Artist plans massive time-lapse of Minnesota State Fair

State Fair crowd
A view outside MPR's booth at the Minnesota State Fair on Aug. 27, 2009.
MPR Photo

Twin Cities artist Ochen Kaylan plans to make a film showing the activities at the fairgrounds before the fair starts until after it's over. Kaylan, an online editor at Minnesota Public Radio, hopes to show how the state fairgrounds transform every year into a gathering place for people from across the state.

"The State Fair is such an amazing thing. It's this 320 acres that's vacant the vast majority of the year, and then at the very end of summer, this activity starts and 1.8 million people pack into this place and they sing and they dance and they play and they eat. And then just as quickly as they came in they rush out and then it's gone again," Kaylan told MPR's Morning Edition.

Kaylan will place video cameras in different places throughout the fairgrounds and let them run for hours or days. Time lapse videos will be used in his 20-minute film about the fair.

Kaylan said he's planned all the shots for the film, which won't be narrated.

Camera unit
One of the units created by artist and filmmaker Ochen Kaylan that he'll use to create a massive time-lapse video of the 2010 Minnesota State Fair.
Image from video clip

"It's this immersive 20 minutes of just trying to get what the fair is," he said. "This I hope will be some way of just expanding my understanding of the fair but also anyone who sees it, what their understanding of what the fair can be and what this thing is that's part of all of us as Minnesotans."

Find out more about the project here.

(MPR's Cathy Wurzer contributed to this report.)

Create a More Connected Minnesota

MPR News is your trusted resource for the news you need. With your support, MPR News brings accessible, courageous journalism and authentic conversation to everyone - free of paywalls and barriers. Your gift makes a difference.