Abstronic
A pioneer of visual music and electronic art, Mary Ellen Bute produced over a dozen short abstract animations between the 1930s and the 1950s. Set to classical music by the likes of Bach, Saint-Saëns, and Shoshtakovich, and replete with rapidly mutating geometries, Bute’s filmmaking is at once formally rigorous and energetically high-spirited, like a marriage of high modernism and Merrie Melodies. In the late 1940s, Lewis Jacobs observed that Bute’s films were “composed upon mathematical formulae depicting in ever-changing lights and shadows, growing lines and forms, deepening colors and tones, the tumbling, racing impressions evoked by the musical accompaniment.” Bute herself wrote that she sought to “bring to the eyes a combination of visual forms unfolding along with the thematic development and rhythmic cadences of music.”
Tarantella
Here the artist creates a world of color, form, movement and sound in which the elements are in a state of controllable flux, the two materials (visual and aural) are subject to any conceivable interrelation and modification.
Study No. 9
An experimental short from Oskar Fischinger
at your own pace (film 2 edition)
a short film documenting a day in the life of cl0ud
Composition in Blue
An abstract film in which every motion of coloured shapes is in strict synchronization with music. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2000.
Escape (Synchronomy No. 4)
To the toccata portion of Bach's "Toccata and fugue in D minor," we watch a play of sorts. Blue smoke forms a background; a grid of black lines is the foreground. Behind the lines, a triangle appears, then patterns of multiple triangles. Their movements reflect the music's rhythm. Behind the barrier of the black lines, the triangle moves, jumps, and takes on multiple shapes. In contrast with the blue and the black, the triangles are warm: orange, red, yellow. The black lines bend, swirl into a vortex, then disappear. The triangle pulsates and a set of many of them rises.
Autogenic
From the void of space, a cube structure comes to life in this experimental visual music film.
Jean-Michel Jarre Live in Sevilla
Jean-Michel Jarre unveils an immersive concert-show in the heart of Seville's sumptuous Plaza de España, transformed into an exceptional stage setting for one evening.
Watine-Eros & Thanatos
A music video directed by experimental director Anna Malina for Catherine Watine's EROS & THANATOS from her 2020 album INTRICATIONS QUANTIQUES.
What the Walls Feel
The muted despair and confusion of Rob Ford or something like that.
Ghostnaps presents TAKE ME WITH YOU!!
TAKE ME WITH YOU!! is the sophomore album and debut visual film from Ghostnaps, the solo project of Boston-based artist and producer Richard Lathrop.
Goddammit
Short film based on norwegian writer Jan Erik Vold's concrete poem with the same name, from Kykelipi (1969).
Dance of the Colors
A play of colours, shapes and music: colourful dots, lines and surfaces move to the rhythm of the music. A short film by Hans Fischinger, the younger brother of experimental film pioneer Oskar Fischinger.
Musikalische Arabesken: Suite
This short film is an animated interpretation of the Suite No. 4 by the music ensemble Bayon, which was founded in East Germany in 1971. Bayon’s music is a unique combination of Khmer pentatonic music with elements of classical, jazz and rock.