06.04.2015

30000fps is an anonymous Berlin based visual artist working within the confines of one to two second animated loops that produce a wide range of optical and emotional sensations upon viewing. We got in touch to find out more about the unidentified creative behind the site.

Why did you start the site?
30000fps was initially a side project of mine, and I still treat it more like a sketchbook than anything else, a place where I can post experiments in visual loop making. I come from a graphic design and fine arts background and over the last few years started moving more toward animation and video. I’ve always been a curious person and a lot of the works stem from asking simple questions like – what would it look like to stand inside a perfectly mirrored sphere? What would you see? I take that approach with all of my animations.

I try to stay focused on some of the themes that interest me, but it’s a long list. Mainly futurology – space travel, artificial intelligence, and nostalgia for obsolete technology. I’m also inspired by many early works of op-art, light art, video art, plus different optical and physical phenomena like the ganzfeld effect, interference patterns, cymatics, schlieren photography…

Over time the site has sort of taken on a life of its own and now has a small following, but in the beginning it wasn’t as active. The name has to do with my interest in optics and imaging technology, including high speed photography. 30000fps is an effect best seen in real life – http://goo.gl/WP3XCA.

As much as I enjoy working digitally, I’m also inspired a lot by the real world. Lately I’ve been aiming to make loops that you can watch for longer periods of time, trying to emulate real sensations like the light reflecting off of waves in a river or lake, or the feeling of flying through the air or traveling through space. Certain seamless loops can produce strange afterimages while others have a hypnotizing effect – especially when you can’t tell where the loop point is.  They almost exist outside of time. There’s a certain power in that.

Aside from making gifs, one of my goals is to get more involved in some of the new developments in augmented and virtual reality. The idea of VR was just a tease when I was younger (PowerGlove), but seems like it’s about to bring about a very big shift in the coming years. I think the perceived border between the digital world and the real world is collapsing and it will be really fascinating to see where things are headed.

08.04.2015

10.04.2015

What’s your day job?
Right now I work as a freelance motion and graphic designer, so I’m usually dreaming up animations or doing some print design on the side (books and records). But I always come back to 30000fps. I have to say I’m really humbled every day by the following that the site has gained, and it’s thanks to everyone that stops by and shares the images or writes to me that keeps it going.

There will be a new series involving light and refraction coming out later in the year, an edition of prints available for sale, and also more new stuff coming out on 30000crt and regular posts at 30000fps. Stay tuned!

Favourite animation:
Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero by Charles and Ray Eames.

Favourite Wikipedia pages:
Timeline of the far future | Extraterrestrial Skies | Tesseracts | Simulation hypothesis | Eternal Return | Schlieren photography

Follow 30000fps on Tumblr here.

More: Website

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