Meshes of the afternoon is a short experimental film directed by wife-and-husband team Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. The film’s narrative is circular and repeats several motifs, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper–like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean. Through creative editing, distinct camera angles, and slow motion, the surrealist film depicts a world in which it is more and more difficult to catch reality.
With the original soundtrack – no music.
https://youtu.be/RuA9TPlwA7M
Maya Deren , Marcel Duchamp – 1943
https://youtu.be/KKvlzBY7vOI
https://youtu.be/vUCgHIrFnqw
Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) is a short, silent experimental film directed by Maya Deren. Like Deren’s previous work, A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), she explores the use of dance on film through the lens of commentary of societal norms, metamorphosis, and anthropomorphism. The film is notable for its disjointed storytelling and use of slow motion, freeze framing, and unique blend of stage dance and film.
Abstract animation of music originated in early experiments to develop machines to link the musical scale with a corresponding scale of colour and light. The first of such machines was developed long before the advent of film, in 1730 by French mathematician Louis Bertrand Castel. His Ocular Harpsichord replaced the pitches of a harpsichord with projected coloured light.
In the twentieth century abstract animation, also known as “Visual Music” and “Absolute Film” was pioneered by the animators Mary Ellen Bute, Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger. These artists developed methods and devices to translate visual imagery into and alongside sound.
From the 1960s onwards, artists such as John Whitney (the father of computer animation) used computer technology to enable the creation of sound and complex, abstract moving images. Contemporary artists code and connect via midi and software programs such as Max MSP, Processing and Isadora to perform in real-time or to compose.
Music and forms for Sequential structuring
Abstract animators work on the basis that all processes when removed from their concrete context, become inherently universal and repeatable: ‘pure movement’. There can be said to be three key ‘movement strategies’ that govern the creation and structuring of abstract animation: evolution, deconstruction and patterned movement.
When watching abstract animation work, expectations connected with viewing narrative work should be suspended. As no story arc is present and the structure is more like music than literature, the mind is able to wander. The viewer enters a different type of experience; perhaps more like that of watching clouds. Thoughts emerge and disappear.
Len Lye for example recalled being enthralled with their fast, scurrying motion of clouds after a rain storm.
“All of a sudden it hit me – if there was such a thing as composing music, there could be such a thing as composing motion. After all, there are melodic figures, why can’t there be figures of motion?”
Len Lye, edited by Roger Horrocks and Wystan Curnow, Figures of Motion (1984) Auckland University Press, Oxford University Press.
Mary Ellen Bute: Rhythm in Light
Rhythm in Light (1934) was Mary Ellen Bute’s first completed film, appearing the same year as Schillinger’s discussion of synchronization in Experimental Cinema. It had been preceded by several studies and an earlier attempt to film Schillinger’s ideas using standard animation techniques that was abandoned because the imagery was too complex for standard production with hand animation. Rhythm in Light reflects this shift from the painterly and cel animation techniques employed by the absolute filmmakers (Ruttmann, Eggeling, Richter) in the 1920s in favour of the same procedures of abstracting from reality by using already abstract subjects employed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Running just under three minutes long, following the opening credits it proclaims itself a “A Pictorial Accompaniment in abstract forms” followed by the explanation that “It is a pioneer effort in a new art form – It is a modern artist’s impression of what goes on it the mind while listening to music.” The explanatory element in Bute’s film is a common feature of American abstract films of the 1930s produced for commercial distribution—an element also shared by Fischinger’s An Optical Poem (1936).
https://youtu.be/ySUtIgZU9uU
Harry Smith
Oskar Fischinger, Wax Experiments (1921-1926)
Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger (1900 – 1967) was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter, notable for creating abstract musical animation many decades before the appearance of computer graphics and music videos. He created special effects for Fritz Lang’s 1929 Woman in the Moon, one of the first sci-fi rocket movies, and influenced Disney’s Fantasia. He made over 50 short films and painted around 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries, and collections worldwide. Among his film works is Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), which is now listed on the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress.
Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German cinematographer and film director, and along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger was the most important German representative of abstract experimental film. He is best known for directing the semi-documentary ‘city symphony’ silent film Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis. His audio montage Wochenende (1930) is considered a major contribution in the development of audio plays.
https://youtu.be/FYJnZ946L1c
1921. This piece has soft modulated bold but flowing shapes that often evoke simple landscapes. The paper-like shapes, often with torn edges, are sometimes semi-lucent and sometimes merge into each other or divide. The dreamlike effect is enhanced by the flickering boil of the background.
