I was going to write about Norman McLaren but it seems a lot of people already have, so I looked into Len Lye's work more thoroughly. The piece that caught my attention the most was a scratch film called Free Radicals. Simple lines on the film dance to tribal music from the Bagirmi tribe of Africa, and give the illusion of moving in 3D space. His inventive way of showing rotations of flat lines is so convincing, I went to wikipedia to make sure that this was indeed scratch on film. The movement to the music fits perfectly and showcases his true talent of illustrating music and creating art that dances to a rhythm.
Free Radicals
Another work I enjoyed was Rainbow Dance, where he uses the Gasparcolor process. Rainbow Dance, Lye's second film (viewed publicly) is a colorful display of a sillouette man dancing with an umbrella in the rain, with an ever changing background. Towards the end of the film when the music finishes, a narrator advertises the Post Office Savings Bank, as well as an incomprehensible slogan for it. The same kind of ending is seen in his other work, A Colour Box, with Cheaper Parcel Post. Since Lye was funded by these companies, they had to be included somewhere. In A Colour Box the insertion of Cheaper Parcel Post is seemingly unnoticeable since it moves with the music and doesnt break from the overall feel of the piece, which to me makes him all the more talented. Even in films today the advertisers are all to obvious to the audience with no subtlety and often remove the audience from the film
A Colour Box
Rainbow Dance
Enjoy.
by Ryan
Mar 31, 2010
Brakhage.
While Norman McLaren's work was utterly tasteful, I feel that Brakhage displayed an elegance rarely seen. One might say McLaren is to Mozart as Brakhage is to Beethoven. I want to know: is this why McLaren found such embrace in Canada, and Brakhage found such solitude in the States?
His work may be criticized as scientific, but his transcendence of inherent distinctions between art and science is exciting, even today. And what continues to be exciting is the anti-materialism of his work...
I was very centered on the American abstract expressionist movement. I was always interested in ineffable shapes that, if you were going to name them, would be biological rather than mathematical: shapes related to nerves, to cells, to the honeycomb of the bones, to the synapse system in the brain. Whether they were conscious of it or not, the abstract expressionists were always painting closed-eye vision, and I wanted to include that in film, since my impulse always was to include everything that you might see within the possibilities of filmmaking: closed-eye vision, daydreams, nightdreams, and so on.
And while anti-materialism is an aspect of all abstract work, it is interesting to consider the commodification of abstract expressionist paintings in contrast to Brakhage's struggle to find an audience.
Brakhage's work started out as (gorgeous) documentation - he abhorred the term abstract; but it applies to his films. I guess I say that because abstraction requires commitment of its audience, which is certainly true of his work. His compositions came to be based on light acting as a musical score in itself. His images immediately call to mind the sound of Cecil Taylor.
I feel Brakhage's distance from symbolism is what continues to make his films brilliant. And though this strays from the realm of animation, how could I discuss Brakhage without touching on Window Water Baby Moving? On further tangent, Brakhage and Bill Viola make an interesting comparison.
Only a ghost film could possibly break through thought-bonds of language and exist as, say, movement haunt, tone-texture haunt, ineffable-haunt. The sense of such a film might naturally exist within the spectator, very like the kind of passing image which prompts dreams that cannot be verbalized to one's breakfast companion or psychoanalyst. Such a film might eventually prompt whole new ways of recollection that are essentially free from language?indeed might prompt whole new definitions of what "language" might eventually come to be...an un-nouned, non-dichotomous series of light-glyphs available for arrangements of cathectic exchanges which directly reflect each person's synapsing inner nervous system.
Fred Camper said, "A narrative film creates an arc of expectation that sets up conflicts and tensions the viewer expects to have resolved — or at least, lead to some form of conclusion. Brakhage's films are organized according to a precisely opposite principle. There is no overarching or predictable form; his emphasis is on each instant of perception. One way he achieves this emphasis is by organizing his films around unpredictable changes in composition, subject-matter, and rhythm: each small pattern that a film sets up is violated just at the moment when you think you have finally apprehended it. The process of viewing a Brakhage film becomes part of the film's subject; in answer to the passivity encouraged by a mainstream commercial narrative movie, Brakhage requests active participation. Relaxing one's perceptions when the lights dim, as many movie viewers are accustomed to doing, won't work here: one must learn to see faster, more precisely, and more deeply."
Brakhage enabled this to exist.
A few of his films, which total at least four hundred (though the quality is... that of youtube, there is something to be gained from observing the timing and spacing of color and gesture):
post by eli
Mary Ellen Bute & Seeing Sound
Kool Kat Mary Ellen!
Being the only female animator on the list of people we could pick to write about, I thought Mary Ellen Bute would be a really great and fascinating person to look into. Born in 1906, Bute was a pioneer of "visual music" and abstract animation, making a series of films which she referred to as "Seeing Sound." Earlier on, she studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, where she realized that although she enjoyed painting, it was too restricting for the kind of art she wanted to make. She later started to embrace the potential of light, which compelled her to travel to Europe and assist the color-organ inventor Thomas Wilfred. This led her to study the electronic transformation of acoustic into optical signals with Leon Theremin in 1931, along with the mathematical concepts of composition with Joseph Schillinger. She then realized that film was the right medium for her, which led her to create "Rhythm in Light," which was screened at the Radio City Music Hall and is believed to have most likely been the first abstract film to have been shown publicly. Unfortunately, "Rhythm in Light" has not been uploaded onto the internet for me to post here.
Mary Ellen Bute embraced classical music in particular by juxtaposing famous compositions with entrancing "lights and shadows, growing lines and forms, [and] deepening colors and tones," creating intense and wonderful visual experiences that were synchronized to feel as though you could see the music (centerforvisualmusic.org).
An interesting piece I found on her work was this short documentary about her, which notably describes her films as "unjustly ignored." Along with talking about her work and her life, it additionally shows clips of her films, including live action work with a young Christopher Walken, ha.
The thing this documentary lacks, though, is a discussion on how Bute approached and created her work. She first refined her black and white film technique in which she would sometimes take drawn images with filmed pictures and multiply them to distort their appearance and enhance the light and shadow. Later, with her husband Ted Nemeth, she started creating her visual music films to synchronize musical compositions with animated imagery. She used early color film systems and quickly began utilizing hand drawn animation and superimposition. Bute, along with Norman McLaren and Hy Hirsh Bute were some of the first filmmakers to truly explore electronic imagery, as early as the beginning of the 1950s. By using oscilloscope patterns, she felt as though she had become the closest to visually representing music onto film.
Collaboration with Norman McLaren:
Later film, "Finnegan's Wake," which combined live action with animated techniques. It won the "best debut" award at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival:
--Phylicia
Larry Jordan: Animator/Human
I was completely taken aback by the beauty of Duo Concertantes by Larry Jordan. According to scientific studies performed in Switzerland by "top men," the film was animated entirely with cut-outs of steel engravings, a mind blogging achievement, considering the fluidity and intricacy of movement throughout the film's length. And, holy shit, did it look good on 16mm.
Given the film's placement in history, I found the subject matter to be surprising. Made in an era defined by abstract expressionism, political activism, the experimentation of French New Wave cinema, and drawing influences from surrealist photomontage and the playful language of Dada, who would have thought that an experimental animation such as Duo Concertantes would focus on more innocent subjects, like spiritual rebirth, instead of trying to instill in its viewers the tenets of some ridiculous Grand Marxist Narrative? Lots and lots of words in that sentence. But it is this attraction to innocence and non-theistic sacral narratives that makes Larry Jordan such an interesting filmmaker and separates his work from the heavy handed manifestos of his peers. And thank GOD he didn't turn into one of those drug dropping "I just want to make things that look cool and sound kinda funny" self-proclaimed synaesthete hippies that monopolized experimental film making in the 60's.
On a slightly related note, Len Lye did not produce a single film in the 60's. What.
Moving forward, and transforming rapidly into biography mode with incredible precision, Larry Jordan was born in the year of our Lord, 1933, made his first film in 1952, has been living and working in the Bay Area of San Francisco since 1955 and is, surprisingly, still not dead. He has made both live-action and animated films, and was good friends with Stan Brakhage, whose shadow is dark and all-encompassing.
To my knowledge, these are the film's of Jordan's in which Brakhage has appeared:
Trumpit, 1955
The One Romantic Adventure of Edward, 1956
To my knowledge, these are the films whose founding ideas Jordan ripped off of Brakhage:
Hymn In Praise Of The Sun, 1960, in which Jordan "celebrates" his daughter's birth.
Larry Jordan, throughout his career, has produced 40 short animated and live-action films, as well as 3 feature length films. He received a Guggenheim Award in 1970, has been invited to show his work at the Cannes Film Festival, and is currently the chairman of the film department at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Jordan's masterwork is considered, by many, to be Sophie's Place (1986). The film was produced over five years, and utilizes Jordan's characteristic style of cut-out animation. All of the cut-outs were hand-painted by Jordan. The film was animated straight ahead, beneath the camera, and was done without any planning, whatsoever.
Oh, and apparently I lied about the whole "avoidance of Marxist Narrative" thing. Supposedly, Sophie's Place makes satire of the Academy with it's use of Classical imagery. This seems odd, as Larry Jordan is not French, and nobody cares about the Academy anymore. Although, I'm sure that somewhere, in a mass grave beneath une Grande Avenue, Courbet has finally stopped spinning.
Larry Jordan shares his name with Michael Jordan's brother and some dude that directs concert videos, making him very hard to find on both Wikipedia and IMDB.
Here's a very special list of his films:
Love,
matt
Len Lye- Most Unboring Person Ever- Amanda Bonaiuto
Len Lye(1901-1980) was a New Zealand born artist dedicated to motion.
Len Lye was all about creating "new forms" of art and avoiding falling into the category of traditional art making. Lye seemed to possess a sense of movement far beyond most artists, which allowed him to "compose motion" and ultimately come to a cross roads between traditional art making and experimental art making. Lye's need for alternate forms of creating is what lead to his inventing camera-less animation and using film to work on directly, as if it were a pen and paper.
We see this technique used in "A Colour Box"(1935)---
Animation today can be examined as a medium used for experimentation and could even be considered radical. Animation is the inventors medium and this type of thinking is reflected in Len Lye's work. Len Lye believed "There has never been a great film unless it was created in the spirit of the experimental film-maker. All great films contribute something original in manner or treatment". Discovering that films could be made by painting or scratching into film was a big deal because of creative solutions but also because it meant less money to be spent and no need to purchase a film camera.
Free Radicals(1958)
Len Lye wasn't interested in representing actual objects in his films, but rather representing motion through "pure figures", meaning shapes, lines, and color which possess the rhythm of the film. Lye was fascinated with waves, forms, and color from a young age; he simply had an eye for motion.
-amanda
John Whitney
Whitney's interest in spirituality through meditation and music is clear in his 1975 vibrant and hypnotizing animation, "Arabesque". His use of iconography, colors, music, rhythm and repetition work together to create a powerful and experimental animation piece.
I was fascinated by the complexity of the computer graphics that Whitney was experimenting with. They were considered to be on the cutting edge at the time the animation was produced and Whitney is often referred to as the "father of computer graphics". In "Arabesque", Whitney used digital processes as opposed to his previous work created by an analogue computer that he himself developed. (The analogue computer process sounds incredible! He combined machinery that originally used to be an antiaircraft gun director into a 12 foot, brilliant monstrosity.) He created "Arabesque" with financial support from the NEA and also with full endorsement of the computer giant, IBM.
I was also struck by the iconography he uses to create a mandala-like visual experience. As the title suggests, he uses repetitive geometrical elements that form fanciful yet relatively simple patterns. Arabesques are an frequently used motifs in Islamic art and convey spirituality. The whole can be broken down into smaller geometric forms, such as squares and circles or plant forms that are all deeply entrenched in symbolism: unity, equality, nature, etc.
Not only was Whitney pushing the limits in terms of the visual language that he used, but maybe more importantly, he legitimized the computer as a medium for art. Besides using computer graphics, Whitney also weaved the enthralling music composed by the Iranian-American Santur master and composer, Manoochehr Sadeghi together with the visuals, creating a mesmerizing and powerful whole.
John Whitney was a pioneering experimental animator, who really helped to establish computer graphics as a legitimate art form and who successfully combined cutting edge technology, science, music and spirituality in his work.
Posted by Eszter
Harry Smith and William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs has been a major inspiration for me for a long time, and I've read his works extensively, as well as books about him. Much like Burroughs, Harry Smith was a truly innovative artist whose talent and vision transcended the era of the 50's and 60's. In many senses, Burroughs' "cut-up" style of writing seems almost seamlessly matched to Smith's early abstract animations.Honestly, I only just recently realized that Harry Smith the experimental filmmaker/animator is also the same Harry Smith who frequently shows up with people like Burroughs and Paul Bowles and Allen Ginsberg in countless drug-and-booze influenced stories from the Beat Era. To make it even more suspicious, he's also the same Harry Smith who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music in the early '50's, which went on to inspire a new era of folk musicians, including Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. At various points and places in his life he was also known as a painter and a sort-of new age philosopher.
(Okay, wait a minute ... Doesn't it sound like one person couldn't really have done all this stuff in one life? Plus, isn't it kinda suspicious that his name is so ordinary that it doesn't even sound like a name? Harry Smith? That's like naming your dog "Fido", or your cat "Whiskers". "Harry Smith" might be an animator, but he might just as well be a group or a collective of "Harry Smiths". I think somebody should do a really thorough investigation into this.)
Anyway, "Harry Smith's" early abstract animations are still highly influential. Performers like Deerhoof and Philip Glass have used his films in their shows.
And like Burroughs, his intelligence and style were far ahead of his time; this sucked for him 'cuz he wound up being wicked poor and fucked-up for a while, but it's awesome for the later generations of artists that discovered his work and were profoundly inspired by it.
Also: despite his wide and varied body of work, Smith had a bizarrely self-destructive side. He was known, at times, to purposely destroy his own paintings and films. On top of that, he often continued to edit his films long after they had been "finished". Ultimately, this made compiling his films really difficult for archivists and fans.
Here is one of his early abstract animations:
Ummm ... I just thought of something as I was watching that. It's got nothing to do with Harry Smith, but it does have a lot to do with squares and shapes and stuff. It's a film by Co Hodemann called "Tchou-Tchou". It's great and fun and also scary:
Also, for a really deeply incisive first-hand account of what Harry Smith was like as a person, here's an interview with Allen Ginsberg about him:
s.st.f.d.
Mothlight-Bryan DiBlasi
Although I enjoy much cameraless animation, I can never really get into Stan Brakhages “Mothlight” (1963). There is no denying that an ungodly amount of time, focus, care, and precision went into this film. There is no denying that the film you see running right before your very eyes is in fact quite beautiful and outlandishly creative. For me, I can never get into the rhythm of the film. It moves too fast while lacking the rhythm. I have seen the film many times now (both outside my film class and several times in it) and I always reach the same conclusion. When watching the film at home on the computer, I constantly second guess my conclusion. This is because when it is paused it is easier to admire. While watching the film on my computer this time, my Internet connection started to go in and out. This made the film unintentionally pause and unpause on its own, creating its own unique rhythm. Then, I started to intentionally pause and unpause the computer to make my own rhythm, which I thought actually enhanced the film (rhythm wise). But when I would let the film play at its intended speed again, I felt it lacked something (rhythm wise). I believe other Stan Brakhage camraless animation films (e.g. “Water for Maya”, ”Glaze of Cathexis”,etc…) demonstrate his mastery in the camraless animation field, but in “Mothlight” he missed the boat with rhythm. I recently watched some (on recommendation from my film instructor) of David Gattens “What the water Said”. In this film, David Gatten “placed unexposed rolls of film in crab traps in the Atlantic Ocean off the South Carolina coast. The resulting sounds and images were produced by the physical and chemical interactions between the film's emulsion and the surrounding salt water, sand, rocks, crabs, fish and underwater creatures.” I believe that that this is a film, which is a prime example of what camraless animation can achieve both rhythmically and also in the entire realm of visual music. “Mothlight” is close, but I still feel lacks rhythmically.
Brief look at the life and influences of Oskar Fischinger
It was difficult to find any films of Oskar Fischinger, since the Fischinger Trust seems to have removed most of them. Among the exceptions, you can see his influence as it appears in the opening sequence of Disney's Fantasia. After his decision to part ways with Disney the abstraction in his work was altered to more representational and illustrative of classical music in the works: the bows of the string section and the strings dance with the music in certain parts of the film excerpt.
He was introduced to art at a very early age when living in Gelnhausen, Germany. As the middle child in his family he was less pressured to follow up the the work of maintaining the household and the family drugstore and so he was able to dedicate more time to his education and to enjoy leisure activities. One such activity was guiding the painters which came into his town on the train, to the most picturesque locations where they would be able to paint. In this way Fischinger was able to earn some pocket money and sketch in the company of artists. When he eventually moved out of Gelnhause, he apprenticed worked in the business of organ making and later in design. He was deemed undernourished to fight in the 1st world war and landed a job working in the drafting of tools.
His work in animation must have begun early in his life as he had an animation studio by the age of 22. At the age of 35 he was screening in cinemas and posing a threat to the Nazi's concept of pure art. His work shows his familiarity to experimental animator Walter Ruttmann, who preceeded him in his abstract shapes and dancing geometric forms. Ruttmann, however, was ready and willing to transform his work to promote the Nazi ideology. He became the assistant to the director Leni Riefenstahl in the propagandistic film "The Triumph of the Will" (1935). Fischinger's expressions of life through the relationship of music and colorful shapes became unacceptable under that regime, and so, Fischinger eventually moved to America and built a work relationship with Paramount Pictures and Disney. He also released his film "An Optical Poem" through MGM. Despite the rather unfair agreements he had with the American studios (The contract that Fischinger signed with MGM called for him to deliver a completed negative, and he was to bear all of the production costs out of his agreed upon fee, which was only $11,000.) he still remained in America until his death in 1967.
His work in animation must have begun early in his life as he had an animation studio by the age of 22. At the age of 35 he was screening in cinemas and posing a threat to the Nazi's concept of pure art. His work shows his familiarity to experimental animator Walter Ruttmann, who preceeded him in his abstract shapes and dancing geometric forms. Ruttmann, however, was ready and willing to transform his work to promote the Nazi ideology. He became the assistant to the director Leni Riefenstahl in the propagandistic film "The Triumph of the Will" (1935). Fischinger's expressions of life through the relationship of music and colorful shapes became unacceptable under that regime, and so, Fischinger eventually moved to America and built a work relationship with Paramount Pictures and Disney. He also released his film "An Optical Poem" through MGM. Despite the rather unfair agreements he had with the American studios (The contract that Fischinger signed with MGM called for him to deliver a completed negative, and he was to bear all of the production costs out of his agreed upon fee, which was only $11,000.) he still remained in America until his death in 1967.
-angela
Multiplane Camera: Tips and Techniques-Bryan DiBlasi
This truly is an incredible machine. Not to mention, a truly incredible machine for its time as well. Watching this, kind of makes you have mixed feelings about the innovations in both animation and film today. On one hand (in the digital age) its great that we are able to accomplish so much, and things (via digital) are much easier and even more readily available for both professional and amateur animators and filmmakers alike. On the other hand, you lose the true “art” in it all. The time and minds it must have taken to accomplish each great step in the medium is staggering to me. However, with each passing year when multiplane cameras, and optical printers, etc… all fall out of favor and are updated, these innovators now seem to have more in common with magicians than animators and filmmakers.
Jumping-Bryan DiBlasi
Although we didn’t get to it in class, I really enjoyed the film “Jumping”. This was the first Osamu Tezuka film I’d seen (aside from the “Astro Boy” stuff), and my favorite of his thus far. I just thought that the idea behind the story and the way he executed it was a very unique one. After I saw this, I looked up his film “Metropolis”, which I also enjoyed. I had read that he got the idea for the film from looking at a movie poster of Fritz Langs “Metropolis”(1927). This was what had attracted me to the film in the first place; me being a big fan of the German Expressionist Movement. Although, Osamu Tezuka claims to have never have seen the film himself; only the poster.
Song of the South-Bryan DiBlasi
This film might be the most offensive out of all the “War, Propaganda & Picturing the Other” list of films that we watched in class. Right off the bat, with the old black man teaching all the white kids about the stories of the south “in his old-timey way”. It’s blatantly racist, and would never have been made today. It reminded me of something I read recently about some Hindus accusing Nina Paleys film “Sita Sings the Blues” of being blatantly offensive towards Hindus; saying that “Any white person doing a project like this is by definition racist”. Although, I suppose that from a strict Hindu extremists point of view, I can see what there’re saying, their argument doesn’t hold up much water against what “Song of the South” did.
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