And some other works you’ve done before?

There are are several short pieces that can be found on my website, using abstract narration and a mixture of my painterly and 3d style. For example “E3” is a diary of 3 months I spend in the UK, while “winzerla woods” captures the mood of my living area. It’s hard to get funding for this kind of works at all, so my personal work is self funded.

“processes: living paintings” Phyletic Museum, Robert Seidel, 2008

But sometimes an interesting commission turns up, so I recently did a large architectural projection on the façade of the Phyletic Museum in Jena called “processes: living paintings”. It was especially created for the 100th anniversary of the museum founded by Ernst Haeckel, one of my favorite inspirational scientist-artists. The dimension was 35 by 16 meters using 3 video projectors for the outside, synched light sources from the inside, sound effects and an ambient score. Even though it was shown in winter 2008 for one day only, it had around 20.000 visitors. I’m still amazed about all the people standing 15 to 20 minutes in the freezing cold and being fascinated by something that indefinable.

Could you tell us about some technical parts?

I’m basically using 3ds max and After Effects with some plug-ins and scripts. It’s nothing really special, as every Hollywood studio has more capable tools and people really knowing how to use them. I would love to have a programmer working full time with me on some ideas I can’t explore, as my everyday work eats up a lot of energy and I’m already spending too much time in front of my PC.

Could you tell us about the Japan Tour starting in this April?

Last year I met filmmaker Max Hattler at the Animation Exchange Forum of Filmfest Dresden. We became friends, performed live at Aurora Festival (UK) and planed a collaborative movie. Max is based in London and we both needed to get away from the commercial pressure and wanted to look for new inspiration. We are both fascinated by Japanese culture, so we planned for to spend some time there. Originally I wanted a more relaxed way of approaching the country, but now after so much positive feedback, we have an amazing tour plan visiting Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, Osaka and Nagoya performing audio-visual live sets, giving talks and screenings in independent art spaces, cinemas, film festivals and universities. We will be there from April, 22 to May, 27, so be sure to check out the tour plan and visit us. I’m really excited and at the moment of this interview I can’t even possibly imagine how it will be…

Do you have any other plans? Or what would you like to be in the future?

As I said, I would like to work on my next movie in a very calm atmosphere and after the Japan tour, I try to take some time off to reach for that. Apart from my personal work, I’m dreaming of new architectural as well as cinematic challenges and collaborations with programmers or expert teams to create even more complex projects without doing so many things by myself. I met so many great people over the years helping me little by little, that I believe it will happen one day, even though it’s a long road…

Please leave a message to readers.

Be inspired by everything surrounding you!

Robert Seidel
Address: 2 Max-Steenbeck-Str., 07745 Jena, Germany
Tel: +49 36 4123 2943
https://www.robertseidel.com