TRIP CARAVAN - the avant-garde Berlin arts scene comes to L.A. on December 9th

LOS ANGELES – Dec. 5, 2005 – The avant-garde Berlin arts scene comes to L.A. for one week in December as the official U.S. premiere of TRIP kicks off a series of events celebrating the multi-media spectacular, on Friday, Dec. 9, beginning at 7 pm, at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station.

TRIP CARAVAN L.A., Dec. 8-13, will be held in various venues throughout the greater Los Angeles area in a series of events that reflect the multi-faceted nature of the audio-visual media project. In addition to the Dec. 9th kick-off, TRIP CARAVAN L.A. events include an artist reception and exhibit (with Frank Otto), a panel discussion exploring the relationship between music and film, and a “family day” program, complete with an audience participatory drumming circle.

The Dec. 9th kick-off event includes a simultaneous, multi-screen presentation of TRIP’s four films accompanied with performance artists, tribal dancers and drummers, with guest celebrities, and a live musical jam session with TRIP creators-composers Frank Otto, Bernt Koehler-Adams and guest musicians. Additionally, the U.S. debut exhibit of Frank Otto’s paintings. as seen in the film TRIP, will be held at Berman/Turner Projectsion D5 gallery, adjacent to Track 16.



Origins of TRIP

TRIP first began as an original 74-minute contemporary music opus composed Otto and his creative partner Kohler-Adams. Fourteen distinctively different musicians joined them in countless studio session to create a musical work that explores the roots of jazz, rock, ambient and classical with influences as diverase aas Miles Davis, Pink Floyd and Ravel. The music inspired filmmakers to produce four, completely different feature-length experimental films.

The result is TRIP – a synchronized experience for the senses. Four years in the making, the cutting-edge film-music-art project involved 33 directors, 14 musicians and scores of technicians, and was shot in 12 countries and numerous underwater locations. Each of the four TRIP films can be viewed separately with the TRIP soundtrack, or together in split-screen fashion.

Thus, thanks to its multilayered content, “Trip” is re-created again and again: on the art and event level as well as on the level of advanced, technical-experimental cinema entertainment. And by the way, “Trip” is also the innovative program for the collective capabilities of the DVD format.

Wherever and however the performance takes place, the common denominator is always the soundtrack, which acts as an overall framework, holding together the conscious randomness of time, place, and action.

And viewers and listeners are right in the middle: “Trip” takes them along on a journey through the cosmos of the ocean, tells stories of people around the world, lets them participate in the fantasies and daydreams of cinema artists, and follows the trail of a momentous love. The images dance with the music – a spiritual rock opus, somewhere between Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, and Ravel.



The films “sea music”, “track 2”, “Playing Planet”, and “artwork” tell stories to music. They lead into a seemingly surreal underwater world, through lost dreams in a Berlin subway shaft, to the other end of the world, and to love, evanescence, and the search for self. A synchronized experience for the senses.

In the end, the result is an offering of reproduction, distribution, and communication open to many sides. “Trip” is a previously unknown combination of expanded formats and a bringing together of different contents using the resources of modern media technology.

Following its U. S. premiere in Los Angeles, as well as screenings in other select U.S. cities, TRIP will be released on DVD in spring 2006.



Frank Otto – Creative Entrepreneur / Enterprising Artist

Truly a renaissance man, TRIP’s creator, Frank Otto, is an accomplished musician, filmmaker and painter. His right brain aside, Otto is also a successful business entrepreneur, having revolutionized commercial TV and radio in Germany.

Frank Otto was born in 1957. Following an education in art restoration at the world-famous Museum of Art and Trade in Hamburg, he studied Fine Arts with the main focus on painting.

As a music producer and a musician in his own right, he founded OK radio in 1987 which was the first radio station based on musical formats in Germany. Later, he also established other format-specific radio stations including Delta, KISS FM, Energy Saxonia and Oldie 95.



In 1993 he co-founded VIVA TV (vivamediaag.com), Germany’s first music television channel. Today, the channel reaches 32 million households throughout Europe. In addition, he was publisher of Hamburger Morgenpost from 1999 to 2003, which is one of the two big daily newspapers in Hamburg.

Today he is mostly focused on music and film. In addition to TRIP, he recently established two new music labels, Safety Records and Unit Undercover. He also has established Ferryhouse Productions, a company dedicated to developing his own and others’ multimedia projects.