Berlin-based artist Robert Seidel works in the fields of experimental film, installation, public art, image making, performance, sound, and curation.
hysteresis
The experimental film explores the lag between recording analogue drawings and projecting them onto a queer performer’s choreography to create dense feedback loops.
Using machine-learning to mediate these transformative re-presentations, the film intentionally corrupts strategies of the AI, unveiling a frenetic, delicate, flamboyant visual language of the hysteria and hysteresis in this historical moment.
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In tech companies, universities and artist studios, machines work through and learn the history of mankind. Copyright dissolves; distinctions between original, imitation or inferior reproduction erode. No origin, no responsibility, no clear bias - just a primordial soup that can be transformed into any form without questioning knowledge systems and hierarchies. In this silent, but radical restructuring of entire industries, the artist becomes a template of a future that is digitally assembled from a myriad of fragments of the past.
»…such a web fascinates us because it resembles so closely the way that the mind works all the time, whether we’re aware of it or not, reflecting the dense interconnections of all existence.«
In the experimental film Hysteresis, Seidel’s analogue drawings and digital processing merge with the queer performance of Tsuki, whose movements improvise between Ballet, Butoh and Berlin club culture. In a fusion process, her image is recorded, fed back through Seidel’s devices and then projected onto her body. An expanding digital sphere beyond labels and identifications with gender, culminating in dehabitualised neural patterns and reconceived fabrics of intimacy beyond rational understanding.
In a final step, the resulting sessions are edited and dissolved by machine-learning strategies into a constant flow of pulsating images and folded spatial configurations. The resulting Muybridgean silhouettes, baroque textures and bursting painterly structures fluctuate between the second and third dimensions, unfolding free-floating gestures that unhinge the laws of nature. Meanwhile, delicate abrasions of the pictorial frame build bridges into contradictory concatenations of reality. The soundtrack by Oval (Markus Popp) incessantly corrodes this dense web of associations, threatening to dissolve the remaining fragile points of reference.
At a time when an overriding predictability is forced upon us all, the film celebrates the disruption of pattern recognition and the artistic corruption of results induced by artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning. With Hysteresis Seidel explores new grounds in his experimental practice and collaboration. Unveiling a frenetic, delicate and flamboyant visual language, that speaks to the hysteria and hysteresis in this historical moment. The artist wants to open a discourse about these unique modes of AI creation – with implications beyond the film and other media, to that singularity, where history collapses into a single point in the present.
To the freedom of digital filmmaking beyond (commercial) hyperrealism!
Robert Seidel, December 2021
»AI is not transforming her [the performer Tsuki] so much as she is transforming it.«
hysteresis
Experimental Film, D 2021, 5:05 min
Film: Robert Seidel
Music: Oval
Cinemascope 2K, color, 2.35:1
Dolby 5.1
Performance & Choreography: Tsuki
Title Design: Bureau Now
5.1 Master: David Kamp
Special thanks to Miriam Eichner, Carolin Israel, Falk Mueller and Paul Seidel
Funding: FFA Filmboard
Screenings & Exhibitions
04/22 National Premiere, Filmfest Dresden, National Competition, Dresden, Germany
04/22 Video Installation of HYSTERESIS, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
05/22 Special Mention, ITFS Stuttgart, International Competition, Stuttgart, Germany
05/22 International Premiere, Audience Award, Animation Avantgarde Competition, Vienna Shorts, Vienna, Austria
05/22 Cannes Film Festival, Short Film Corner Market, Cannes, France
06/22 Annecy International Animation Festival, International Competition, Annecy, France
06/22 Animafest Zagreb, International Competition, Zagreb, Croatia
06/22 Fest Anča, International Competition, Žilina, Slovakia
07/22 Berliner Kurzfilmrolle 2022, Freiluftkino Friedrichhain, Berlin, Germany
09/22 Encounters Film Festival, Bristol, UK
09/22 Special Mention, Festival of Animation, Berlin, Germany
09/22 Ars Electronica, Experimental Film Program, Deep Space Theater, Linz, Austria
09/22 Taichung International Animation Festival, New Angles Program, Taichung, Taiwan
09/22 Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival, International Competition, Bucharest, Romania
10/22 Bucheon International Animation Festival, Short Competition, Bucheon, South Korea
10/22 Hysteresis & Company: LIVE + Screening, Schaubühne Lindenfels, DOK Leipzig, Germany
11/22 Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Artists' Film Selection, York, UK
11/22 New Chitose Festival, Music Animation Competition, Chitose, Japan
11/22 Audience Award, LIAF, International Competition: Abstract Showcase, London, UK
11/22 Manchester Animation Festival, Short Films Panorama, Manchester, UK
11/22 Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- und Videofest, Kassel, Germany
11/22 Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, International Competition, Winterthur, Switzerland
11/22 Animateka, Best of the World, Ljubljana, Slovenia
11/22 Opening Ceremony, Spektrum, Rumelage, Luxemburg
11/22 Special Mention, Tbilisi International Animation Festival, Tbilisi, Georgia
11/22 dança em foco - Festival Internacional de Vídeo & Dança, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
12/22 Beijing International Short Film Festival, International Competition, Beijing, China
01/23 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, Short Film Market Picks, Clermont-Ferrand, France
03/23 Ann Arbor Film Festival, Shorts Competition, Ann Arbor, USA
03/23 Kaboom Animation Festival, AI & Animation, Amsterdam, Netherlands
03/23 Videoformes, Clermont-Ferrand, France
03/23 Glasgow Short Film Festival, Rise of the Empathy Machines, Glasgow, UK
04/23 Images Festival, The Ghost in the Machine, Toronto, Canada
04/22 Filmfest Dresden, AI Special Screening, Dresden, Germany
05/23 International Competition - Abstract Animation, Anifilm, Liberec, Czech Republic
06/23 Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia, Unlock -Jumping into a New World, Tokyo, Japan
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