TYPEMOTION. TYPE AS IMAGE IN MOTION
NTMoFA 2015
Introduction Texts Exhibition and Subgenres
Exhibition Text
TYPEMOTION. Type as Image in Motion
An international research, edition and exhibition project initiated, produced and presented by ZKM | Karlsruhe, in collaboration with FACT and xm:lab,
funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Goethe-Institut Taipei.
TYPEMOTION at NTMoFA is curated by:
Dr. Christine Stenzer, Curator and Researcher
Dr. Soenke Zehle, Media Theorist, Managing Director xm:lab
in cooperation with Hsiao-yu LIN, Curator NTMoFA
The exhibition TYPEMOTION presents 159 outstanding examples of Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films from more than sixteen countries,
including twelve works of art by Taiwanese artist, dating from 1897 to the present. The exhibition focuses on artistic films, videos, and new
media art works, but also includes feature films, title sequences, commercials, music videos and works from the computer demo scene. It is
the very first time to introduce a grand international exhibition which focuese on writing and dynamic images in Taiwan. To highlight the
particularity and artistry of Chinese characters and the mature development of new media and filmic art in Taiwan, twelve Taiwanese
works are brought into the curitorial context, juxtaposed to reflect the contrasts between Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films in oriental and
occidental cultures. This also features the main characteristiscs of TYPEMOTION. Type as Image in Motion exhibition in Taiwan.
We define Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films as analog or digital films or film sequences in which mainly animation, graphic design, or music
open up possible uses of type far beyond conventional ways of communicating with type. Referring to those sites and situations where we
encounter type in motion, the exhibition examines the multiple possibilities for the presentation, perception and ways of communicating
with type.
Interpreting the curatorial idea of the dynamic archive, the historical scope of the TYPEMOTION film collection is spread out across the vast
gallery spaces of the NTMoFA. Each genre is shown in its own gallery, whose forms of presentation (from single screens to cinema
projections and interactive multi-screen installations) allow for a dialogue between different spaces of experience and the wide range of
aesthetic strategies of the works on display. Works from Taiwanese artists are highlighted in distinct areas, yet integrated into the overall
passage, a multimedia installation will allow visitors to generate their own visual poetry via their mobile phones.
Visitors can literally explore the space of the archive, organized as a passage through more than a century of typemotion experiments.
Offering a variety of ways to interact with works, the exhibition encourages visitors to engage with the works' multiple registers of
openness.
The entry area includes a large sculpture that structures the gallery space. A non-descript shape, the structural landscape recalls the
generic computational infrastructures that are so common that we rarely pay attention to the way they structure our experience. Rising
toward the ceiling and stretching across the entire gallery space, the sculpture also recalls the complex urban infrastructures which frame
our everyday encounter with type in motion: the architectures of our contemporary cities whose surfaces serve as screens, acting as
interfaces to a vast cultural archive.
Movable at least since Gutenberg, type has kept moving to and across cinema screens, computer displays and other projection surfaces.
This has opened up an entire range of possibilities barely conceivable in the cultures of print. Countering pessimistic assumptions
lamenting the decline or at least marginalization of writing, TYPEMOTION highlights an important feature of contemporary culture: the
non-hierarchical play with the simultaneity of writing and image in analog and digital forms of communication. Schriftfilme//Typemotion
Films affirm the continued social, cultural and economic significance of writing in and through visual cultures.
Gallery A – old monitor
Silent Film – Early Narrative Cinema
The use of writing as an additional informational medium in film became standard practice no later than 1907/1908: In silent film, it
emerged initially in the guise of intertitles inserted to ensure narrative coherence. In this context, writing primarily appeared not as an
independent means of communication, but as an auxiliary way of compensating for the limitations of film. Since, in such cases, the purpose
of writing is to convey clear semantic information, effortless legibility is required; fade-ins are thus executed in linear and logical, distinct,
and static forms that produce a rigid and disruptive and consequently un-filmic effect. And yet, ever since the early pioneering days of film,
writing in film has by no means remained restricted to the mediation of semantic information. Through its graphic stylization, it is capable
of serving pivotal additional functions. Innovative forms of visual accentuation enhance the relevance of the intertitles to such an extent
that filmic narration is mediated by writing almost as much as it is by the image. Writing establishes itself as means of filmic
communication and representation in its own right – in some films even as direct element of the filmic image.
