About TRIP

Frank Otto described the creation of TRIP as “a free-form project where everyone - artists, musicians and filmmakers - had the freedom to express themselves to create one synchronized experiential trip for the senses.”  The feeling of a TRIP audience is just as alive with freedom: No two people experience the same movie at the same time – so all, by watching, remix their experience.

TRIP is a dynamic project which can be present the simultaneity of the films in many different ways: using either separate film screens, multiple plasma monitors, or one projection in which all 4 movies are shown on a single split screen. Since its inception, the project has been produced over multiple times in imaginative settings – at event installations in art galleries, at dance clubs and on a movie theatre tour throughout Germany; it currently plays at the Hamburg planetarium, completed with lasers. TRIP has made appearances at the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in Havana, Cuba and at the Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

The films open windows to our world, showing parallel truths, ethereal landscapes, exposed fantasies, the secrets of the ocean, the possibilities of the planet, and the power of the human experience.

Come experience the dreamworld for yourself.

Yet the project has not come to New York… until now.

For the complete history of TRIP, please visit our main site: www.trip-movie.com



The TRIP Movies

artwork.
a fairy tale’s trip.

Frank Otto once studied painting at the “Kunsthochschule”, the college of fine arts, in Kiel, Germany. For the film “artwork” he created his own sequel to “The Little Mermaid”, the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. On the spacious concrete floor of a studio hall measuring 260 m² (2800 sq. ft.), a total of 170 individual pictures came about in a mere 4 weeks. Starting with the last picture first, the pictures were then painted over in exactly 74 minutes, accompanied by music from “TRIP”, while the cameras filmed.

The film by Stefanie Volkmer that runs 'backwards' conveys the illusion that the man with the two paint rollers allows the tale to arise picture by picture. The painter himself suddenly seems to actually become one of the protagonists in this fairy tale.

seamusic.
a trip under water.

“seamusic” was the first film in the “TRIP” quadrology, and thus the first cinematic transposition of the original composition. Frank Otto and Bernt

Köhler-Adams had started off by combing through the abundant archives of Frank Schweikert, an underwater film-maker. In the end, he was the one who convinced them to film additional new footage in order to visualize the music to “TRIP”.

“seamusic” displays the unique features of the sea: an unknown world under water whose inhabitants become surreal starring actors to the beat of the music.

playing planet.
a trip around the world.

The two film-makers Eliane Koller and Ariane Bethusy-Huc traveled the globe for 9 months in order to realize “playing planet”, their “TRIP” film. They became acquainted with Frank Otto and the “TRIP” project 8 weeks before they set off to Sudan, their first shooting location. Inspired by the musical leitmotif, they made use of the time in between to draft 13 fictitious stories. After that, they dedicated their efforts to looking for places, people and occurrences which seemed to correspond to their tales. A very special kind of adventure began.

“playing planet” is the outcome of an extraordinary journey marked by inspiration, pure chance and encounters with the widest variety of people, cultures and rituals on our planet.

Track 2
30 trips in one.

The soundtrack was split up into 30 sequences for the production of “Track 2”, the second “TRIP” film. Those sequences were subsequently interpreted for the cinema by film-makers coming from the widest range of genres. Whether as a short story, a 3D animation or a video clip: Each feature stands for a project impression all its own.