Film ist. 7-12

100 years is not long time for a medium. However the last few years have seen accelerating technical developments: digital manipulation of pictures, Internet TV, virtual reality games, CDROMs and DVDs now dominate the media landscape. The project Film ist. is intended to be an artistic contribution to the discourse about those questions arising from dealing with a deeper understanding of the way opticalacoustic media work. Film ist. approaches the principles which lie at the foundation of the media. It does not claim to be a theoretical work but tries, on the basis of a long engagement with the material, to track down some of the building blocks of perception and some of the effects of moving images. The product is neither an analysis nor a documentation but rather an artistic experiment.Deutsch has been working on this project since 1986. The first concrete results were seen with the compilation Film ist. 16, that was dedicated to the science laboratory as one birthplace of film. Since 1999 he has been working on the making of the next chapters which are concerned with the funfair and variety as the second birthplace of film. Film ist. 17 focuses on such phenomena as stop tricks, time lapse, slapstick sketches, phantom rides, instruction and spectacle. Rotterdam also premières a DVD installation of Film ist., presenting some key sequences on a circular screen.