A much darker ‘night’ piece in blues, blacks and reds. Similar flowing shapes, but often jabbed and ivershadowed from the top by sharp triangles and oppressive ‘city’ squares and rectangles.
https://youtu.be/pQC8V_LBGqk
1925. A very rhythmic piece around danving black andcwhite lines – African in reference. With a sensuous blue section, and more violeht red and black.
1924. A more geometric piece in blue/black, black/white and red. Mysterious shapes evocative of ancient pyramids and temples flow in and out superimposed, sometimes showing power, sometimes sensuously. Much of the effect js achieved by very subtle differences in colour, sharp/soft/ragges/translucent edge lines.
1922 ‘the champion’ advertisement for Excelsior Reifen tyre company using abstract shapes with cartoon narrative.
Stan Brakhage, (1933-2003) was an American non-narrative filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.
Brakhage’s films seek to reveal the universal, in particular exploring themes of birth, mortality, sexuality, and innocence. Influenced by German and Abstract Expressionism and his own visual impairment, he explores the nature of the ‘untutored eye’ where perception is freed from preconceptions of language. His work explores abstraction of communication between vision and neural responses ‘if I close my eyes I continue to see explosions of light’ that evoke memories and symbols of emotion.
Brakhage’s work is experimental, producing many accidents of chance, most of which are rejected. Then creatively responding to selected discoveries of chance that ‘seem to respond to his soul’ to create a world where ‘nothing is let in that does not have life’. He explored a wide variety of formats, approaches and techniques that included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid film, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures. Inspired by art like the ‘unpainted paintings’ by snow on watercolour of Emile Nolde, he often worked directly on film in such a way that the outcome was not planned for example in Garden Path (2001).
His films are for the most part silent except for the rhythmic whirring of the film projector.
Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects, and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of colour. Imagine a world before the ‘beginning was the word.’
How many colours are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of ‘green’? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heatwaves can that eye be?
Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.
“Now let me say to you – simply as I can: the search for art is the most terrifying adventure imaginable: it is a search always into unexplored regions … all real adventures are purposeless… beyond any purposeful definition…”
Stan Brakhage, The Brakhage Lectures (1972) Chicago: Good Lion
Interim (1952)The Boy and the Sea (1953)Unglassed Windows Cast a Terrible Reflection (1953)Desistfilm (1954)The Extroadinary Child (1954)The Way to Shadow Garden (1954)In Between (1955)Reflections on Black (1955)Untitled film of Geoffrey Holder’s Wedding (1955)The Wonder Ring (1955)Gnir Rednow (1955-56)Centuries of June (1955-56)Flesh of Morning (1956)Nightcats (1956)Zone Moment (1956)Daybreak and White Eye (1957)Loving (1957)Anticipation of the Night (1958) Cat’s Cradle (1959)Sirius Remembered (1959)Wedlock House: An Intercourse(1959)Window Water Baby Moving(1959)
Interim (1952)
The Wonder Ring (1955)
Wedlock House: An Intercourse (1959)
Cat’s Cradle 1959
An enigmatic video in red an black of a bedroom scene. Sequential video clips of:
a cat
a woman
a man (sometimes helping, sometimes sitting smoking.
illustration of what seems to be a flea
bottle of perfume and other ‘boudoir’ objects, curtains etc
Ends in a sex scene. What does it all mean?
https://youtu.be/VI41boFneqE
Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
Short film of the birth of Brakhage’s first child. This film is both graphic and beautiful while effecting each viewer a little differently. The colours in the film are especially striking. (Warning this film is not for the queazy).
