Animation of the Analogue Era - Cel, Cut Out, Stop Motion, Puppet, Pixilation, Cameraless, Sand, Pinscreen... Plus Experimental Films + TV, plus Assorted Visual Weirdness.
One of my interests is the weird electronic (or otherly avant or just nuttily absurdist) music on animations and experimental short films, sometimes done by a composer or someone the animator-director knows who has institutional access to synths and such, but quite often made by the animator-director.
Prime example: Norman McLaren of Canada's NFB.
I have made compilations of soundtracks and scores having liberated them from their cinematic context. Most of the time the audio - often mixing music with sound FX and cartoony voices - has no existence separate from the film, has never been released as records.
Prime example: Norman McLaren of Canada's NFB.
Until now! with the release of Rythmetic – The Compositions of Norman McLaren
Daryl Worthingtonreviews Rythmetic at the Quietus as Reissue of the Week
" Born in Stirling, Scotland, McLaren started making films when studying at the Glasgow School Of Art. After his stint at the GPO, he relocated to Canada and worked for the country’s nascent National Film Board. He was acknowledged as a pioneering animator in his day, winning an Oscar and a Palme d’Or. Pablo Picasso and George Lucas were fans, the former describing McLaren’s work as “something new in the art of drawing”.
...Central to many of them is a symbiotic connection between sound and image.... It hits with dazzling effect on 1949’s Begone Dull Care, an animated accompaniment to the Oscar Peterson Jazz Trio. McLaren didn’t always use other people’s music to score his films however, as documented on Rythmetic: The Compositions Of Norman McLaren, the first collection of McLaren’s audio work. Spanning 1940 to 1970, the compilation pulls together eight of his film scores, four unreleased compositions, and, intriguingly, the entire audio for his 1961 film Opening Speech. Most of the tracks capture a process dubbed ‘hand-drawn sound’. Just as his movies often involved him drawing on film, McLaren’s sound works involved him drawing shapes and patterns.
"As the detailed liner notes for the compilation explain, after noticing the glue on spliced film reels produced a sound as it passed through a projector, he began measuring and collating the frequencies and tones different cuts and notches would produce. Over the years, he created a series of cards containing symbols and patterns corresponding to eight octaves of notes, which he then deployed in his sonic compositions. Often, both animation and soundtrack would be hand drawn side by side on the same reel of film."
The blippy micro-syncopated percussive scores that McLaren etched by hand into his celluloid do sound startling and contagious when listened to separately: at times more like demented Morse Code, flurries of dot-dash pointillism, than music. But after a bit I found myself wondering whether they actually worked best in their original visually kinetic context.
Worthington feels the same:
"Sometimes, something does seem to be missing when the hand-drawn soundtracks are isolated. The absence of visuals is a reminder of how integral sound and image were to each other in McLaren’s films. That’s brought home most directly by the compilation’s third track, ‘Neighbours’, originally created for the 1952 film of the same name which won McLaren an Oscar. The short film sees two neighbours get into hyperreal fisticuffs after one erects a fence to claim a flower that has sprouted between their houses. What starts as a farcical punch up descends into disturbingly violent scenes. An overblown conflict which leads to mutual destruction, Neighbours is a scathing lament of war’s violent futility, likely taking aim at the absurdity of the Cold War that was simmering away when the film was released. Left with the sound alone, that uncompromising critique is lost."
While overall feeling the move to issue the music separately was a good idea;
While some things are lost, just as much is gained through the magnifying glass Rythmetic shines on McLaren as a brilliantly unique composer. A facet to his work which until now has often been hidden in plain sight in his films is given the attention it truly deserves.
Here are the original films that the tracks on the comp supported (with the exception of four unreleased compositions)
"Imagine an early Eighties Eastern European space-prog album high on sugary breakfast cereal, “Heavy Metal” magazine, Hanna-Barbera cartoons and 8-bit arcade games like Galaxian and Asteroids, and you have some idea of the otherworldly weirdness of the Romanian animated sci-fi film DELTA SPACE MISSION. In the year 3084, a Modigliani-esque alien journalist with blue-green skin, Alma, boards a state-of-the-art spacecraft named Delta – whose highly advanced computer brain develops a mad teenage crush on her with disastrous results. An incredibly strange and strangely beautiful work of galactic eye candy, DELTA SPACE MISSION defies all rules of perspective and logic, like M.C. Escher and Moebius teaming up on a Romanian Saturday morning cartoon. Fueled by an addictive Perry-Kingsley like electronic synth score by Calin Ioachimescu, DELTA SPACE MISSION grooves along folding space and time, an early Eighties Euro disco perched on the edge of a Black Hole. With its egg-shaped spaceships, giant floating triangles and anthropomorphic computer, the film also brings to mind Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Rene Laloux’s FANTASTIC PLANET and the work of the Strugatsky Brothers (STALKER)."
