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By invitation of our design professor, I had the opportunity today to present Kaleidotype to his class. For the remainder of the lecture, he showed a couple of films by Virgil Widrich, an Austrian filmmaker. I liked “Fast Film” best, which is a hard-to-describe but very ingenious short film. On the website you will find good background information, but I will tell you this much: Over a period of two years, 65,000 paper objects (such as paper planes) were folded, on each of which one still frame from about 300 action films was visible. These were then assembled with stop-motion techniques in order to produce a new, 14-minute short film. The “Making Of” feature on the website explains a good deal.

Here is an interesting thought taken from the interview with Virgil Widrich: Since the main characters switch constantly, being assembled from several hundred films, Fast Film employs the main story every action film is based upon: The story of a hero who has to save his kidnapped love out of the claws of evil characters. It is this abstraction which makes this film even possible. Also, every individual person watching Fast Film sees his own film, since he recognizes certain actors, films and situations but not others, and so his attention is focused on only a few of the “films within the film.”

Of course, I’m also fascinated by the incredible patience this puzzle of a project demanded. And it was all done without computer animation! Genuine craftsmanship still does have its merits.

I didn’t think I would actually write three blog entries in a row … most of my attempts at journaling failed so far. I will try not to write just for writing’s sake, promised.

Had breakfast with my friend Christian, who just returned from an 18 months’ stay in San Jose, California (and whose apartment I’ve been renting since he had left). I’ve been through the same culture shock twice. It was good to get together and talk over freshly baked, warm German Brötchen (rolls) with delicious, home-made apple-blackberry-banana jelly. Only an hour ago, he rang at my door when I was almost ready to go to bed, asking if I would like to share a soup. Two nice meals with a friend in one day – very special.

In between, I went to the opening of the exhibition of the Saxon State Award for Design here in Dresden, where I was invited to do some presentations of Kaleidotype (which had won second prize). I was delighted to see Professor Rayan Abdullah again, professor for typography at the School for Graphic Design and Book Arts in Leipzig and member of the jury. (Incidentally, I once applied to the school for graphic design when I had just finished highschool, but didn’t get accepted.) Here you can see him play with the Kaleidotype software.