Visual Music

Abstract Animation and

Synaesthesia
Wassily Kandinsky
• The theory and works of
Kandinsky were concerned
with abstracted musical
forms. He describes an
experience of Wagner's
Lohengrin during the early
1890's: "All my colours were
conjured up before my eyes.
Wild, almost mad lines drew
themselves before me. It was
Kandinsky completed his first non-
quite clear to me that representational painting and his
painting was capable of treatise On The Spiritual In Art in
developing powers of exactly 1910.

the same order as those

music possessed."
The Colour Organ
• Synaesthesia has a long history
in human artistic endeavour.
Classical Greek philosophers
debated whether colour, like
pitch, could be considered a
quality of music. There have also
been various mystical
explorations with musical scales
and the colours of the rainbow,
such as the colour-organ
experiments of the Jesuit priest
Fr. Castel in the early 18th
century.
Alexander Rimington and his Colour
Organ, 1893.
Music to Colour
• Coloured keys were arranged above a
conventional keyboard, connected to a
lens-and-filters system, allowing
colours to be played. Various pedals
changed the quality of light, allowing
dissolve-like effects. Rimington went
on to published ‘Colour Music: The Art
of Mobile Colour’ in which he argued
that the standard repertoire might be
performed in colour. He subsequently
expressed a wish that musicians would
begin to write dual scores, one for
Rimington patented his Colour Organ in 1895, colour and one for music.
the same year that cinema was invented. The
instrument operated by passing light through
carefully tinted glass discs.
Alexander Scriabin
• The Russian composer Alexander
Scriabin aspired for the Wagnerian
idea of the 'Gesamtkunstwerk’ in his
hybrid symphony 'Prometheus: The
Poem of Fire'. Scriabin was a
theosophist who discovered his
synaesthetic ability at a concert in
the company of Rimsky-Korsakov,
when they both agreed that the
piece in D major appeared yellow.
Scriabin built a colour organ for use ‘Let us be born in vortex! Let us wake up into the
in his performance of his symphony sky! Let us merge our feeling into a common
in New York in 1915. wave! And in the luxurious glitter of the last
flourishing, appearing to each other in a naked
beauty of sparkling spirits, we will disappear…
we will melt away...’ Scriabin wanted to create a
symphony for the end of the world.
Coloured Rhythm
• Beginning in 1912, Leopold
Survage produced abstract
paintings which he called
'Coloured Rhythm'. He
hoped to animate these
works on film, developing
colour and movement to
evoke sensation. He
intended these abstract
images to flow together to
form what he called
“ I will introduce rhythm into the concrete action
"symphonies in colour". In
of my abstract painting, born of my interior life; 1914, he presented his ideas
my instrument will be the cinematographic film, to the Gaumont Film
this true symbol of accumulated movement. It
will execute the 'scores' of my visions,
Company to ask for support
corresponding to my state of mind in its for further development
successive phases. I am creating a new visual
art in time, that of coloured rhythm and rhythmic
towards the application for a
colour." patent. He was turned down.
The Clavilux
• Thomas Wilfred was a Danish
musician who turned to the
medium of light, which he
manipulated into dreamlike
compositions of varying colours
and intensities. He called this
practice 'Lumia'. He wrote, 'The
lumia artist conceives his idea as a
three-dimensional drama unfolding
in infinite space. In order to share
his vision with others he must
materialize it. This he may do by
executing it as a two-dimensional
sequence, projected on a flat white
screen by means of a specially
constructed projection instrument The first Clavilux was constructed in
controlled from a keyboard’. 1919, in a studio on Long Island
Hans Richter
• After a brief career as a
Cubist, Richter became, with
Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp,
one of the founding members
of Zurich Dada. He returned to
Germany in 1919. A cinematic
avant-garde was beginning.
Painters and photographers
came together to extend the
strategies of Modernism into
the cinema. The focus was on
the nature, properties and
functions of the camera, film
strip and the screen.
Rhythmus 21, 1921
• “Rhythm expresses
something different from
thought. The meaning of
both is incommensurable.
Rhythm cannot be explained
completely by thought nor
can thought be put in terms
of rhythm, or converted or
reproduced. They both find
their connection and identity
in common and universal The constantly shifting forms render the
human life, the life principle, spatial situation of the film ambivalent