- Vinegar Syndrome
Currently showing on the Criterion channel (but not for long?), this is a really quite stylish and graphically inventive sci-fi animation.
And while the main theme is campy 'n 'quaint (to the point of sounding a bit like something cooked up by Look Around You), the rest of the incidental music and underscores by Calin Ioachimescu are excellent.
Something I learned indirectly from watching this film: we noticed that the language of the dialogue didn't sound Slavic but more like Italian (I heard a word that sounded a lot like "arrivederci") and looking into it, discovered that Romanian, as the name actually suggests, is a Romance language. Despite being surrounded on all sides by Slavic tongues, the language Romanian most resembles is in fact Italian.
Also learned: the term "Balkan sprachbund"
I used to be rather intrigued by Romania as a child, partly because of Transylvania and the legend of Vlad the Impaler (did a school project on him, with the gory bits written in red ink). But also (being into wildlife then) by the fact that the country is relatively unspoiled - large parts of it consist of "undisturbed forest". Many many species of flora and fauna, and a high proportion of the surviving bears in Europe. Also wolves. I used to dream of taking one of those Black Sea cruises advertised in colour supplements and the Radio Times in the 1970s and stopping off in Romania with my binoculars.
We were also big fans in our house of Ilie Năstase, with the dashing long hair and the daring playing style.
"Resident artist and consultant at Bell Laboratories (New Jersey).... during the 70s and 80s Schwartz developed a catalogue of visionary techniques for the use of the computer system by artists. Her formal explorations in abstract animation involved the marriage of film, computers and music in collaboration with such luminaries as computer musicians Jean-Claude Risset, Max Mathews, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Milton Babbit, and Richard Moore.
".... Lumen has collaborated with Lillian Schwartz and curator Gregory Kurcewicz to compile a touring package of these important works. “A Beautiful Virus Inside the Machine” features animations restored to video. “The Artist and the Computer”, 1976, 10 mins is a documentary about her work. Produced by Larry Keating for AT&T, “The Artist and the Computer is an excellent introductory informational film that dispels some of the ‘mystery’ of computer-art technology, as it clarifies the necessary human input of integrity, artistic sensibilities, and aesthetics. Ms. Schwartz’s voice over narration explains what she hoped to accomplish in the excerpts from a number of her films and gives insight into the artist’s problems and decisions.”
– John Canemaker
"To create Pixillation, Schwartz wrote lines of code to create a black and white texture, which she overlaid with hand-colored animation. The artist edited the film so the color of the digital and analog shapes contrast and match in varying frames, creating a shifting effect.
The soundtrack, written and performed by Gershon Kingsley on a Moog synthesizer, increases in tempo as the film cuts from digital to analog imagery at a faster pace, building a sense of urgency.
The saturated colors, complex rhythm, and geometric shapes of Pixillation, Schwartz’s film featuring digitally produced images, went on to define the look and feel of 1970s computer art.
“The changing dots, ectoplasmic shapes and electronic music of L. Schwartz’s ‘Mutations’ which has been shot with the aid of computers and lasers (worked with Don White, Bell Laboratories, to create laser images), makes for an eye-catching view of the potentials of the new techniques.” – A. H. Weiler, N. Y. Times. Music by Jean-Claude Risset–commissioned by Office de Radiodiffusion-Television Francaise. Golden Eagle-Cine 1973; Red Ribbon award – Special Effects – National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences; Cannes Film Festival, 1974. Recent screening at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 10, 2012. shown at festiva musica acoustica. Mutations exhibited in a concert of works by Jean-Claude Risset. Oct 2013
"Music by Emmanuel Ghent. “UFOs proves that computer animation–once a rickety and gimmicky device–is now progressing to the state of an art. The complexity of design and movement, the speed and rhythm, the richness of form and motion, coupled with stroboscopic effects is unsettling. Even more ominously, while design and action are programmed by humans, the ‘result’ in any particular sequence is neither entirely predictable … being created at a rate faster and in concatenations more complex than eye and mind can follow or initiate.” – Amos Vogel, Village Voice. Awards: Ann Arbor-1971; International award-Oberhausen, 1972; 2nd Los Angeles International Film Festival; Museum of Modern Art collection; Commissioned by AT&T. Recent screening at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 10, 2012.- Study in motion based on Muybridge’s photographs of man-running. “Figures of computer stylized athletes are seen in brilliant hues chasing each other across the screen. Images are then reversed and run across the screen in the other direction; then images are flopped until athletes are running in countless ways … not unlike a pack of humanity on a football field.” Bob Lehmann, Today’s Film-maker magazine. Lincoln Center Animation Festival of the 5th New York Film Festival. Recent screening at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 10, 2012.