Edwin S. Porter | College Chums | US | 1907 | animated intertitles | excerpt
Paul Wegener | The Golem: How He Came Into the World | DE | 1920 | Expressionism | excerpt
Robert Wiene | The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari | DE | 1920 | Expressionism | excerpt
Fritz Lang | Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler | DE | 1922 | New Objectivity | excerpt
Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy | Ballet mécanique | FR | 1924 | Early Avant-garde | Dadaism | excerpt
Marcel L’Herbier | L’inhumaine | FR | 1924 | Impressionism | excerpt
Sergei M. Eisenstein | Stachka | SU | 1925 | excerpt
Gallery A – 2 projectors
Early Avant-garde
European film avant-gardes that established themselves beginning in the mid-1920s drew conceptual inspiration from Cubism,
Constructivism, Dadaism, and later, from Surrealism. Interestingly, their attempts to (further) develop a film-specific form of expression at
the expense of a narrative, illusionist filmic constitution, still included written fade-ins. In the ambitious films of Marcel Duchamp (Anémic
Cinéma, FR, 1924/1926), Man Ray (Le Retour à la raison, FR, 1923; Emak Bakia, FR, 1926; L’Étoile de mer, FR, 1928), Fernand Léger (Ballet
mécanique), Charles Dekeukeleire (Histoire de détective, BE, 1928/1929) and Len Lye (A Colour Box, GB, 1935; Kaleidoscope, BG, 1935;
Trade Tattoo, GB, 1937) one witnesses a distinctly open and creative treatment of writing. These filmmakers are the first to treat writing as
one equally valid filmic design element among many, diametrically opposed to its conventional function as an integral part of a narration
and thereby achieving valence as an independent aesthetic formal element in film. In their work, the mode of reception oscillates between
reading and viewing. Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films of the historical avant-garde anticipated forms of writing and film art that would only
establish themselves many years later.
In running direction; left – right:
1. Procetor
Marcel Duchamp | Anémic Cinéma | FR | 1924/1926 | Dadaism
2. Projector
Len Lye | Trade Tattoo | GB | 1937 | Handmade Film | Commercial for General Post Office G.P.O
Gallery A – projection with seating
Lettrism
A striking film-historical change occurred around 1950: from this point on, writing is programmatically integrated into the filmic medium.
The use of writing can be traced back to a genuine interest among directors in the medium of writing, which was considered a (concrete)
material. Such cases involved artists and literati attached to Lettrism that target the practical implementation of theoretical postulates in
film. Lettrist artists like Isidore Isou (Traité de bave et d’éternité, FR, 1951) and Maurice Lemaître (Le Film est déjà commencé?, FR, 1951)
not only blast open conventionally classified boundaries of form and content of what counts as film, but also − ironically and provocatively
− defy the formal and functional requirements that writing in film is conventionally meant to fulfill. Whereas the artists of Lettrism
expressly endeavored to turn against the commercial film industry by way of their cumbersome, unconventional filmic aesthetics − above
all, as conditioned by the integration of writing −, the stylistic innovations of their films today are among the standard modes of design in
cinema and TV trailers, and are used specifically in title sequences for mystery or horror thrillers.
