Bauhauswoche Berlin – Collaborative Project w/ Samuel Wike
The idea for this project was to create kinetic posters for the Bauhauswoche festival in Berlin, which is celebrating the centenary of the establishment of the Bauhaus School of Art & Architecture in 1919. I collaborated with classmate (and the only person I know who also works in Cinema 4D) Samuel Wike. Our goal was to create 7 posters in total, one for each of the key contributors to the School; this includes Lázló Moholy-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, and Walter Gropius. These animations were designed to advertise in the Berlin U-Bahn, London Underground and other transport systems within European cities where they would get high footfall and attract the most attention.
This poster takes inspiration from two key pieces of Albers' work. It starts with a side view of the scene, reminiscent of the cover of his 1963 book Interaction of Colour. The camera then shifts with dynamism, with the new perspective showing a composition that reminds the viewer of his famous Homage to the Square series of paintings.
This idea took inspiration from a 2D drawing that Oskar Schlemmer did, turning it into something new. I was inspired by the head of one of his figures, and so I thought that making it in 3D space and attaching it to a wire string suspended between cogs would give it an industrial feel – this matches the feel of the Bauhaus in general.
For this kinetic poster, we wanted to maintain the use of geometric shapes, harkening back to the most well known period of the Bauhaus' teachings. This uses a similar effect to the previous poster, with the ball as a focal point. The object interacts with the rest of the composition to guide the viewer's eyes across the poster.
For this kinetic poster, we were inspired by one of Moholy-Nagy's sculptures, making a version with perpetual motion. We constantly thought about how the Bauhaus members would have worked with today's technologies, and applied this to our efforts within this project.
This kinetic poster was loosely inspired by Kandinsky's drawings. We wanted to imagine how his energetic compositions would work in a 3D space, so we translated this by giving the poster the focal point of the red ball. This serves as the point of entry into the poster while making sure that the composition remains delicate and balanced.