METAMORPHOSIS
Music Symphony in D Major by Salieri. “As expert hands in the complex techniques of integrating the computer and animation, L. Schwartz and Ken Knowlton make fascinating use of exotic, flowing forms, colors and electronic music in ‘Metamorphosis’.” – A. H. Weiler, N. Y. Times. “Schwartz’ METAMORPHOSIS is a complex study of evolving lines, planes, and circles, all moving at different speeds, and resulting in subtle color changes. The only computer-generated work on the program, it transcends what many of us have come to expect of such film with its subtle variations and significant use of color.” – Catherine Egan, Sight Lines, Vol. 8, No. 4, Summer 1975. Sinking Creek-1974; 1975 American Film Festival “Film as Art”. A three screen production.
“Apotheosis, which is developed from images made in the radiation treatment of human cancer, is the most beautiful and the most subtly textured work in computer animation I have seen.” – Roger Greenspun, N. Y. Times. Film created by Lillian F. Schwartz. Computer data supplied by David Sterling. Music by F. Richard Moore. Award Foothills-1973. Recent screening at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 10, 2012.
“Lines and rectangles are the geometric shapes basic to ENIGMA, a computer graphics film full of subliminal and persistent image effects. In a staccato rhythm, the film builds to a climax by instantly replacing one set of shapes with another, each set either changing in composition and color or remaining for a moment to vibrate strobiscopically and then change.” – The Booklist. Awards: Foothills-1972; Kenyon-1973; 16 mm. de Montreal; 5th Annual Monterey Film Festival; 2nd Los Angeles International Film Festival; Nat. Acad. of TV Arts & Sciences; Spec. Effect (72). Recent screening at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 10, 2012.
Olympiad - Study in motion based on Muybridge’s photographs of man-running. “Figures of computer stylized athletes are seen in brilliant hues chasing each other across the screen. Images are then reversed and run across the screen in the other direction; then images are flopped until athletes are running in countless ways … not unlike a pack of humanity on a football field.” Bob Lehmann, Today’s Film-maker magazine. Lincoln Center Animation Festival of the 5th New York Film Festival. Recent screening at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 10, 2012.
"An integral part of Robakowski's work are his statements and
self-commentaries, as well as numerous programming texts and manifestoes, e.g.
Calling Once Again for 'Pure Film' (1971), Video Art - a Chance to Approach
Reality (1976), or Manipulating! (1988).
"Robakowski made his first experimental film in 1962, 6,000,000, a compilation
of fragments of Holocaust-era documentaries. Photographic activity dominated
the early period of his practice, also as part of the collective Zero-61..... According to Robakowski, the group drew
inspiration from the "tradition of metaphorical montage known from
interwar painting, photography, and avant-garde cinema." During that time,
besides various photographic experiments (e.g. Photo-Painting, 1958-1967;
double-exposure photographs employing mirror-image composition), Robakowski
made photo-objects, such as Colander (1960), the photograph of a colander
nailed to a plank.
"One of Zero-61's most important presentations was an
independent exhibition at a deserted smithy in 1969, where instead of
photographs the viewer encountered 'objects for photographing'.
"Between
1965-1967, Robakowski was also active on the collective Grupa Krąg, which
brought together visual artists, filmmakers, poets, sculptors, and
photographers. The artist remembered: These exhibitions were like
quasi-theatrical happenings, with all kinds of actions, 'tricks', transforming
exhibition presentations into spectacles (...) I was closest to a simulated
character that didn't really exist, and its name was Józef Korbiela. Józef
Robakowski
"The smithy exhibition took place at a time when Robakowski was
already studying in Łódź. There, in 1970, the Workshop of Film Form (Warsztat
Formy Filmowej) was founded, initially within the framework of the Student
Science Club of the National Film School in Łódź, active through around 1977.