Maurice Lemaître | Le Film est déjà commencé? | FR | 1951 | 62 min
Gallery B – projection (onto the horizontal middle of 3 fields)
Flicker
The flicker effect offers an especially well-suited approach to make film visible as material, as film. Unlike the descriptive terms motion
pictures, movies or moving images which, strictly speaking, do not refer to film as medium and material as separate, single images, but to
its unique effect – namely, generating the illusion of movement −, the designation flicker refers explicitly to film as strip, and names a
consistently concealed modality of film projection usually discarded as an undesirable side-effect, or as a technically conditioned mistake.
The mechanical transport of separate, single images makes the latter’s actual detachment recognizable as the visual shimmering or
flickering of the images (flicker). Flicker films do not conceal this genuine filmic modality, but render it the dominant figure within a
reduced perceptual range. In flicker-Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films, this reduced perceptual range consists of writing that is illegible
through the flicker mode. But – and this is the decisive factor in these films – it is recognizable as writing and thus, letter for letter, image
for image, renders the film viewable as film, as material, as sequence of distinct images.
Di(e)ter Rot(h) | Letter | DK/IS | 1956/1961
Paul Sharits | Word Movie | US | 1966 | Fluxus
Timm Ulrichs | IKON / KINO | DE | 1969/1979
Peter Rose | Spirit Matters | US | 1984 | Handmade Film
Mika Taanila | Ihminen ja tiede [Man and Science] | FI | 2011
Nik Thoenen | Korpus Grotesk | AT | 2013
Gallery B – projection
Concrete Poetry / Sound Poetry
In contrast to avant-garde and experimental films that link writing and (film) image, and that consequently evoke complex interactions
across the media used, writing in the Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films of Concrete Poetry is the sole material of representation. In post
Second World War Austria, Marc Adrian and Gerhard Rühm were the first artists to have designed Concrete Poetry for film. By exhausting
film-specific means of representation, they sought to (re)activate the yet-to-be-exhausted potential of writing in print media (compare
writing mobiles, flip-books). Although written fade-ins are legible, in Concrete Poetry films, there is no recognizable display of clearly
meaningful narrative structures; only individual connections may be construed, at best, allowing for the emergence of fragile associative
narrations. The Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films of Concrete Poetry not only point to unique formal-aesthetic attributes but, above all, to
otherwise unobserved constitutive and functional mechanisms of writing, enabling audiences’ self-reflective observations of their
perceptual automatisms.
Marc Adrian | WO-DA-VOR-BEI | AT | 1958
Marc Adrian | Text II | AT/DE | 1964
Gerhard Rühm | 3 kinematografische texte [3 cinematographic texts] | DE | 1969
Jörg Piringer | rr ii | AT | 2006
Stephan Groß | ICI | DE | 2007
Ottar Ormstad | LYMS | NO | 2009
Ottar Ormstad | when | NO | 2011
Ottar Ormstad | natyr | NO | 2013
Josef Linschinger | Colors | AT | 2014
Josef Linschinger | Terms | AT | 2014
Josef Linschinger | Text-Image | AT | 2014
Gallery B – 2 projections
Structural Film
Based on the term Structural Film, which had greater currency in the Anglo-American spheres, and which harked back to P. Adams Sitney,
material films were likewise referred to as Strukturelle Filme [structural films] in Germany from the mid-1960s on. Structural Films are
based on concepts derived from the parameters of the carrier material – such as the structuring of time, camera movement, or serial
montage sequences. Given their highly self-reflective character, structural Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films – like Ernst Schmidt jr.’s 9/g
Filmtext (AT, 1967), Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma (US, 1970), Peter Greenaway’s Dear Phone (GB, 1976), or Michael Snow’s So Is This
(CA, 1982) – analyze the conditions of perception in the media of film and writing and, through the connection of these media, offer
different responses to the question “does writing in film become film?”
In running direction; left – right:
Left projector: Michael Snow | So Is This | CA | 1982 | 45 min
Right projector: Ferdinand Kriwet | Teletext | DE | 1967 | TV Avant-garde | Experimental Film
( please don’t print this film onto this panel for „Structural Film“, instead only put a small sign next to the projecton screen of
Kriwet with this underlined information!!! 
