemporary painter or sculptor. All the great names of the 20th century are to be found; Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Klee, Kandinsky, Giacometti, Warhol, etc.

Each clip is the enactment of a scenario based on the spirit of the particular art work and the methods of its artist. The question was not to reproduce a fictitious genesis of the work or a lesson in art history. "L'Art en Jeu" is apath along which intuition and imagination lead us quite naturally to the discovery of the opus. The works "at play" include the "Pépin géant" ("Giant Pip") by Arp.

In front of this sculpture I bad the feeling of being confronted with something hybrid, ambiguous: partly hard, partly soft; partly sex, partly toy; partly torso, partly cell; partly man and partly woman. And this feeling guided me. I wanted to play with the anthropomorphical shape in various scenarios: seen from close and from far, from different - even unusual - angles, clothed in various lighting, the figure reveals itself as never identical and always unique. It changes its shape, breathes, marks the space with its shadow and leaves behind the impression of its manifold outlines. It breaks apart, it is sliced torecreate the artist's sculptures in painted wood, and finally it is multiplied,as the sculpture has several sisters.

The sequence of images is set in a decoration that in reality is but details of the sculpture itself, as if this abstract mini-fiction took place in the armpit of the sculpture's giant copy. 3D was the only means to tackle such a concept. Therefore, the whole of the sequence consists of digital images created with the Explore Programs by TDI and Vertigo, as well as with custom-made programs by Studio Transformer (UMT) for the creation of a depth of field. One of the most remarkable features of the modelling was to achieve absolute fidelity of the original work.

The animation is supported by original music based on percussions (by Gérôme of the group 'NOX') in order to underline the primordial, original, sensual character of the sculpture. Particular care was taken in the relationship between sound and image, so as to match the rhythmical structure of the soundtrack and the inherent rhythm of the imagery to achieve an overall choreography. The film was awarded the First Price Pixel-INA in the category "art" at the Imagina '92.

Technical Background
HW / SW: 3D-Animation Transformer, Silicon Graphics 320 VGX, 4D25, TDJ Explore (In-House SW)