Animations from the Kunsthochschule are shown here
At the HÖR.SPIEL Museum in Kassel, students bring figures and sounds together.
What does a parade of little beetles marching through the grass sound like? And what does it sound like when a deer trudges through a winter forest? Visitors to the HÖR.SPIEL Museum in Palais Bellevue at the Schöne Aussicht in Kassel can currently ask themselves these questions. Students from the Kunsthochschule Kassel have animated silent films that can be set to music live in the museum - by the visitors themselves. They can press buttons to call up sounds prepared by students to accompany the action of the films: Laughter, stamping, crunching in the snow and many others.
In the winter semester, nine students from the Visual Communication course created the silent films with seminar leader Petra Stipetić as part of the animation class led by Prof. Kathrin Albers and Prof. Martina Bramkamp. The project is not only special because it was created in cooperation with the HÖR.SPIEL Museum, but also because the students from Kassel worked together with fellow students from the Finnish Design University in Lahti, who also contributed films (and sound). Three films by the students from Kassel and around ten films from Finland can be seen in rotation in the permanent exhibition at the HÖR.SPIEL Museum.
The idea came from Julia Blando, managing director and curator of the Brückner-Kühner Foundation, which has been running the museum in Palais Bellevue since November 2023. She had long wanted one of the four interactive stations to have a Kassel connection, and what better way to do that than with films by Kassel students? Petra Stipetić was immediately enthusiastic: "After we only received a few orders during the coronavirus pandemic, I was really pleased about the request. It was immediately clear to me that the students could take a lot from this project for their future."
The students had to cope with the real-life requirements of the museum. The animations were not allowed to be longer than one minute, had to work without speech and be family-friendly due to the young target audience. On the other hand, the students were free to decide what the silent films should be about - as long as they matched the museum's sound clips and those produced by the students from Finland. Nevertheless, all three films have a similar storyline: In all of them, the main characters make their way to a destination and are surprised along the way. In the first silent film, a parade of beetles is almost attacked by a cat; in the second, a deer trudges through a winter forest and unexpectedly encounters a polar bear. In the third, more experimental film, a figure made of geometric shapes is unexpectedly attacked by animals and continues to deform as a result.
But what inspired the students to create these stories? Childhood memories of animations such as Maya the Bee and Heidi, but of course also the sounds from Finland and the museum. "We thought about what feelings the sounds trigger in us and then tried to imagine what that might look like," explains Stella Hood, who was involved in the production of the experimental film. "In terms of design, we were inspired by the artist Wassily Kandinsky and his colorful works of art." Since the premiere on February 7, 2025 as part of the annual animated film festival "Trickreich", the silent films have been part of the permanent exhibition at Palais Bellevue. "It's exciting to see how visitors interpret the films," says Petra Stipetić. "This gives the students direct feedback on how clear their own visual language is and whether the films are understood even without sound."
This article appears in the university magazine publik 2025/1. Text: Hannah Eichenberg
The animation class at the Kunsthochschule: