TRIP – Remix Your Experience


TRIP – Remix Your Experience is a German Gesamtkunstwerk, a synthesis of the arts, authored and produced by Frank Otto and Bernt Köhler-Adams in 2005. As early as December 2004, it was premiered for the very first time as a multimedia installation at the Instituto Superior de Arte under the auspices of the Havana Film Festival. The world premiere as an experimental film took place in September 2005 at Expo 2005 in the prefecture of Aichi in Japan as an element of the official supporting cultural programme for the German pavilion. A full-scale performance was given for the first time in December 2005 in the US at Bergamot Station in California.

Content and Plots

In all of the forms in which this psychedelic work is depicted, the recipient viewer/listener is called upon as the “final author” to allow their own individual storyline to arise. The basis for the cinematic-musical concept piece is formed by a Progressive rock piece of music 74 minutes long. The session formation “The Element Project” interprets a variety of human relationships to the environment, to nature and love in English. The spectrum of stylistic tools ranging from Rock to Jazz, Blues, Ethno and on to the avant-garde defines the dramatisation of four different films.
As regards the 8 additional video-wall films from the bookshelf wall in “artwork”, these equally deal with a mimical portrait that interprets the music, two computer animations, two VJ productions and documentary footage of the painting performance, straight through to the musicians involved.

Forms of Depiction

The premiere in Germany was acclaimed as the coup at the film festival Filmfest Hamburg 2005.
Once the individual films had been screened at various international film festivals, the complete version debuted in 2006 at the 59th Cannes Film Festival before an international film audience.
Aside from the film industry, one performance subsequently constituted the “Grand Finale” at the 2006 “Festival of the Fourth Dimension” in Sophia Antipoles, the first global festival for art and technology.
Following the German cinema premiere, a 15-city tour of movie theatres including live performances ensued to accompany the film's release.
For the first time in television history, the synchronised parallel broadcast of a film feature occurred simultaneously in 4 variations on 4 TV stations on June 2, 2007.
As a cupola projection, TRIP has been a Fulldome programme feature at the Hamburg Planetarium since July 2007.
After 5 shows in New York, e.g. at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the DVD was released in the U.S.

Critiques

When the film was released in Germany, discussion surrounding the feature-length film was highly controversial from a variety of viewpoints: