Art and Play A productive and receptive treatment of film imagery has been around since the
early 20th century. The anthropological figure homo ludens has also contributed to the victory
of the visual media in that the key activities of communal human life-communication through
language interpretation of the world the fostering of community-are all influenced by play.
In this sense art is a form of play turned into form with content. Sichtspiele presents film
and video. All the works included in the publication create a playful tension between visual
representation and compositional form. The book reacts with innovation to the challenges of
translating the medium of moving imagery into an art book: on the one hand it shows stills as
visual markers for pictorial dynamics and on the other image sequences of each work can be
set into motion using an app for the cell phone or tablet. Sichtspiele is an interactive film
book that offers the possibility to see moving images. All texts by Michael Ostheimer.
