You work both artistically and with commissioned commercial work. How do you adapt your creativity and art into your clients’ briefings and needs?

In the past we tried to work artistically with clients on commercial projects, but it never worked. There is no understanding, need or interest in it.
Later we tried separating the artistic work and the commercial projects, until we found that some clients actually do want to tap into our creative resources and want unpredictable, therefore predictably more interesting artwork. Now we work in different ways: With Zeitguised we work conceptually on our own independent artwork which we sometimes sell or rent. We also work commercially with commissioned artwork, where clients book a slot in our books and we will get creative for them, meaning we work like independent artists on open briefs. This usually results in the most exciting and visually arresting work, and our clients more and more come to embrace that, because they know they can trust us to arrive at some high level output.
On the other hand, we still work in a classical production route with our sister company foam studio, where normal time and budgetary constraints apply and we work to a tight brief given by the client.

Would be great to get a case study. Some work you have recently done for some brand or institution which we can use as an example to extend your point.

Recently we worked on a project we called “Neural Groove“, and it was ignited by a client’s request to create visually stunning work for their campaign and their in-store imagery.

Please let us know a few achievements or milestones in your career so far that you would be happy to share with us.

We used to apply for and win competitions in the early years, then ceased that activity entirely. Now we are doing that again and recently won two honorary mentions at Ars Electronica and two awards at the Berlin Fashion Film Festival. We even used to be selected for DOTMOV in 2004: 
Which we were very proud of!

We in SHIFT are currently celebrating our 20th anniversary!
 When was the first time you heard about SHIFT and how was that?

I still remember the day when I was visiting friends in Chicago in 1998 and they had a new iMac and something called an internet flat rate, and I was sitting inside for a whole day, surfing of what I thought was the most advanced visual styles the world had to offer, mostly centered around SHIFT as it was called back then I seem to remember. I took home megabytes of screenshots on something called a zip disk. It was an eye opener, and my world had changed forever.

Please tell me about the geist.xyz EP

That is a limited edition pressing – 99, each one unique – of the soundtrack to the geist.xyz film and its remixes.

Are you interested yourselves in VJ work and mixing visuals?
 Have you ever done any live performance or worked for any artist live?

We did some live VJing between 2004 and 2006, some 2D mixing but also 3D live interaction and generation.

Have you exhibited your work at any art gallery or showcased it at any event?

We’re constantly exhibiting at galleries and festivals. Please check our exhibition panel and filmography.

Please tell us what are you up to at this moment and some other projects for the middle future.

We’re developing the design side as well as the art branch with some new directions.