The Workshop's practice, focuses on an analysis of the new media language
(photography, film, video), drew its inspirations from the constructivist
tradition and conceptualism, striving to get film rid of 'alien elements'
(anecdote, literary forms, narration) and make its language simpler and
information denser. The artist's analytical position at the time was also
manifested in his interest in the peculiarities of human perception towards the
still cameras and film cameras, in questions about these tools as extensions of
the human organism's mental and physiological functions.
"During this time, from
1974, Robakowski also embraced a new medium - video. The move away from the
traditional forms of filmic narration often went hand in hand with a rejection
of the representational function. The non-camera film Test II (1971) is among
the most radical statements against the narrativity and illusiveness of the
traditional filmic message, made by puncturing a dark film tape, as a result of
which the viewer was 'attacked' by a strong beam of projector light, producing
the effect of afterimage. During a festival in Knokke-Heist in Belgium in 1971,
Robakowski enhanced the effect by using a mirror to reflect the projector light
towards the audience (Test I).
"Light also played an important role in many of
the artist's later works, such as 1, 2, 3, 4... (1992), or Attention: Light!
(2004), made in collaboration with Wiesław Michalak, with a score by composer
Paul Sharits, and music by Fryderyk Chopin. In the 1971 manifesto Calling Once
Again for 'Pure Film', the artist wrote, Currently the subject of my work is
eliminating from film elements characteristic for literature. I am aware that
such a conception constrains my freedom of action, raises artificial barriers,
and leads me to the peripheries of the genre. I believe however, or rather, am
convinced, that through various kinds of experiments, trials, propositions, I
will succeed in freeing film from the ballast of habits adopted from
literature, uncritically accepted almost universally by both filmmakers and
viewers. The question the Workshop of Film Form artists were asking was
therefore one about whether there exists a language appropriate for the film
medium.
"The first piece made as part of WFF was Robakowski's Market Square
(1970), an animated film compiled with still images of the Łódź market square, Czerwony
Rynek, made every five seconds on a single day between 7 am and 4 p.m. In the
film, that time was compressed to five minutes.
"An important aspect of
Robakowski's WFF work were experiments with image and sound - an extra
soundtrack, asynchronicity of sound and image, or their mutual relation. The
artist experimented with them in Próba II (1971), juxtaposing intense red
colour with classic organ music.
"In Dynamic Rectangle (1971), Robakowski
manually shaped a rectangle to music by Eugeniusz Rudnik. The issue of the
relation between sound and image returned frequently in the artist's oeuvre,
including the films Videosongs (1992) and Videokisses (1992). Józef
Robakowski’s Own Cinema at CSW - Image Gallery 1 / 13
"Since 1978 Robakowski has
run Exchange Gallery (Galeria Wymiany), a private gallery of recent art
featuring leaflets, films, videos, objects, photographs, books, posters,
documentations, and all kinds of publications, both the artist's own and
donated by other artists. The guiding idea of Exchange Gallery is to 'exchange
artistic ideas, cause ferment, and stimulate creative initiatives'.
"In 1987,
Robakowski photographed himself - or, rather, his chest - with objects from the
collection, creating the Fetishes series. Exchange Gallery was also responsible
for initiating a number of important artistic initiatives - exhibitions,
symposiums, publications, particularly in the 1980s.....
"Since the 1970s, an important
role has been played in Robakowski's art by his concept of art as a field of
energy transmissions. Hence he has focused in many of his works, which are
often biological-mechanical recordings, on issues such as vitality or energy
resulting from the contact with a tool. The film are often an effect of an
encounter between the mechanical camera and the human body, a confrontation
between man and medium
""I want to tell you all that art is energy",
Robakowski says, jumping out of water in his Energy Manifesto (2003), as if
paraphrasing and referring to a conception by Andrzej Pawłowski, who claimed
that "art is an energy field".
"Robakowski wrote in 1977, For many
years I have been studying the relationship between my psychophysical organism
and the devices I make mechanical recordings with (film camera, still camera,
video camera, tape recorder). These studies have resulted in a sense that
technological inventions are of fundamental significance, because they make it
possible to convey my psychophysical states, my temperament and consciousness,
to tape.
"The best example of this may be the film Walking, made during
the Workshop of Film Form period (1973), recording the artist's climb up the
stairs of a parachute tower. In the single-sequence film, growing increasingly
tired, he counts off steps from one to two hundred.
"In 1975, Robakowski started
a series of works called Energetic Angles, which, as he says, reflect my
fascination with the problem of the existence of 'Angles' as a kind of
intuitive geometry. (...) I've been wondering to what extent geometry, whose
goals are intended to be purely practical, can function in art. For the problem
to gain significance, I've decided to establish the Angles as an energetic
culture sign in the form of a personal fetish.
"Energy fields have also been
realised in Robakowski's art in other ways. In the 1980s, he made films based
on recordings of rock concerts, especially his favourite band, the punk group
Moskwa. In 1989, in the film My Videomasochisms, he mocked self-mutilating
tactics of performance artists: during a for-camera performance, he manipulated
various tools next to his face, inflicting a kind of torture on himself.
"In
1996, in a TV studio, he carried out a happening, broadcast live, during which
he was connected to electricity, asking viewers to increase the voltage (I Am
Electric). Most recently, in 2008, the artist introduced, as Energy Manifesto,
the vastness of the Niagara Falls in the space of Galeria Atlas Sztuki in Łódź.
The artist said in an interview given prior to the exhibition's opening,
"This is to be a laboratory-like, artificial situation, but favourable for
the person willing to spend time in it. The viewer's contemplative bliss,
despite the powerful audiovisual energy, is to be guaranteed by a stylistic figure
I call monotony".
"In the early 1980s, Robakowski introduced yet another
term explaining his practice - 'personal cinema', that is, one based on the
observation of one's immediate surroundings as well as 'self-observation'. He
wrote in 1981, "So let's keep filming everything, and it will turn out
we're always filming ourselves. Such a filmed and filming individual lives
fully only on screen and while his physique is similar to yours, his character
and personality are different. It is extremely interesting that you can
polemicise with yourself via the screen. So keep filming and keep looking
closely and critically with a sense that you on screen are more wonderful than
in nature, because you are better able to remember the past. Finally, take into
account the fact that your memory often becomes the viewer's memory."
"At
the time when Robakowski wrote these words, he had already begun shooting
footage for From My Window (1978-1999), a collection of camera observations of
the courtyard of the artist's tenement in a part of Łódź known as Manhattan,
recording the residents and the changes occurring in the space over the years.
The film ends with images of the construction of a hotel that is to ultimately
obscure the view from Robakowski's window. The moving video About Fingers
(1982) is, in turn, a kind of biography, told for each finger separately (with
the characteristic independent narrator from Robakowski's works delivering a
background monologue), and at the same time, a 'self-observation document',
revealing the private and subjective. Patricia Grzonka notes that, given the
piece's historical context and the artist's personal situation at the time - he
had just been fired from his teaching position - About Fingers "can also
be interpreted as a metaphor of the political situation of the era, a manifesto
of the artist's withdrawal at a time of his exclusion from public life".
"Of similarly private nature was My Theatre (1985), enacted for the camera by
the artist's hands and fingers, again accompanied by an off-screen monologue.....
"If you want to see the West as you’ve never seen it before, go to Japan. Since the end of the Second World War, there have been few big Western phenomena in which Japanese creators have not taken an interest, then turned around and made their own. One of the most powerful imaginations among those creators belongs to Keiichi Tanaami, who came of age surrounded by the likes of Mickey Mouse and Elvis after doing much of his growing up amid the chaos and devastation of war. Born in 1936... he’s produced a body of work whose earliest pieces go back to the 1950s, and even the variety of media he’s used — illustration, graphic design, paintings, comics, animation — can barely contain his ever-expanding vision, a mixture of pop culture and and symbolic iconography drawn from America, Japan, and deep down in his own psyche.
“A magazine that is packed to the brim with human interests and desires bears a strong resemblance to who I am as a person,” Tanaami once wrote, a description reflected by his current work as well as that of previous eras.,..
In 1971’s Good-Bye Marilyn, Tanaami pays tribute to perhaps the most iconic woman America has ever produced; that same year’s Good-Bye Elvis and USA draws its inspiration from quite possibly America’s most iconic man. Tanami makes use of the imagery of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley in a way no other artist has, though he was hardly alone in his fascination with the very fascination those figures commanded: Andy Warhol, for instance, also got artistic mileage out of them.
