Tesla Continuum is a multimedia film in honour of Nikola Tesla, his inventions and the influence of his work on the world of his time, and the world today. Though the difference between this worlds is on first sight immesurable, if we look closer, we will see a lot of similarities. Today the scientific exploration and their technological application seems primarily to be "Digital", in Tesla's time it was "Analogue". In the film this "distinction" was presented by the use of two animation techniques: the "Analogue" animation, i.e. hand drawn, in which Tesla's vision and the influence in his time was conveyed, and the "Digital" animation, i.e. computer modelled and rendered, which tries to convey the influence of Tesla's inventions on the modern world.
The inescapable link is actually the distributed network, the grid, which is, in its different emmanations, in his present day form existing from Tesla's discovery of the alternating current up to present day internet, mobile phone network and Grid Computing. This intertwining led to the form of the film, being a closed endless loop which is returning to itself through itself. All those inventions "sped up" our world, the modern day technology enables us to get instantly the information needed, as well as our availability always and anywhere (be it for better or for worse). So, the film is also speeding up through each iteration.
This form is also mirrored by the film music - the choice of Jochan Sebastian Bach, one of the very very rare authors whose music can be played backwards, without loosing the musical integrity. This specificity was used for stressing the reversibility and self-referential mirroring of the film. So, as with the moving part of the film, the music is also perceived in both directions - forward and reversed. The fact that Bach wrote his music by hand (i.e. in "Analogue") was also used, as the performance is done fully "Digitally", by using computer sinthetized "instruments", so during the film the waveform of the sound changes from analogue sine wave into digital discreet signal and vice versa.
This film is originally conceptualized as a 12 minute film. However, 12 minute version can be prolonged to 24 minutes by physcally reversing it from exactly 12:00 back to the front. In such a way a mathematically fully correct endless loop of the film is generated, so from whichever point in the film, looking forwards, or reversed, backwards, the film makes u full loop.
The Tesla Continuum film was produced in honour of the 150th birthday of Nikola Tesla, during the Year of Nikola Tesla, and financially supported by the Parliament of the Republic of Croatia. The film was awarded at the "Marie Curie Workshop" 2006.
The authors sincerely hope that you will experience this film with the same intensity with which it was made.