Gallery C – flatscreen
TV Avant-garde
For the first time in cultural history, the introduction of television allowed communication with all social groups across demographic
boundaries. But in the early 1970s, TV did not venture beyond such a leveling of demographic boundaries. The mass medium proved
unable to transgress the boundaries between art and life, already called for in the historical Dada movement or the Fluxus movement of the
1960s and 1970s. Beginning in the early 1970s, artists – Klaus Peter Dencker, Ferdinand Kriwet, Stephen Partridge or Jean-Luc Godard with
his Histoire(s) du Cinéma (FR/CH, 1988) – attempted to counter TV with artistic film- and video productions, making their own television.
To push viewers out of their role as passive spectators, they combine writing with decontextualized footage, or writing alone is featured as
image content. Artistic TV productions are integrated into regular TV broadcasting schedules, but also appear as unannounced
interruptions, as TV interventions.
Klaus Peter Dencker | starfighter | DE | 1971
Klaus Peter Dencker | rausch | DE | 1971
Klaus Peter Dencker | astronaut | DE | 1971
Stephen Partridge | Sentences | US | 1988-1993 | Video Art
Stephen Partridge | The Sounds of These Words | GB | 1989 | Video Art
Gallery C – projector
Experimental Film
Multiple experimental Schriftfilme//Typemotion Films exist – among others David Lynch’s The Alphabet (US, 1968), or Stan Brakhages
handmade film I... Dreaming (US, 1988) – that employ writing as one of several autonomous means of filmic design, often referencing and
building on the practices of historical avant-garde movements. In combination with images, mostly decontexualized footage, writing
engages in countless associative connections and opens wide interpretive horizons. Sometimes writing communicates information that is
both redundant and contradictory, sometimes the combination of image and writing contributes to the particular aesthetics and complex
layers of meaning in these films even though no relationship seems to exist between them on the level of content.
Georg Bense | The Fish Flies Steeply | DE | 1962/2013 | Concrete Poetry
Georg Bense | Terry Jo's Monologue | DE | 1963/2012 | Concrete Poetry
Stan Vanderbeek | Poemfield No. 2 | US | 1966 | Computeranimation
Eino Ruutsalo | ABC123 | FI | 1967
Nicolás Guillén Landrián | Coffea Arábiga | CU | 1968 | Documentary
Paul Glabicki | Object Conversation | US | 1985 | Dadaism
Timm Ulrichs | The End | DE | 1990/1997
Andreas Krein | Typokinematographikon | DE | 1997 | Animation
Norbert Pfaffenbichler | notes on film 01 else | AT | 2002
Gallery D – 6 flatscreens
Video Art – Performance Videos
Although artists such as Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell already began to explore the new possibilities for display and image manipulation
enabled by video technology in 1963, other artists did not develop interest in video as a new form of artistic expression and the forms of
aesthetic practice it allowed until much later. Instead, they considered video technology as a welcome new possibility in the context of
Expanded Cinema, but also as a cost-effective technique for the storage especially of the processual moments of their Performance Art.
Starting in the late 1960s, artists in Austria, Germany and the United States start to use the new technology to document their performances
– contrary to the original postulates defining this art form as ephemeral and non-reproducible.