It was Warhol who showed Tanaami how artists of their sensibility could make a career. Tanaami first saw Warhol’s work on a trip to New York City in 1967. “Warhol was in the process of shifting from commercial illustrator to artist, and I both witnessed and experienced firsthand his tactics, his method of incision into the art world,” Tanaami once recalled. “He used contemporary icons as motifs in his works and for his other activities put together media such as films, newspapers and rock bands.” In 1975, after becoming the first art director of the Japanese edition of Playboy, he returned to New York to visit the magazine’s head office and took a side trip to Warhol’s Factory and took in what Warhol and his collaborators had been up to with experimental film. But Tanaami had already been making serious inroads into that field himself, as evidenced by the two aforementioned shorts as well as his 1973 animation of John Lennon’s “Oh, Yoko!” — a kind of early music video — up top.
Few artists of any nationality have hybridized the thoroughly commercial and the deeply personal as Tanaami, who got his start in advertising and not long thereafter was designing the covers for Japanese editions of albums by Jefferson Airplane and The Monkees..... Tanaami’s 2013 animation Adventures in Beauty Wonderland above shows how that integration has continued, taking as it does just as much from traditional Japanese symbols and design motifs as it does from the work of Lewis Carroll — a characteristically thrilling and elaborate aesthetic journey....
"An experimental animation created by Osamu Tezuka to explore the possibilities of expression. An animation that expresses the uncertainty of memories by combining photos and using pictures that emphasize deformation" - unknown.
(Turns out I have posted this before, and forgotten - a wry inadvertent comment on the fragile unreliability of memory in itself)
"An extremely witty and imaginative boy, he grew up in a liberal family exposed to manga and animation.
As a boy he also had a love for insects reminiscent of Fabre, and, reflecting the level of his interest in the insect world, later incorporated the ideogram for "insect" into his pen name.
Having developed an intense understanding of the preciousness of life from his wartime experience, Tezuka Osamu aimed to become a physician and later earned his license, but ultimately chose the profession he loved best: manga artist and animated film writer.
Tezuka Osamu's manga and animated films had a tremendous impact on the shaping of the psychology of Japan's postwar youth. His work changed the concept of the Japanese cartoon, transforming it into an irresistible art form and incorporating a variety of new styles in creating the "story cartoon." Changing the face of literature and movies, his work also influenced a range of other genres.
His impact on animated film was equal to that which he had on the manga world. The lovable characters appearing in works such as Japan's first animated TV series "ASTRO BOY," the color animated TV series "Jungle Emperor Leo", and the two-hour animated special "Bander Book," captured the hearts of the Japanese through the medium of television, propelling the animated film to tremendous popularity in Japanese general society.
Tezuka Osamu's work was exported to the U.S., Europe, and other Asian countries, becoming the stuff of dreams for children around the world. He also ventured into the world of full-length adult animation, exploring all possibilities of the field of animation.
In addition to his record of achievement in TV and commercial animation, he also received international acclaim for his work in experimental animation in his later years.
His enduring theme that of the preciousness of life, formed the crux of all of Tezuka Osamu's works. Tezuka Osamu, creator of a great cultural asset and gifted with an unbeatable pioneering spirit combined with an enduring passion for his work and a consistent view to the future, lived out his entire life tirelessly pursuing his efforts, passing away at the age of 60 on February 9th, 1989."
"... while still remembered as a Bauhaus designer, painter and teacher, Oskar Schlemmer’s contribution to dance gets little more than a passing reference. With one exception. His designs for his Triadic Ballet, which premiered at the Wurtemburgische Landestheater in Stuttgart on September 30, 1922 remain among the most striking and unusual ever conceived....
"The costumes or figurines as Schlemmer called them, of which nine of the eighteen originals survive, seven in the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, are extraordinary. Even a hundred years later, they look strangely futuristic, like something from a science-fiction cartoon. Schlemmer only hinted at possible interpretations of them in his manuscripts. “Precision machinery, scientific apparatus of glass and metal, artificial limbs developed by surgery, the fantastic costumes of deep-sea divers and a modern soldier,” he wrote.
"Heavy and made from unusual materials such as foil, sheet steel, plywood, wire and rubber, they transform the human body into moving sculptures where movement is severely restricted.
"Gold Sphere is an armless ovoid torso. Sphere Hands is a figure whose handless arms end in swollen coloured balls. The twin Disk Dancers, whose heads and bodies are set with thin blade-like disks, move toward each other from opposite directions, appearing to slowly slice through one another as they merge together. Wire appropriately appears as a figure snarled within the coils of barbed wire. Made of wood, The Diver is armless, grotesquely deformed and comes with a strange oversized helmet. It’s original, housed in the Bauhaus Dessau, is apparently so heavy that it takes two people to carry it.
