Brut Magazine is an experimental hype video magazine revolving around the topics of design and culture. It distances itself from traditional linear storytelling and adopts a dynamic video experience instead.
Together with 14 fellow students I created the fourth issue. I was put in charge of technical supervision and also contributed one video segment.
Within the magazine, all video clips are interconnected. The user starts off with a random interview and can, at any time, insert a thematically linked clip from a different interview. By interacting in this way, the user is blazing his own unique trail throughout the magazine.
![Graph showing the logic of Brut.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/29fiedpe/production/c069e146c06405f6622e1687867819b57f165a8c-1500x749.png?w=800&auto=format)
Video A1 delivers a specific theme, opinion or meaning. Video B3, which has been inserted by the user, has it's own statement and therefore puts A1 into a new context, ultimately altering its meaning. The result is a recontextualization of the initial content. Each user creates a self-generated stream with a unique statement. So control over the medium is put into the hands of the user.
![Abstract Geometry](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/29fiedpe/production/42d91adaf563c5483c419aafbe548a7eddf7dd7c-2000x746.png?w=800&auto=format)
As technical supervisor I was responsible for developing this issue. I teamed up with Fabian Burghardt and Sebastian Strobel to work on the front-end while coordinating the development of the back-end. Two developers from our applied informatics department became an essential part of the team. We got together weekly to merge the work in progress at both ends.
![Screenshot of the Interface](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/29fiedpe/production/87786a34e6702fa70b1507b37694bb7f15f6c0b0-1252x668.png?w=800&auto=format)
The interaction is kept as simple as possible. By pressing any key, an excerpt from a different interview is inserted into the current stream. If the altered path is of higher interest, it can be continued by pressing that key a second time. Inactivity leads the user back to the original stream. By pressing the space bar, the video is paused and the menu shown.
![Image of the Timeline](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/29fiedpe/production/2c5228e029194597eeee42265e53a850944450af-1500x109.png?w=800&auto=format)
The video I produced for this edition was on the topic of «Why good ideas still fail». As part of it I interviewed Philipp Glöckler, Thomas Weyres and Prof. Andreas Ingerl.
![Screenshot with title of my episode.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/29fiedpe/production/1119a157ec9351f901fac7d397b59693cf29cf8c-1920x1080.gif?w=800&auto=format)
Brut is the largest project I have worked on so far. The project involved a team of 15 people and this was an entirely new challenge for me. The larger the team, the more complex the decision making process becomes, and meeting deadlines for a smooth release require a significant managerial effort. From a technical point of view, it's nice to see the entire magazine and video handling dispense with plugins. We also discarded Wordpress and went on to create our own CMS. As a result we enhanced the platform’s performance significantly. Also the cross browser implementation of dynamic subtitles brought us to the limits of what the current (2015) web standards allow.
![Collage of Brut Interface and Logol](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/29fiedpe/production/5bf29fbf0d579d16768af6851794dbaab77c3e08-1364x1142.png?w=800&auto=format)