Berlin-based collective Zeitguised fuse art, fashion and architecture with their love for technology to create breathtaking visuals, and having first featured in shots as New Directors back in 2003, they've gone on to collaborate with the likes of MTV, Toyota and Vodafone. We hunted down the duo behind the group - Jamie Raap and Henrik Mauler - to find out what makes Blinkart's newest signing tick.
Tell us a bit about how and why you formed Zeitguised…
It was more or less accidental - when we came together, we felt like we needed a radically new direction for ourselves and the fields we started out in - sculpture, fashion and architecture - then it was also the time when digital design started to take foot in mainstream culture as well as art, as the tools became available to everyone. A coincidence, but we felt we needed to do something there. At first we only did a few festivals and competitions here and there, but slowly we made more work and after a while we did our first commercial work for MTV, small of course but it was exciting nevertheless.
… and how did you pick the name?
Since we are a mixed bag of Germanic and Anglistic ingredients, we were looking for something that worked in both languages but had a bit of a twist to it. Most of our work is time-based, hence the first syllable is the German word for time. As well as feeling a bit oblique and fashion-related the second syllable is from "disguised". You could also interpret it as "zeitgeist's irregular twin"...
How would describe your aesthetic and vision?
We love the structural as well as the surreal, the quirky as well as the minimally designed. Usually we walk down these paths until we find something, and then run off perpendicular to what we think is expected, at least with our work in a purely "artistic" context.
What commercial projects have impressed you recently, and what type of commercial briefs are you on the look-out for?
More and more brands look for surreal and strange imagery for their caigns these days. Not all of them work, not all of them are in good company with the brand itself. One good exle was last year's Hornbach commercial Die Hymne Des Machens, which we liked. It was charmingly underdesigned.
Ideally we would find a brief for us that catered to our feel of things and how everything should be designed. It is yet to be written! Or, easier: give us a few elements and a half open brief, we take care of the rest...
Watched/listened to lately that you reckon shots readers should check out?
We've been listening to Royksopp and Fever Ray, as well as Stricken City and Clutchy Hopkins.
Reading came from Spook Country by William Gibson and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Watching things other than clips on the web - not so much. Lack of time...
You have unlimited equipment and an infinite budget - what's your ideal project?
We would have nanobots designed and programmed to connect with each other and every molecule on this planet, proliferate via genetic algorithms and change colours, textures, shapes, structures of all nonliving things to turn the world into one colourful, obnoxious, brain-splitting, motiongraphic performance, the ad to end all ads, and afterward there would be only wastelands and peace and quiet.
Been involved in any creative projects outside the commercials realm recently?
We finished a stills portfolio for a new rep in Paris, which was largely uncommercial and fun. But that was three weeks ago - it's about time again!
We're in the third month of 2010, what do you hope to achieve by the end of the year?
Get back in the swing of making a new piece just for us, something made from pure love and sweat and laughter. It should be on the cards this year, at least there is hope.
Check out a selction of Zeitguised's work below and in the gallery on the right...
MTV: Sugar Rush
Peripetics
Syntax of Construction
Connections
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