I’m currently going through the reading for my Visual Music Studio class, and I investigated a few of the early films referenced in the reading. Two of my favorites were Opus I (1921) by Walter Ruttmann and An Optical Poem (1937) by Oskar Fischinger.
After watching Busby Berkely’s Dames (1934), I immediately thought of Michel Gondry’s music video for The Chemical Brother’s song Let Forever Be (1999).
I knew of Harry Smith because of his folk music compilations, but I was floored after watching his Early Abstraction pieces. The film exercises from the Whitney brothers were not only advances in visual music but point toward the many possibilities of electronic music.
I enjoyed seeing John and James Whitney’s innovations in automated processes with hand drawings, with a massive jump from their early experiments to pieces such as Yantra and Lapis. Stan Brakhage’s The Dante Quartet (1987) illustrates his abilities in rhythm, pacing, and mixing of colors and movement that “creates an almost hallucineogenic world, a realm somewhere beyond nameable things”.
Reference
Wiseman, Ari, Judith Zilczer, Kerry Brougher, and Jeremy Strick. Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
After watching Busby Berkely’s Dames (1934), I immediately thought of Michel Gondry’s music video for The Chemical Brother’s song Let Forever Be (1999).
I knew of Harry Smith because of his folk music compilations, but I was floored after watching his Early Abstraction pieces. The film exercises from the Whitney brothers were not only advances in visual music but point toward the many possibilities of electronic music.
I enjoyed seeing John and James Whitney’s innovations in automated processes with hand drawings, with a massive jump from their early experiments to pieces such as Yantra and Lapis. Stan Brakhage’s The Dante Quartet (1987) illustrates his abilities in rhythm, pacing, and mixing of colors and movement that “creates an almost hallucineogenic world, a realm somewhere beyond nameable things”.
Reference
Wiseman, Ari, Judith Zilczer, Kerry Brougher, and Jeremy Strick. Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
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