ZEITGUISED are a conceptual design studio with a creative artistic practice that moves between abstraction and realism through the use of computer generated and procedural design. Founded by American sculptor and fashion designer Jamie Raap and German architect Henrik Mauler (b. 1974 Dresden) in 2001, ZEITGUISED has a network of designers and artists that operate under the name of the studio, often using a guise of anonymity in their projects. ZEITGUISED explore how computational processes can present new possibilities and subvert the relationship between simulation and realism.

At the time of acquisition, ZEITGUISED was directed by Mauler, co-founder Raap having left the studio in 2018 after 18 years to join field.io as Head of Production. The studio initially created digital art, installations and short films, moving to a joint-commercial and creative practice with the formation of foam studio, now ZEITGUISED which has worked with brands such as Absolut, Adobe, Becks, Mercedes Benz, MTV, Peugeot, Toyota and Vodafone, and fashion brands including Comme des Garcons and Chanel, among many others. Mauler trained initially as an architect and was introduced to 3D rendering and image manipulation during his degree – coming to it via an interest in the spatial qualities and possibilities that software can bring to an architectural image. Mauler’s diploma piece ‘The Cave’, a VR exploration of space and the computational image, led him into the studio practice that became ZEITGUISED.

Three further creators can be linked to the creation of the geist.xyz project alongside Mauler and Raap; Chris Hoffman (design, animation and audio, ex-ZEITGUISED), Helge Kiehl (current ZEITGUISED) and Marian Pramberger (ex-ZEITGUISED).

The film is an abstract narrative that details the evolution of a set of algorithmically generated amorphous speculative textiles which change gradually in colour, shape and texture. Over the course of two minutes and thirty seconds, elements of the speculative textiles that appear in each scene – such as the texture of the cloth, or the pattern as it moves or glides across the surface of the cloth – shifts from scene to scene as they recursively feedback on themselves through four main colour schemes; olive, rose, mauve and electric blue. ZEITGUISED see this evolution of the textiles as something closer to a poem, than a strict narrative. As a means to partially explain the algorithmic process behind the film’s creation, ZEITGUISED wrote a poem, detailing the project’s inorganic, procedural nature, and the studio’s interest in the synthetic and fake:

geist.xyz

A Ghost in the shell,
>dancing the procedural revolution<.

Algo vs rhythm =
0% organic /
100% processed *
(*Olive, Rose, Mauve and Electric Blue).

Serving suggestions:
Grid wrangling like a pharmacist /
Authentic apparition sequence;

Fake hacks realism,
Small wonders:
Sympathy demons / Uncertainty artifacts

: Synthetic ecstatic aesthetic means
Extended PLAY
Station NSFW.

Incrementally yours,
ZEITGUISED.

The film features a soundtrack created by Superimposed Void (also known as Chris Hoffman/Ugly Stupid Honest) which accompanies the textile’s evolution, increasing in complexity as the narrative progresses. A limited-edition vinyl was issued at the project’s launch in 2016, with a digital release on music publishing website Bandcamp.

The geist.xyz project was created using a combination of rendering, simulation and animation software. To first create the speculative textiles central to the project, the team experimented by making elements in Marvelous Designer, a proprietary ‘realistic cloth-making' and physics-based model simulation programme. It was developed for the fashion industry by Korean company CLO Virtual Fashion Inc. in 2012 (also creators of CLO3D) and is now used primarily in the games and visual effects industry. Houdini, a 3D animation and procedural visual effects software released in 1996 by Toronto studio SideFX, and mostly employed in the film and VFX industry, was used for the procedural surfaces and algorithm-driven patterns that are animated on the cloths and surfaces of the textiles within the film. Adobe Substance 3D Designer, an application intended for creating 2D textures, materials, filters and 3D models, was used for additional procedural surfaces.

The project parts were finalised in Cinema 4D and rendered in Octane (a GPU render engine). Cinema 4D is a 3D modelling, animation, simulation and rendering software created by Phillip and Chirstian Losch for Amiga computers in 1990 and now published by German software company Maxon for commercial use. ZEITGUISED also used several other software packages including biological simulation software and other processes to map textures and parametric patterns to surfaces. The many software choices show the multiple ways in which digital designers choose a suite of tools and processes to achieve their intended results.

The geist.xyz film was exhibited on its launch in 2016 at a number of fashion, digital art and moving image festivals, winning awards including; Best Experimental Video 2016 Berlin Fashion Film Festival, Best VFX at Berlin Fashion Film Festival 2016, Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica2016, Bronze Award Ciclope 2016, Official Selection Milano Fashion Film Festival 2016.

geist.xyz was acquired through the generous support of the Art Fund.