Ace of Light

Occhio

An important sensory organ, the eye, is damaged. The exhausting healing process takes us on an inner journey full of pain, fragility and mental unrest, in which even superstition and witchcraft seem to have an influence on recovery.

Perf Dance

A visual reinterpretation of dance and animated found footage.

Melancholy of the Outer Limits

undressed

By Winds and Tides

Exploring the conscious, the unconscious and the self, By Winds and Tides takes a deep experimental dive into the birth of an idea—how it takes shape, how it is released. An allegorical quest, the film combines images and words into a singular sigh.

Bootstrapping for the Boobied

Maxed out, burnt out, and sex-starved, Amber Su falls under the spell of glamorous self-help guru Coco Ging, whose mentorship turns desire and ambition into different kinds of debt. Repression evolves into possession as Amber molts into a new ego: a worksona.

Mountain Music

Mountain Music illustrates what happens when technology gets too advanced too soon. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

Metamorphoses I

For the multimedia exhibition Tangenten I (Tangents I), Dammbeck and co-organizer, sculptor and painter Frieder Heinze had planned to collaborate on a film that would combine non-camera animation with 35mm footage of a train ride between the two Dresden districts of Radebeul and Pieschen. When the exhibition was banned in 1978, Heinze turned to other projects, but Dammbeck continued working on the film by himself. Metamorphoses I—the first experimental film ever to be shown publicly in East Germany—marks the filmic beginning of Dammbeck’s long-term art project the Herakles-Konzept (Hercules Concept).

ACT III

Abstract video art set to the music of Philip Glass.

Voyage

An NTSC space opera.

You Can't Outrun Yourself

An experimental avant-garde film where the character battles with herself, struggling to understand and embrace her true identity. Blending dream-like and reality sequences together, the film connotes inside the character’s mind. Escaping to different parts of her subconscious, she is met with confrontation, fear & desire. This piece of work highlights themes of identity, surrealism & subjectivity, where the instability of the self is at the forefront of the film. The film uses elements of mixed media montage to portray the character’s inner thoughts.

The Divine Miracle

A surrealist translation of Catholic devotional postcard imagery set into unsettling motion. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2008.

Decoherence

Decoherence is an audiovisual composition made with sound waves, water, and granular and spectral processing. A 60 cycle drone from a speaker cone below creates subtle patterns on the liquid surface, which grows increasingly turbulent. This piece explores interference patterns, the interplay of macro and microscopic patterns, chaos and continuua.

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An experiment in meditative and stripped down cameraless filmmaking, edited and sequenced using machine learning models.

This Socks

'This Socks' is a stop motion animation short film that experiments with different techniques to illustrate a common everyday annoyance.

Threnody

Threnody emphasises some of the madness and instability of a year filled with fires, infections and general disarray.

Paper Trail

A life, seen through paper.

Rectangle & Rectangles

This is a didactic film in disguise. A progression of brilliant geometric shapes bombard the screen to the insistent beat of drums. The filmmaker programmed a computer to coordinate a highly complex operation involving an electronic beam of light, colour filters and a camera. This animation film, without words, is designed to expose the power of the cinematic medium, and to illustrate the abstract nature of time.

The Outsider

Machinima-adaptation of Albert Camus book "L'étranger", done in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Things to Come

A vibrant animation by Patricia Marx. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2000.