Our experimental short film about OUBEY was shown publicly for the first time on 23 March 2010 at the Opening Event of Oubey’s web site.

This film is a portrait of a German artist who voluntarily isolated himself from the public for ten years to create more than 1200 paintings. When Oubey finally began considering the possibility of a new exhibition, he was killed in a traffic accident in August, 2004, at the age of 46.

The project.

The project MINDKISS posthumously realises his plan. Dagmar Woyde-Köhler, initiator and head of the Mindkiss project, commissioned Stefan Sagmeister / New York to design a book about the project and as:if Film Matters and Less Rain / Berlin to create an experimental cinematic portrait of Oubey.

Our aim was to explore not only the complexity of Oubey’s world, but also the material potential of his work and, not least of all, himself in the artistic process. In a first stage we selected private super 8 and video clips from Oubey’s legacy as well as HD material we shot in his studio to edit an 11 min long cut of the final version.

For the final piece up to 100,000 particles are animated simultaneously in 3D, each one corresponding to a pixel of the movie. They align, dissolve, mimic the motion within the movie itself and react to the user. All of this is precisely timed to fit the story arc and the music. Everything happens in real-time, nothing is prerendered. The software is running in Adobe Flash.

Oubey’s interactive portrait is accompanied by a mesmerizing soundscape of french composer Kangding Ray.

The movie has a running time of 11 min and can be downloaded only until April, 4th at http://www.oubey.com/en/loft/welcome

(Links to PC and MAC versions are on top of the page, the link under the image is just a short trailer.)