In running direction:
1. Flatscreen
Peter Weibel | Grüß Gott [Greetings] | AT | 1967
Peter Weibel | Das Recht mit Füßen treten [Stepping on Law] | AT | 1967/1968
Peter Weibel | Selbstbeschreibung [Self-Description] | AT | 1973
Peter Weibel | Mundtext [Mouth Text] | AT | 1974
Peter Weibel | Augentexte [Eye Texts] | AT | 1975
2. Flatscreen
Dennis Oppenheim | Feedback | US | 1971
3. Flatscreen
Gerhard Rühm, Hubert Sielecki | witz | AT | 1971/2007
4. Flatscreen
Silvie and Chérif Defraoui | homme, femme, serpent | CH | 1986
5. Flatscreen
Bertram Haude, Jens Volz | perfect activity leaves no traces | DE | 2001
6. Flatscreen
Anna Gollwitzer | Satzbau | DE | 2004
Anna Gollwitzer | before / beside / behind | DE | 2005
Gallery D – 2 projections
Video Art – Media Reflection, Media Criticism, and Other
Video technology swiftly began to catch artists’ attention following its introduction to the North American and European markets around
the beginning of the 1960s, and therefore was able to establish itself as an independent art medium. The initially black-and-white and
minimal resolution images by no means diminished the enthusiasm among artists for countering television with artistic productions – to
make their ‘own’ television – and henceforth to explore image, sound and writing with a more affordable means of production. One of the
most obvious differences to film – reflected no less in the integration of writing since the emergence of Video Art – is the genre’s (almost)
entirely inexistent hierarchy of image, sound and writing. In video, the soundtrack need not be superimposed over the images in a separate
process, nor should text panels be inserted into the pictorial space. In electronic − and later in digital − media, image, sound and writing not
only have equal rights from the outset, but are, above all else, of a similar kind, based on the same electronic/digital components.
In running direction:
Left projector
Richard Serra | Television Delivers People | US | 1973
Stephen Partridge | Easy Piece | GB | 1974
Gary Hill | Happenstance (part one of many parts) | US | 1982/1983
Antoni Muntadas | Media Ecology Ads | US | 1982
Eduardo Kac | Reabracadabra | BR |1985
Eduardo Kac | Recaos | BR | 1986
Peter Rose | Foit Yet Cleem Triavith | US | 1987
Right projector
Silvie and Chérif Defraoui | Exposition/Surexposition | CH | 1991
Dellbrügge & de Moll | Video-Theorie II | DE | 1992
Dogfilm | Soap | DE | 1994
Daniel Pflumm | Logos auf Schwarz [Logos on Black] | DE | 1995/1996/2005
Eduardo Kac | Reversed Mirror | US | 1997
Simon Ellis | Telling Lies | GB | 2000
Gallery E – 4 projectors
Poetry Clips
Especially the avant-garde filmmakers of the early 20th century were interested in liberating the then-new medium of art from that which
was already considered art prior to its incorporation into film, from theater and literature, hence from language and writing. Today, the
conceptual integration, the creative visualization of what had once been (ideologically) rejected as un-filmic has become a growing trend.
Artists now strive to interprete literary works in animated poetry-clips, transform literary idioms into filmic language and draw attention
to the form of writing to visualize the content it conveys.
Clockwise direction by entering
1. Projector
2. Projector
3. Projector
4. Projector
Jakob Kirchheim | Geld oder Leben [Money or Life] | DE | 1990
Edmund Skellings | Senior Citizen | US | 1993
Christian Weckerle | Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie | DE | 1995
Feargal O'Malley | Violets | GB | 2004
Clemens Kogler | Panther | AT | 2005
Andrew Gribble | Poetic Motion | US | 2006
Johannes Vogt | Bitterschön | DE | 2008
Sebastian Lange | Flickermood 2.0 | DE | 2008
Eiríkur Örn Nor∂dahl | Höpöhöpö Böks | IS | 2008
David Alexander Anderson | Tongue of the Hidden | GB/IR | 2008
Alice Lyons, Orla Mc Hardy | The Polish Language | IE | 2009
Kristian Pedersen | Viva Zombatista | NO | 2009
Kristian Pedersen | Sveve, sveve | NO | 2011
Anna Duquennois | Hunter's Green | US | 2010
Susanne Wiegner | just midnight | DE | 2010
Susanne Wiegner | [meine heimat] | DE | 2012
Susanne Wiegner | something I remember | DE | 2012
Sebastian Lange | Urban Surfaces | DE | 2014
F Cinema
Program: Narrative Animation – Living Types
A great many special effects, which both simulate the movement of the motionless, and make visible that which has never been seen, have
also been used for more than one hundred years to present writing in extraordinary ways. Animated films bring writing to life not only in a
formal sense, but by way of granting it an autonomous agency otherwise reserved for actors or objects: writing becomes the animated main
character. Letters walk across the screen, interact with humans, or look, move and behave like the animals or the objects to which they
relate – in experimental films and videos (of social criticism), in commercials, in music videos.
