Opening Titles Düsseldorf by Brendan Dawes

Brendan Dawes and I go back a long way. I actually met him for the very first time 25 years ago at Flashforward 2001 in Amsterdam. This event actually also sparked my interest in running events as well, after a longer break of attending demo parties during my time on a Commodore C64. We share a lot of memories from countless events and journeys and that makes it even more wonderful to collaborate with him and benefit from the beautiful work he creates.

He first created the graphics and titles for beyond tellerrand in 2019 and seven years on I was lucky enough to have him do it all again for our fifteenth anniversary edition in Düsseldorf.

Two pages of hand-drawn sketches on grid paper. The left page shows a storyboard with labelled frames for a 20-, 50-, and 10-second sequence, including notes like ’point cloud,’ ’scanning,’ ’speakers,’ and ’reveal.’ The right page features loose ink doodles exploring typographic treatments of the ’beyond tellerrand’ wordmark, with swirling shapes and notes such as ’deterministic noise.’
First rough sketches by Brendan

He started sharing his process on his blog in early April, beginning, as he always does, with pencil sketches before moving into software. “Scribbles without judgement”, as he puts it. Where in 2019 he had built everything in Houdini, this time he wanted to work in TouchDesigner, with the goal of making the posters deterministic so each speaker poster came out subtly unique.

Through April he was deep in the system: a series of posters (one for each speaker, plus separate ones for the event itself) and the animated opening titles. By mid-month the titles were close to done and he, once more, was working back and forth with Tobi Lessnow on the music.

Then on the Monday morning of the conference he and his wife Lisa flew over to Düsseldorf and the posters – generated by his system – got a small scramble at the end of Tuesday as people grabbed them to take home. ☺️

As he wrote afterwards:

There’s something quietly satisfying about watching an abstract system become an object people physically want to keep.

Well, what else can I add here. That, honestly, is one of the reasons, why I keep asking him back.

Thank you Brendan!

About Brendan Dawes

Brendan Dawes is a British artist and designer whose playful, code-driven work explores the relationship between data, technology, and the everyday. Rooted in remix culture, he blends code, found objects, and tactile interfaces to surface the poetry hidden in mundane moments and the structures hidden inside complex data.

His work has been exhibited internationally, including three shows at MoMA in New York, where his piece Cinema Redux became part of the permanent collection in 2008. He has also shown at ZKM, Somerset House, Disseny Hub Barcelona, and as part of Big Bang Data in thirteen cities around the world, with works auctioned at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

In 2024 he collaborated with filmmaker Gary Hustwit on Eno, the world’s first generative film – a documentary about Brian Eno that is unique every time it is viewed, with 52 quintillion possible versions. The film premiered at Sundance and was later shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Oh and I had the honour of hosting the German premiere in Berlin.

A Lumen Prize and Aesthetica Art Prize alumnus, Brendan is Visiting Professor of Computational Art at Manchester Metropolitan University and is represented in the UK and Europe by Gazelli Art House, London. You can find more of his work on his website.