1960s
Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself (1960)The Dead (1960)Thigh Line Lyre Triangular (1961)Films by Stan Brakhage: An Avant-Garde Home Movie (1961)Blue Moses (1962)Silent Sound Sense Stars Subotnick and Sender (1962)Sartre’s Nausea (1962-63)Mothlight (1963)Oh Life, A Woe Story, The A-Test News (1963) Dog Star Man and The Art of Vision (1961-5)Black Vision (1965)Fire of Waters (1965)Pasht (1965)Three Films: Blue White, Blood’s Tone, Vein (1965)Two: Creeley/McClure (1965)The Female Mystique and Spare Leaves (For Gordon) (1965)23rd Psalm Beach (1966-67)Eye Myth (1967)The Horseman, the Woman and the Moth (1968)Love Making (1968) Scenes from Under Childhood 1 1967 and 2 1970.
https://youtu.be/jJl-Gpx6mAk
Dog Star Man (1961-1964)
Dog Star Man consists of four short silent films and a prelude, all directed by Stan Brakhage and featuring Jane Wodening. Brakhage began filming Dog Star Man after editing and completing Cat’s Cradle and as he also worked on The Dead. He started without a clear idea of what the project would be about at a time when he was questioning his distant relationship with his wife Jane at the time and experiencing visions, and contemplations of death and decay. The series was released during 1961 to 1964 and comprises a prelude and four parts. They were later re-edited into a much longer film, The Art of Vision 1965.
Dog Star Man is considered a key moment in development of experimental film. Shot in 16mm, the film uses abstract imagery shot with variable exposure times and physical manipulation techniques such as painting directly on the film, scratching and punching holes into the film to produce specific visual effects.
Described as a “cosmological epic” and “creation myth” Dog Star Man illustrates the odyssey of a bearded woodsman (Brakhage) climbing through a snow-covered mountain with his dog to chop down a tree. While doing so, he witnesses various mystical visions with various recurring imagery such as a woman, child, nature, and the cosmos while making his ascent. Dog Star Man There is a general structure to the narrative of the film cycle that comprises the prelude and four parts:
Prelude (1961, 26 minutes): Described by Brakhage as a “created dream”. It broadly presents a visualisation of the creation of the universe and contains many of the images, symbols and concepts that recur throughout the rest of the film series. Many instances of superimposed abstract images and what Brakhage calls “close-eyed vision”.
Part I (1962, 30 minutes) a more impressionistic film presenting the main narrative of the series: the woodsman struggling with his journey up the mountain along with his dog. One of the most important images is the mountain that Brakhage attempts to climb. Major parts of the film are in slow-motion; others, in time-lapse photography, speeding up motion.
Part II (1963, 5-7 minutes) Its central focus is on the birth of a child which was filmed on black and white film stock as a part of Brakhage’s home videos that he shot during the time; stylistically, the filming of childbirth in an almost documentary-like way. Two layers of imagery are imposed over one another, suggesting that the woodsman’s life is passing right before his eyes.
Part III (1964) Part IV (1964)
Mothlight (1963)
“Brakhage made Mothlight without a camera. He just pasted moth wings and flowers on a clear strip of film and ran it through the printing machine.”
Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971 (2016) Columbia University Press.
In ‘Mothlight’ Brakhage invented his own technique of ‘collage animation’. The objects chosen were required to be thin and translucent, to permit the passage of light. He collected moth wings, flower petals and blades of grass and pressed them between two strips of 16mm splicing tape. The resulting assemblage was then contact printed at a lab to allow projection in a cinema.
Scenes from Under Childhood is an attempt to imagine fetal seeing and hearing. “What we call ‘closed-eye vision’ is for me the template in the mind upon which all further formative envisionment is to occur” “The color red that dominates those early moments of the film has always struck me as the same color I see when I look at the sun with my eyes closed”. The film needed three thousand light changes in 40 minutes of filming and was pushing the edge of technological possibilities at a time when light was changing constantly across one, two, three, four rolls.
Scenes from Under Childhood 1 1967
Scenes from Under Childhood II 1970
1970s
The Weir-Falcon Saga (1970)The Machine of Eden (1970)Animals of Eden and After (1970)Wecht (1971)Angels (1971)Fox Fire Child Watch (1971)The Peaceable Kingdom (1971)Western History (1971)The Trip to Door (1971)The Presence (1972)Eye Myth Educational (1972)The Process(1972)The Riddle of Lumen (1972)The Shores of Phos: A Fable (1972)The Wold Shadow (1972)Gift (1973)The Women (1973)Aquarien (1974)Clancy (1974)Dominion (1974)Flight (1974)“He was born, he suffered, he died.” (1974)Hymn to Her (1974)Skein (1974)Sol (1974)Star Garden (1974)The Text of Light (1974)The Stars are Beautiful (1974)Short Films: 1975 (1975)Gadflies (1976)Sketches (1976)Window (1976)Trio (1976)Rembrandt, Etc., and Jane (1976)Desert (1976)Highs (1976)Airs (1976)Absence (1976)Short Films: 1976 (1976)The Dream, NYC, The Return, The Flower (1976)Tragoedia (1976)The Domain of the Moment (1977)The Governor (1977)Soldiers and Other Cosmic Objects (1977)Bird (1978)Burial Path (1978)Centre (1978)Nightmare Series (1978)Purity and After (1978)Sluice (1978)Thot-Fal’N (1978)@ (1979)Creation (1979)
The Machine of Eden (1970)
The Process (1972)
The Text of Light (1974)
Burial Path (1978) about forgetfulness and death-at-work. The third part of a trilogy, with ‘Sirius Remembered’ and ‘The Dead’.
1980s
https://youtu.be/ucktAy6b1bk
Murder Psalm (1980) is composed of found footage. principalmente da immagini di found footage, in particolare, da un film educativo circa un bambino epilettico. Come Brakhage, si muove attraverso una varietà di impostazioni, la violenza e l’orrore sembrano esplodere da ogni lato. Il potere di trasformazione della luce in questo caso è abbandonato, esiliato dalle terribili illusioni e mezze verità della cultura di massa. Il suo opposto trasforma Toronto in una dimora di illuminazione stessa. Brakhage ‘canta’ la città con campi di luce il cui solo significato risiede nella propria esistenza, e che non potrebbe esistere altrove. Uno splendidamente orchestrato insieme folle di film scientifici e didattici, tv e cartoni animati elaborati e rigenerati in negativo costituiscono un mito che è la versione dostoevskiano, oscura e feroce del film di collage. Brakhage continua ad esplorare gli strati frastagliati delle identità, la strutturazione della memoria e del mito, gli assedi combattuti da un asfissiante individualità contro la coscienza culturale dominante.
SHOW LESS
The Garden of Earthly Delights 1981
Dante Quartet 1987
Then comes a moment when suddenly I can’t handle the language anymore, like I can’t read one more translation of The Divine Comedy, and suddenly I realize it’s in my eyes all the time, that I have a vision of Hell, I have even more necessary kind of a way of getting out of Hell, kind of a springboard in my thinking, closing my eyes and thinking what I’m seeing […] and also purgation, that I can go through the stages of purging the self, of trying to become pure, free of these ghastly visions, and then there is something that’s as close to Heaven as I would hope to aspire to, which I call “existence is song.” And that all of that was in my eyes all the time, backfiring all these years […] It’s lovely that I can have the language, but I also have a visual corollary of it, but that is a story.
The Dante Quartet is divided into four parts, titled Hell Itself, Hell Spit Flexion, Purgation and existence is song, respectively. Brakhage described the sections as follows:
I made Hell Itself during the breakup with Jane [Brakhage] and the collapse of my whole life, so I got to know quite well the streaming of the hypnagogic that’s hellish. Now the body can not only feed back its sense of being in hell but also its getting out of hell, and Hell Spit Flexion shows the way out – it’s there as crowbar to lift one out of hell toward the transformatory state – purgatory. And finally there’s a fourth state that’s fleeting. I’ve called the last part existence is song quoting Rilke, because I don’t want to presume upon the after-life and call it “Heaven.”
The Dante Quartet took six years to produce.The eight-minute silent film was created by painting images directly onto IMAX and Cinemascope 70mm and 35mm the film. Sometimes over previously photographed material that was then scraped away or otherwise manipulated. The paint was applied very thickly onto the film, up to half an inch thick.
Should animations be: – purely visual – mostly visual but supplemented with sound – an integral combination of the two – sound as the driving force for the visuals ?
“A truth whispered among animators is that 70% of a show’s impact comes from the sound track.”
Michael Dougherty, Sound in Animation (2015)
“I think really for the art of the film, sound is an aesthetic error… if the major consideration of film is the visual then the reason sound is a blind alley is that it cuts back on sight so that the very instance that sound is removed or that it is relatively silent, it becomes more possible to see…
I sometimes think the real reason that movies plaster mood music all over the soundtrack, so that there is never a moment of silence is because people are afraid. With sound pouring into the ears they feel more comforted, lullabied in some sense.”
Stan Brakhage, Dog Star Man (1970)
For my first observations on combining visuals and sound from listening to animations with or without the sound turned on see:
TASK: The following two animators hold very opposing views on animation and the use of sound. Consider your own viewpoint – Search for animations that supports or challenges your viewpoint in someway. Try listening to animations before you watch them, or watching them without the sound to help reflect on the relationships between image and sound. Produce a short blogpost that outlines your research and supports your viewpoint on the relationship between sound and image in animations. You could do this through writing or by creating a short audio/moving image piece.
I do not think there are any hard or fast rules. It depends on what one is trying to do. The important thing is to be aware of the interactions and interrelationships. And emphasis can shift in the course of any one animation.
Sound only
Slow down thought processes to focus on what is being seen
Stanley Brakhage
Visual with sound
Sound effects or ambient music to support the mood or give occasional comic effect or emphasis
Sound and visual equal
Voiceover or sound effects can change or alter the meaning
Michael Dougherty
Sound as driving force
Voiceover narrative can be the main story
Music videos and soundscapes
What is done first? Sound, then suggest visuals and the visuals are carefully timed to follow the sounds? Or the visuals and the sound effects chosen to support them. Depends partly on which elements require continuity and which can be split and cut.
Some element of serendipity and disruption can enhance the meaning. Too much often becomes just cliche and boring in my opinion. But it depends on what one is trying to say – and whether specific rules are essential to one’s ‘signature style’ or key area of exploration eg in the case of Brakhage.
For my own explorations see:
I Love Red Peppers E2.2 and E2.3 where I experiment with different approaches to using music track and sound effects.
Summertime E2.5 Sound and image animatic: an animated music video of Summer from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
Summer 2020: Assignment 2 where I integrate different approaches.
Stanley Brakhage
Stan Brakhage explored a variety of formats, approaches and techniques that included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures. His films are for the most part silent. He thereby sought to reveal the universal, in particular exploring themes of birth, mortality, sexuality, and innocence. For more on his work with a collection of his videos see full post: Stan Brakhage.
Dog Start Man was one of Brakhage’s first experiments. I think on a big cinema screen it could be quite mesmerising and engrossing. But on a smaller You Tube or even large TV screen I find it far too long and soon switch off. My brain is trained to see patterns and meanings. Where I don’t I soon get bored.
I find the colours and textures in this much shorter piece much more interesting to watch.
Visually I find this quite captivating with the Zoom movements sucking me into the intriguing colours and textures.
This animation has sound – though a soundless version of part of it called ‘Night Music’ also exists. I find these textures interesting, and my interest is increased by the music.
Michael Dougherty
One in a series of ‘Trick or Treat’ videos about Halloween designed for different locations. For more details of the background and reasons to create this animation See: https://youtu.be/PVHraE8WclE
Michael Dougherty mostly creates horror animations: a series about Halloween called Seasons Greetings, Krampus an alternative mythology of Christmas and Godzilla.
He uses a lot of scary music and sound effects, often exaggerated cliche of Disney. But I actually find them distracting from the poignancy of the visuals and narrative. Watching the animation without the sound, I slow down and notice a lot more.
It is the contrast between sound and image that is the central element in this animation.
The constant rhythmic movement supports the visuals. The visuals have been carefully times to correspond to changes in tempo.
E1.2 Observing Cycles
Here the Tango sound track plays continuously, hypnotically as a distraction, but also intensification of the feeling of life as just one long repetitive and absurd dance.
Here the relationship between sound and visuals fluctuates. The sounds themselves are symbolic – squeaks and creaks and horses hoofs evocative of a time gone by. Then dance music becomes dominant to fluttering visuals. Then drum beat and hinted music to amplify the cycles of endless working life.
Here the sound counterposes the visuals to show the relationship as a Hollywood Fantasy.
The visuals are dominant, but without the sound effects have little impact.
Materials that Move
Use sound to create suspense and wonder what one is seeing
Starts sound of audience on title sequence.
Incidental sound effects and music to create atmosphere and mood.
TASK: Identify animations that explore materials and use interesting techniques that you find visually engaging. Document your choices by creating a folder of animations you find interesting on your Vimeo page or list them in your learning log. Choose at least two animations and provide a critique of their method. Try to choose one animation that you think is successful/enjoyable and one that you think is less so.
Compare them in terms of technique and material approach. Some questions to consider when critiquing: ● How do the textures and particular qualities affect the feeling and idea of the animation? How could this be improved? ● How is lighting and movement used in the animation and what is the intended purpose? Does the animator achieve this purpose? ● Could the animations be simpler or is something lacking? ● How is sound used in the animation? Does it heighten elements of the material or is it a distraction? To what extent does the experience and meaning of the animation change when played without sound?“
Alice Dunseath, You Could Bathe in this Storm (2014)
I found this animation very beautiful and evocative – eerily disturbing rather than enjoyable because of its enigmatic approach to the apparent subject matter. The info on vimeo by the sound designer says ‘space, form, colours and sounds symbolise a recognisable world ‘Do we shape as much as we are shaped’ suggesting an underlying philosophical intention.
For me – before reading the vimeo caption – the Title suggests an animation about global warming and climate change, and there are obvious symbols of melting icebergs, pink civilisation blistering and drying out and crumbling to dust and heat and lifeless chemistry of minerals and crystals taking over. The colours are beautiful, as are the images at the end of lifeless minerals and crystals growing like trees and coral.
The music and sound effects generally support the dystopian effect. The voice soundtrack is like a meditation Ap, trying to soothe the viewer into an apathetic complacency. Without the sound, the animation has less impact – it is too slow and seems more just like pretty pictures.
But I thought sections were too didactic in the voice over and too long and drawn out. In particular the middle Stop Motion section with the ‘human’ cube and pyramid I and the end section. Possibly I would prefer something shorter, slower and without sound for showing on a large pc screen.
Sophie Clements, How We Fall (2017)
This is a beautiful black and white video animation suggesting contrast between beauty and horror of war and nuclear explosion – like the slow motion film of a nuclear mushroom cloud. But applied to more conventional bombing from modern day wars.
The vimeo description informs us ‘Making reference to the physical structure of the Barbican itself, the film uses cement (the main constituent of concrete) as a symbol of construction and destruction.’ It was created using a circular rig of 96 cameras that capture a moment in time in 360 degrees, using bespoke triggering systems with cameras firing milliseconds apart to give a dynamic and filmic result. The sound by Jo Wills is created solely from audio recorded during the shoot.
I prefer this animation without the sound played on a large pc screen. Then I really notice the beauty of the light and suspended animation particles and apparent huge boulders captured as they fall. I like the fact there is no voice over narration, but the muffled voices make the sound track too much like a mock lunar landing or war video and the sound explosions are unnecessary and distract my attention too much from what I am seeing. I also got a bit dizzy, and would have preferred some variation in the frame speed of rotation to focus in more on specific points in the action.
Restricting the tools: animation without a camera
Animation without camera, also known as drawn-on-film or direct animation is a technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on a film stock, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects are photographed, scanned or constructed digitally.
This technique originated with the entry of avant-garde painters into filmmaking, in the early 1900s. The Italian futurist Arnaldo Ginna made four abstract films based on chromatic experiments in 1910. Sadly, these short films are no longer in existence. Seminal animators such as Len Lye and Norman McLaren took up this technique and developed it.
Artist filmmakers in the 1960s expanded on the idea of animation without camera and subjected the film stock to increasingly radical methods, up to the point where the film was destroyed in the process of projection. These artists, such as Stan Brakhage worked directly on film in such a way that the outcome was not planned: scratching, painting, cutting and collaging the film stock. For example, in Brakhage’s Garden Path (2001). The technique continues to be used by contemporary artists, such as Bristol based artist Vicky Smith, whose Noisy, Licking, Dribbling and Spitting was made with ‘the mouth alone’.
Free Radicals (1958): “Regarded as Lye’s greatest film. He reduced the film medium to its most basic elements – light in darkness – by scratching designs on black film. On screen his scratches were as dramatic as lightning in the night sky. He used a variety of tools ranging from dental tools to an ancient Native American arrow-head, and synchronized the images to traditional African music (“a field tape of the Bagirmi tribe”)…Stan Brakhage described the final version as “an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece (a brief epic).” The Len Lye Foundation on Free Radicals (1958), (2018)
Move It on Vicky Smith, Noisy, Licking, Dribbling and Spitting (2014): “She used her stained tongue as a tool and stamping pad, the first impression is made 40 frames (1 foot) into the film and then reduced by one frame with each new stamp, accelerating until the marks overlap. Mechanistic control is then rejected in favor of spitting and dribbling as random action, painterly like splats and dense swirling tangles roll along the filmstrip and spill into the audio track, generating noisy rasps and skidding sounds.”