from which they spring and

upon which they can build
further”.
Viking Eggeling
• Viking Eggeling shared a
studio with Hans Richter
in the Swiss countryside.
In 1920 Eggeling and
Richter wrote the
pamphlet 'Universelle
Sprache' in which they
likened abstract art to a
kind of universal
language.
Symphonie Diagonale
• Geometric shapes
rhythmically emerge and
recede along an imaginary
diagonal axis. The effects of
shadow and light magnify the
perpendicular lines, while the
parallel and curved lines
create a harmony of shapes
that play with light. An
animated tableau of circles
Eggeling used abstract forms that
and lines appears and then corresponded, in his mind, to movement.
fades away. This film He insisted that his films be screened in
comprised of 6,720 absolute silence
drawings.
Walter Ruttmann
• After studying architecture
and having worked as a
graphic designer, he began
working with film. Ruttmann
would often play the cello at
screenings of his films, and
pioneered several animation
techniques, including the use
of wax plates. Ruttman later
went on to work with Leni
Riefenstahl, editing
"Olympiad" in 1936, and was
killed during World War II
while making a newsreel.
Lichtspiel Opus I
• Lichtspiel Opus I was the
first abstract film to be
shown in public, in 1921.
Ruttmann was trained in
painting and music, both
of which show up clearly.
Ruttmann painted on
At the end of WW1, Ruttmann small glass plates and
wanted to produce "paintings set in
motion'. The film combined the photographed each
separate art forms of painting and drawing one frame at a
music into one work.
time before modifying or
adding and finally hand-
coloring.
Oskar Fischinger
• In 1921, Fischinger was
thrilled by the first
performance of Walther
Ruttmann's Lichtspeil
Opus No.1 and vowed to
devote himself to absolute
cinema, which could best
combine his skills at music
and graphic art. At first, he
experimented with cutting
through shapes of wax,
shooting a frame for each Oskar Fischinger working in
cut. He was influenced by his studio in Los Angeles
Tibetan Mandala shapes. (c.1942)
Allegretto
• Branded a ‘degenerate’ by the
Nazis, Fischinger fled to the
US. He worked for Paramount
Pictures and started ideas
which developed into Disney's
'Fantasia'. He worked on one
sequence but left abruptly
when his styles were
simplified. In Allegretto (1936),
radiating concentric circles "It was like a different language that I
pulse while rhomboids and didn't know existed," says Pete
diamonds dance and shimmer Docter, director of the Pixar hit
Monsters Inc. "Here's a guy who's
suggestively across what look doing something completely different
like radio waves, all synched with animation."
perfectly to the score.
Circles
• In 1933 Fischinger made
a film called Circles.
Only at the close was it
apparent that this play of
form and colour was a
commercial for an ad
agency. The film evaded
the usual Nazi
Made with Gaspar Colour (a 3-color
censorship restrictions
process pre-dating Technicolor) which against "degenerate" art.
Fischinger helped to invent, ‘Circles’ was
one of the first European color films.
Mary Ellen Bute
• During a 25-year period,
from 1934 until about 1959,
the abstract films Mary Ellen
Bute made played in
mainstream movie theatres
around the US, usually as
the short with a first-run
feature, such as Mary of
Scotland, The Barretts of
Wimpole Street, or Hans
Christian Andersen. Millions
saw her work, many more
than most other experimental
animators.
Absolute Film
• “We view an Absolute Film
as a stimulant by its own
inherent powers of
sensation, without the
encumbrance of literary
meaning, photographic
Imitation, or symbolism. Our
enjoyment of an Absolute
Film depends solely on the
From Bute’s film ‘Tarantella’. Her effect it produces: whereas,
ideas are remininiscent of Richard
Wagners term, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ , in viewing a realistic film,
first used in 1849, for a total, the resultant sensation is
integrated or complete artwork. based on the mental image
evoked”.
Jordan Belson
• Jordan Belson studied
painting before seeing
Fischinger's work in 1946.
He first animated real objects
(pavements in Bop-Scotch
[1952]). They foreshadow his
later mystical concepts.
Between 1957 and 1959,
Belson collaborated in the
historic Vortex Concerts,
which combined the latest
electronic music with moving
visual abstractions projected
on the dome of Morrison
Planetarium in San
Francisco.
Samadhi
• Samadhi (1967)
supposedly evokes the
ecstatic state achieved
by the meditator where
individual consciousness
merges with the
Universal. "I hoped that
somehow the film could
actually provide a taste
Later, he added, "It is primarily an
of what the real abstract cinematic work of art inspired
experience of samadhi by Yoga and Buddhism. Not a
description or explanation of
might be like." Samadhi."
Anima Mundi
• Anima mundi is a pure
ethereal spirit claimed
was proclaimed by
some ancient
philosophers to be
diffused throughout all
nature. It is the title of
a 1991 short
documentary film
directed by Godfrey
Reggio, focusing on The movie was commissioned
Nature and Wildlife, for use by the World Wildlife
Fund in their Biological
scored by Philip Glass. Diversity Program.