Visual Music

Still from Oskar Fischinger's Kreise (Circles) (1933), 35mm, color, sound (c) Fischinger Trust, courtesy Center for Visual Music

Visual Music

Sensory Cinema 1920s-70

APRIL 9-13, 2010

Northwest Film Forum and The Sprocket Society, in association with Center For Visual Music, present this special series celebrating the history of Visual Music. Over the past century, there have been a number of prescient artists who’ve approached cinema as a tool for merging visual art and music in order to create a new synaesthetic art form and explore uncharted areas of experience. Through a vibrant history of cinematic experiments, these pioneers have been inventing the concepts, aesthetics, techniques and technologies on which our modern image-and-sound culture is based. Visual Music is a rare opportunity to see restored film prints of work by such master animators as Oskar Fischinger, Mary Ellen Bute, Jordan Belson and Robert Breer on the big screen. In addition, we’ll host a panel discussion on Seattle's own history of visual music in the 1960s and early 70s. 

Curated by Peter Lucas

Special thanks to the Center For Visual Music, Cindy Keefer, Cecile Starr, Spencer Sundell and Alex Bush. 

This program is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment For The Arts.

 

 
Still from Allegretto (1936-1943), 35mm film by Oskar Fischinger. (c) The Fischinger Trust, courtesy Center for Visual Music

Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Retrospective

Program presented in association with Center for Visual Music and The Fischinger Archive

Apr 09, 2010

(Oskar Fischinger, Germany/USA, 1926-47, 35mm, 70 min)

German-born painter and filmmaker Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) was an enormously influential artist of the 20th century. His abstract animations- made between the 1920s and 40s- greatly expanded the possibilities of the medium of film, presenting a range of inventive, visual and temporal techniques and pioneering a new form of audio-visual art.

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Still from Mary Ellen Bute's Color Rhapsodie, courtesy Center for Visual Music

Seeing Sound: The Films of Mary Ellen Bute

Program presented in association with the Center for Visual Music, in association with Cecile Starr and the Women's Independent Film Exchange. 

Apr 10, 2010

(Mary Ellen Bute, USA, 1934-52, 16mm, 70 min)

American filmmaker Mary Ellen Bute (1906-1983) is an important and often overlooked pioneer of visual music and electronic art. Beginning in the 1930s, Bute produced short films that translated music (often classical music including Bach and Shostakovich) into choreographed shapes, ever-changing lights and shadows, brilliant colorful forms, and elegant design.

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Frame still from Allures, by Jordan Belson. 16mm film, 1961, color, sound (c) Jordan Belson, courtesy Center for Visual Music

Jordan Belson: Films Sacred and Profane

Program presented in association with Center for Visual Music 

Apr 11, 2010

(Jordan Belson, USA, 1959-2005, 16mm/DigiBeta, 70 min)

Filmmaker and artist Jordan Belson has created some of the most moving, ethereal works of visual music. After seeing the films of Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and Hans Richter, he was inspired to make what he called "cinematic paintings

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Seattle Psychedelics

Apr 13, 2010

This panel discussion, moderated by curator Peter Lucas, explores the little-known history of experimental films and light shows in the Seattle area in the late 1960s and early 70s, and celebrates the pioneers of this funky, techno-folk multi-media art form.

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Sixties Synaesthetics

Apr 14, 2010

(Various directors, USA, 1961-70, 16mm, 70 min)

In this final program of the Visual Music series, we present a selection of highly original works by artists who shattered the boundaries between visual and sonic through the creative use of optical printing, animation, electronics, and editing.

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