German Designer Uses 3D Modeling and Printing to Create a Surreal, Beautiful Music Video

I grew up in the heyday of MTV, when music videos were often more important than the songs they were released with. I’ve seen some terrible ones, as well as some incredible works of art. I think it’s fascinating how this particular art form has evolved along with technology, from Claymation to CGI. Since MTV has pretty much abandoned its initial purpose, music videos have fallen out of the kind of popularity they had when I was younger, which is a shame. There’s so much that can be done with this art form, especially with the technology we have now. Amazing work is still being done with music videos, however, if you know where to look.

For example, German band Dan Freeman and the Serious has released a video for their recent song “Dagner” that takes advantage of 3D printing to create a fluid, dreamlike landscape. Designer Michael Fragstein was approached to create the video, which melds a variety of techniques including photography, painting, digital effects and 3D printed models. The result is a surreal blend of elements: landscapes that fold, fragment and flow into one another; human figures that meld with and detach from their surroundings; and, running through each scene, bright red threads that frame and move the figures.

“I approached the project from two sides,” said Fragstein. “A visual side with a collection of pictures, paintings and sketches, and the other side was the playful usage of my technical tools.”

Those technical tools include 3D modeling and printing. Fragstein worked with a photographer to shoot footage of several sketches he created; that footage was then used to create 3D models with Agisoft PhotoScan. The images you see in the video are composites of the many images that were shot, and, according to Fragstein, their imperfection perfectly illustrates his vision.

“Our goal was not to create perfect copies of the original scenes but to play with inaccuracy,” he said. “We were feeding the system with imperfect footage and low quality values of our software. The intention of this approach was to let the setup appear more vivid and mysterious. In visual terms we wanted to refer to paintings.”

The technique worked; the overall effect of the video is one of being lost inside a vast, moving painting. The red thread against a black background is not only striking, but adds to the dreamlike effect as it morphs into plants and explosions of droplets. Fragstein’s Stuttgart-based studio, Büro Achter, has used 3D technology to similar effect in other works; one of the studio’s missions is to “generate disorder…by dismantling expectations.”

Fragstein studied architecture and design at the State Academy of Art and Design in Stuttgart, and his portfolio contains an impressive array of videos, installations, advertising materials and more. His design work includes both 2D and 3D animation, and one look at his “Dagner” video shows that he’s incredibly talented at both. Discuss this video in the 3D Printing a Music Video forum on 3DPB.com. You can see his surrealist work of art below: