‘Akt-Skulpturen’ (2023)

‘Akt-Skulpturen. Studienfilm für bildende Künstler’ [Living Sculptures: Film Study for Screen Artist] (Oskar Messter, 1903) was envisioned as a reference tool for artists, but my first exposure to it was as part of a film festival programme of early shorts projected from nitrate prints, where it took on the appearance of an avant-garde film. By transcoding a fragment of the film into a looping sprite-sheet I have changed the piece's materiality as a means of restoring its initial function.

Initially made in PureData with input from a MIDI controller, this project was rewritten in 2024 using JavaScript so that it could be viewed in a web browser on computers and mobile devices. The figure can be rotated by scrolling horizontally.

• If you are using a laptop you can use trackpad gestures to scroll horizontally.
• If you are using a mobile device you can use the touchscreen to scroll horizontally.
• If you are using a computer mouse you can hold the shift key and use the scroll wheel to scroll horizontally.

Linked is the web browser version.