Norman McLaren V for Victory | CA | 1941 | Commercial for Victory Bonds | Early Avant-garde
Daniel Szczechura | Litera | PL | 1962
Jan Lenica | A | DE/FR | 1964
David Lynch | The Alphabet | US | 1968
Terry Gilliam, | Monty Python's Life of Brian (dir: Terry Jones) | GB | 1979 | Title Design
Bretislav Pojar | E | CA | 1981
Jonathan Hodgson | Feeling My Way | GB | 1997 | Video Art | TV Avant-garde
Jonathan Hodgson | The Man With the Beautiful Eyes | GB | 1999 | Poetry Clip | TV Avant-garde
H5: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, Ludovic Houplain | The Child (artist: Alex Gopher) | FR | 1999 | Music Video
H5: François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, Ludovic Houplain | Logorama | FR | 2009
Run Wrake | Rabbit | GB | 2005 | TV Avant-garde
Joanna Priestley | Missed Aches | US | 2009 | Poetry Clip
G Cinema
Program: Silent Experimental Feature Film
Instead of easily legible information presented as motionless on intertitle boards, pioneer Edwin S. Porter presented intertitles as jumbled
announcements, essentially to the impact of his silent comedy. In their two contemporary silent feature films, Florian Krautkrämer and
Esteban Sapir present dialogue, thoughts and feelings as animated written manifestation. The words appear as if they are real objects – to
be talked to, pushed away.
Edwin S. Porter | How Jones Lost His Roll | US | 1905 | 07:00 min.
Florian Krautkrämer | Breaking Legs | DE | 2010 | 15:00 min.
Esteban Sapir | La Antena | AR | 2007 | 99:00 min.
Gallery H – 4 flatscreens
Commercials and TV Motion Design
It was primarily in the period prior to the introduction of sound film that, in advertising strategy, integrating the name and the
manufacturer of the advertised product and, as the case may be sometimes, an advertising slogan in one or the other form, became all but
mandatory. What a so-called audio-logo can achieve when images are combined with a familiar jingle could only be accomplished by means
of writing in the age of silent film. A growing number of artists and filmmakers entered the advertising industry and produced commercials,
in which writing leaves the frame of intertitles to function in the effective communication of messages as means of design and information
of its own. Whereas early films include writing only in-between moving images, writing is itself set in motion in more experimental ways
beginning in the 1920s (motion design) – like in the avant-garde commercials of Julius Pinschewer and Guido Seeber, Len Lye or Norman
McLaren. Whether in commercials, trailers or openers, writing creates emotion through motion and design and takes on functions no
longer limited to the communication of legible information.
1. Flatscreen
2. Flatscreen
3. Flatscreen
4. Flatscreen
Thomas Alva Edison, William Heise | Admiral Cigarette | US | 1897 | Commercial for Admiral Cigarette
Julius Pinschewer, Guido Seeber | Film/Kipho | DE | 1925 | Commercial for Cinema- and Photo-Exhibition KIPHO,
Berlin | Early Avant-garde | Animation
Len Lye | Trade Tattoo | GB | 1937 | Commercial for General Post Office G.P.O | Early Avant-garde | Animation
Norman McLaren | V for Victory | CA | 1941 | Commercial for Victory Bonds | Early Avant-garde | Animation
Young & Rubicam | Ericsson Brandcampaign 1998 | DE | 1998 | Digital Animation
Bessere Werbung | Gina | DE | 1998 | Commercial for Warsteiner Premium Verum
Matthias Zentner (velvet mediendesign) | aspekte | DE | 2001 | TV-Opener ZDF | Digital Animation
Matthias Zentner (velvet mediendesign) | Metropolis | DE | 2001 | TV-Opener ARTE | Digital Animation
Simone Haberland (velvet mediendesign) | Wer sie liest, sieht mehr [Those Who Read It See More] | DE | 2008 |
Commercial for Süddeutsche Zeitung | Digital Animation
Leo Burnett | Everything from A to Z | CA | 2007 | Commercial for Zellers
Peter Lund, Michael Koch (eachfilm), Tanja Fassold, Mario Lautscham (tisch-eins | designstudio) | Typofonie | DE |
2007 | Commercial for Concert Hall Dortmund | Digital Animation
Gallery H – 2 projections
Music Videos – Dancing Types
Since the mid-1960s, the music industry has increasingly staged musical compositions in short film productions to support sales. Since the
aim of this advertising strategy is not only to promote the songs in question, but to increase the popularity of the performer as well, most
music videos have the artists do so-called lip-sync-performances. However, the project TYPEMOTION presents comparately rare examples
of music videos in which colorfully designed, animated text set to music plays a predominant role, using writing in a process of audiovisual
translation. Music videos are considered Schriftfilme // Typemotion Films when they use writing to accomplish more than a simple,
inconsequential duplication of speech that remains epiphenomenal to the filmic image; they are visual compositions of speech with
mediatheoretical, comparative, and cognition-psychological implications
1. Projector
2. Projector
D.A. Pennebaker | Subterranean Homesick Blues (artist: Bob Dylan) | US | 1967
Peter Göltenboth | Nur ein Wort [Only One Word] (artist: Wir sind Helden) | DE | 2005
H5: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, Ludovic Houplain | The Child (artist: Alex Gopher) | FR | 1999
Don Cameron | The Audience (artist: Matthew Herbert) | GB | 2001
Mathis Lex, Hannes Geiger | My Dog Eats Beats (artist: Console) | DE | 2003
MK12 | Sleeping Beauty (artist: Funkstörung feat. Lou Rhodes) | US | 2004
Jonas Odell | Take me out (artist: Franz Ferdinand) | GB | 2004
Mrzyk & Moriceau | Excuse-moi (artist: Philippe Katerine) | FR | 2006
Charly Gutierrez | Ya No Sé Que Hacer Conmigo (artist: El Cuarteto de Nos) | UY | 2006
Jonas & François | The Good Life (artist: Kanye West feat. T-Pain) | US | 2007
Chic & Artistic | Symphonies (artist: Dan Black feat. Kid Cudi) | FR | 2009
Kevin Blanc | Tiger Dust (artist: Yello) | CH | 2009
Alexander Chen, Philip Stockton | Toy Baby Grand (artist: Boy in Static) | US | 2009
Gallery I – 6 flatscreens
Title Design – The Art of the Title
The use of title sequences did not become common practice among filmmakers in the US and Europe until the mid-1920s. Especially the
artists commissioned to design these films also become interested in their typographic design, to communicate the films’ content or its
relationship to a particular genre, but also to generate a specific atmosphere that draws viewers into the innerfilmic sphere. In the late
1950s, the title sequences designed by Saul Bass mark a decisive turning point in the design of film titles: title sequences create their effect
through motion and design – as motion design develops out of the static art of film titling. While Saul Bass, Pablo Ferro or Dan Perri use
legible forms of writing in semiotic relation to film content, from the late 1990s onward the communicative registers of animated, blurred,
and unreadable writing are explored above all by Kyle Cooper, whose work inaugurates yet another era of film title design.
Flatscreen 1
Type indicating historical background
Victor Fleming | Gone With the Wind (dir: Victor Fleming et al ) | US | 1939
Flatscreen 2
Type indicating psycho thriller, crime
Saul Bass | Psycho (dir: Alfred Hitchcock) | US | 1960
Pablo Ferro | A Clockwork Orange (dir: Stanley Kubrick) | GB | 1971 | Trailer
Kyle Cooper (RG/A) | Se7en (dir: David Fincher) | US | 1995
Thomas Wilk (Das Werk) | Run Lola Run (dir: Tom Tykwer) | DE | 1998
Peter Frankfurt, Michelle Dougherty (Imaginary Forces) | The Number 23 (dir: Joel Schumacher) | US | 2007
Flatscreen 3
Type indicating science fiction
Attila De Lado | The Andromeda Strain (dir: Robert Wise) | US | 1971
Dan Perri | Star Wars (dir: George Lucas) | US | 1977
Saul Bass | Alien (dir: Ridley Scott) | GB/US | 1979
Kyle Cooper (Imaginary Forces) | Sphere (dir: Barry Levinson) | US | 1998
Bruce Schluter | The Matrix Reloaded (dir: Andy and Lana (Larry) Wachowski) | US | 2003
Flatscreen 4
Form of type indicating filmic content
Kyle Cooper, Garson Yu (RG/A) | Twister (dir: Jan de Bont) | US | 1996
William Lebeda (Picture Mill) | Hollow Man (dir: Paul Verhoeven) | US | 2000
Karin Fong, Charles Khoury, Chun-Chien Lien (Imaginary Forces) | Daredevil (dir: Mark Steven Johnson) | US | 2003
Flatscreen 5
Title sequence as short story
Terry Gilliam, | Monty Python's Life of Brian (dir: Terry Jones) | GB | 1979
Karin Fong, Rafael Macho (Imaginary Forces) | Bedazzled (dir: Harold Ramis) | US | 2000
MK12 | Stranger Than Fiction (dir: Marc Forster) | US | 2006
Flatscreen 6
Tom Kan, Gaspar Noé | Enter the Void (dir: Gaspar Noé) | FR | 2009
Gallery I – 6 computer screens
Computer Demo Scene
The communicative practices of the computer age are generally considered to be email, chat, or microblogs, or the use of social media in
multimedial self-presentations within digital user communities. The pre-internet network culture of bulletin boards and floppy disk
exchanges is less well-known, but it also included aesthetic practices around typemotion design. Emerging as a subculture around early
generations of personal computing platforms such as the Commodore 64, the demoscene defines itself in relation to the computer demo as
a medium for artistic expression. Combining communication, information, experimental design, and creative coding, artists create
audiovisual compositions in the form of executable software. While aesthetic styles have continued to develop over the past thirty years,
the core principle of real-time execution has remained the same – creating a genre that is fundamentally different from pre-rendered digital
film.
Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3
Screen 4
Screen 5
Screen 6
XAKK | No Sleep 2 (Part 1) | SE | 1987
XAKK | No Sleep 2 (Part 2) | SE | 1987
XAKK | Why Sleep (Part 4) | SE | 1988
Triumph | Gnarp (Part 3) | SE | 1988
Triumph | Gnarp (Part 5) | SE | 1988
Super Swap Sweden | It's Movin’ (Part 5) | SE | 1988
Northstar & Fairlight | Megademo 3 (Scrolly 2) | SE | 1989
Cryptoburners | The Hunt for 7th October | NO | 1990
Phenomena | ScrewBalls (aka Corkscrew) | SE | 1990
Scoopex | Mental Hangover | FI | 1990
Sanity | Elysium – The Search for Anarchy | DE | 1991
Chorus | Revolution (Greetings) | HU | 1994
Equinox | Kings of the Playground | FR | 2004
Black Maiden | Pageturner | DE | 2004
Bypass | Kardiogramm | DE | 2005
Focus | Trans*Form | NL | 2006
Neuro | Die Ewigkeit schmerzt [Eternity Hurts] | DE | 2006