"Perhaps oddest is The Abstract, which it has been claimed was something of an alter ego for Schlemmer, who danced the role himself on several occasions. Split into unequal areas of light and dark, largely white with patches of red, black and blue, it comes with a large half-head, one-eyed mask and wields a dagger and a club. On top of that, it has a permanently outstretched white leg that cannot be bent, which reduces the dancer to limping or hopping around impotently.
"The female costumes do all bear some resemblance to a traditional ballet tutu, however. Perhaps that’s not so much a surprise when one considers that Schlemmer saw himself not so much as a radical but someone updating historic tradition for the new age with new materials and ideas.
"While detailed designs for the remaining costumes remain, the choreography is long lost. Schlemmer’s left many diaries, notes and sketches but they do not detail the steps and there is no known surviving film. Those notes do at least detail many of the floor patterns though and have been used for modern re-imaginings that challenge perceptions of dance just as much as the 1922 ballet must have done.
"Schlemmer was mooting the idea of a gesamtkunstwerk, a bringing together of visual art, dance and costume design, as early as 1912 after meeting husband-and-wife dancers Albert Burger and Elsa Hötzel....
"Having staged initial sketches for what would become The Triadic Ballet at a charity event for his regiment in Stuttgart in 1916, Schlemmer continued to design a formalised, plotless, three-act ballet, which he referred to as a ‘Dance of Trinity’. It had three dancers, one female, two male, in 12 dances and 18 costumes. There were also the three dimensions of space – height, depth and width; and three basic shapes: sphere, cube and pyramid. Finally, there were three basic colours, one for each act: yellow for the first, which was festive burlesque; then pink, solemn; then black, mystical and fantastic.
"The choreography itself was developed by Burger, Hötzel and Schlemmer in collaboration. Floor geometry and geometric shapes determined the paths of the dancers. The music was a collage by eight composers across three centuries. The programme for the opening night noted how the ballet flirted with comedy without being grotesque and brushed against conventions without becoming base. It also suggested that it might demonstrate the beginnings from which a particularly German ballet could be developed. The costumes certainly determined the movements of the dancers, who had to subordinate themselves to their rigid shapes, although, from his notes, it seems that restricting movement per se was not Schlemmer’s prime aim.
"In the premiere, Schlemmer danced under the pseudonym Walter Schoppe but, in a letter to Swiss artist Otto Meyer-Amden, he wrote, “As a dancer…I failed. I may be a dance director, but not a dancer.” The reviews were mixed, although the Frankfurter Zeitung commented, “The foundation has been laid for a completely modern ballet that is real art.”.....
"Schelmmer’s work was removed from the Staatsgalerie in 1933 as part of the now Nazi German government’s purge of art and by 1937, prominent Bauhaus artists such as him were completely ostracised.
"Schlemmer died in 1943 and the Burgers’ costumes were destroyed by fire in 1944.
"The ballet itself fell into oblivion until it was reinterpreted in 1968 as a 30-minute piece for German television by Margarete Hasting, Franz Schömbs and Georg Verden.
".... Schlemmer’s influence has reached outside dance too. lives on. Among others, David Bowie has twice worn costumes that closely resemble those from the ballet."
Bathetic ending to the piece: "in 2019, the American alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins adapted them and turned them into three giant inflatable fantasy figures that towered over the performances."
Surely this video is influenced by the Triadisches Ballett?
Ah, yes:
"The release of "True Faith" was accompanied by a surreal music video directed and choreographed by Philippe Decouflé and produced by Michael H. Shamberg. The opening sequence, showing two men slapping each other, is a reference to Marina Abramović and Ulay's video performance Light/Dark, shot in 1977.Costumed dancers then leap about, fight and slap each other in time to the music, while a person in dark green makeup emerges from an upside-down boxer's speed bag and hand signs the lyrics (in LSF). Other parts of the video were inspired by Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer's Triadisches Ballett."
I thought maybe also Fine Young Cannibals's "She Drives Me Crazy" promo but I had a look at it and not really.
Another pop-detournement, although not by the pop group itself: a fan-made video for Japan's "Suburban Berlin"
An animation created by Jules Evens, one of my students at California Institute of the Arts (with sounds contributed by another student, Zhu Dongchen).
Evens explains: "It's all hand drawn/painted, each frame on a single piece of printer paper. I used different mediums for different frames: colored pencil, marker, pen, pastel, acrylic paint, and water color. After I scanned the frames in, I mutilated each frame in photoshop.
"The music is small samples (1 sample per frame) of: my voice, my friend’s voice, and electronic sounds from a no-input mixer."
"Walter Booth made a number of films that began to explore the potential of stop-motion to bring cut-outs, string, and here clay to life. Many of these scenes are also filmed backwards adding to the uncanny effect, with the devilish, gargoyle faces towards the end of the film being particularly delightful." - BFI
"W.R. Booth was born 12 July 1869, son of a china painter. Apprenticed as a painter to the Royal Worcester Porcelain factory (1882), he worked there until about 1890. In 1895 he gave a comedy lecture in Worcester entitled Skit and Sketch, illustrated with sketches on a blackboard. In May and June 1897 Booth appeared in Exeter with Slade’s Animated Photographs (prop. W.D. Slade of Cheltenham). A keen amateur magician he joined the company of J.N. Maskeleyne and David Devant at the Egyptian Hall in London, and from late 1897-1900 toured with Devant’s Animated Photographs performing conjuring (sometimes as the Turkish Magician), ventriloquism and sketching. The films included productions by Robert Paul. Booth began devising and stage-managing (the then term for directing) short trick films for Paul, beginning with The Miser's Doom and Upside Down; or, the Human Flies (1899) in which, by turning the camera upside down, he made his actors perform on the ceiling.
"Many of his early films were based on conjuring tricks (Hindoo Jugglers, Chinese Magic, both 1900), and with The Devil in the Studio (1901) he began to introduce effects involving cartoon type artwork. Later that year his Artistic Creation featured rudimentary animation, while his Political Favourites (1903) featured Booth rapidly drawing caricatures of Lord Rosebery, Joseph Chamberlain and other current politicians. By 1906 Booth had joined the Charles Urban organisation and made The Hand of the Artist, no doubt prompted by J. Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces of a few weeks earlier. Booth constructed his own outdoor studio in the back garden of Neville Lodge, Woodlands, Isleworth, London W., and here, with F. Harold Bastick as his cameraman, he produced and directed a large number of films for Urban. At least fifteen films a year were made up to 1915, after which he entered the publicity film market, making advertising shorts for Cadbury's cocoa and chocolate, including A Cure for Cross Words. He also invented an advertising method called 'Flashing Film Ads': 'Unique colour effects in light and movement'.
".... Freud would have had a field day with the animated shorts of the grandfather / bad boy of Japanese alternative animation Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, b. 1928). His black, and often bawdy, sense of humour pervades the mood of most of his films. In his 1963 film Love (愛, 1963), a big woman with prominent breasts breathily gasps the word “Ai” (Love) repeatedly as she chases a man who is much smaller than her. The woman is depicted as being so desperate for love that she even embraces trees in frustration. In contrast, the man seems repulsed by her attention and races to keep himself out of her clutches.
"In one moment, the woman clutches the man as if he were an infant or a ragdoll and he transforms into a giant drop of water in order to slip from her grasp and escape. The man also chants the word “Ai” but in a less passionate, more matter-of-fact manner. The couple play a kind of hide-and-go-seek amongst a row of trees. The woman chases the man with a net as if he were a butterfly. Once captured, she consumes him whole, only to have him come out the other end and escape again.
"She chases him through a gallery lined with portraits of the man and through an empty café with identical tables. Their chants of “Ai” are sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted at top volume, increasing in tempo and desperation. The woman’s arms stretch out to an impossible length in order to grab the man again. In another scene, he stands on all fours like a doll on a leash and eats his food on the floor.
"The chase grows increasingly desperate with the woman beating the man into submission with a baseball bat, reducing him to a stuttering idiot in their shared bed, and putting a leash on him and taking him on a walk. The ends with the soundtrack fading out as the man leads the woman into the horizon like a dog on a leash.
:This animated short is based on a poem by Shuntarō Tanikawa (谷川 俊太郎, b. 1931) with music composed by Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹, 1930-96). Takemitsu is perhaps best remembered today for his composition of soundtracks for the films of great directors like Akira Kurosawa (Ran, Dosdesukaden), Hiroshi Teshigahara (Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes), and Masaki Kobayashi (Harakiri, