Archeoscope /

Archeoscope /

Priliminary Excercises

Jan Kulka, Czech Republic, 2016, 16mm, B&W, 24’, no dialogue

Fragments of an old educational film for dancers inside a live operated experimental film projector serve as matter for an immersive study of essential principles of the film medium and perception itself. Besides the main focus on the phenomenon of the illusion of movement, its emergence, modulation and decay, the film also plays the ‘what if’ game around the ‘musical’ and rhythmical potential of the frame rate, which is usually just a regular metronomic pulse. What if it adapts various rhythmic structures? Synchronised polyrhythmic sequences, chaotic or linear interfering frequencies?

Prefilm

Jan Kulka, Czech Republic, 2016, 16mm, B&W/colour, 22’, no dialogue

A film piece can hardly get more elementary than a sequence of light and dark moments in time and, yet, flickering light is an ever so powerful phenomenon, with literary unimaginable transcendental potential. So rich while virtually empty. Stimulating senses and triggering the mind by medium as a massage.

Prefilm utilises the wide range of new possibilities – multiple overlapping, interfering, synchronised and precisely controlled nuances of the flickering light of a special projector to target the ticklish spots of perception. An intensive contemporary live analogue contribution to the flicker film tradition.

Archeoscope (Pramítačka)
New worlds of film discovered by unique projection technology: the Archeoscope is a special opto-mechanical projecting apparatus created for live film performances, invented and constructed by Czech filmmaker Jan Kulka. The Archeoscope can project all traditional film formats, but also a scope of mixed media such as bandages, Scotch tape, laces, bubble wraps – an array as broad as the imagination. The Archeoscope brings brand new possibilities and radically different ways of perceiving, understanding, and working with film material, alongside modernising creative process of the act of projection.

Jan Kulka is a Prague-based experimental filmmaker and a graduate of Editing department at the FAMU. His primary focus is the invention of special projection apparatuses for live performances. Rather than telling a story, he tries to target the senses of each spectator directly with light and sound to reveal some of the foundations of our perception.
(Photo: personal archive)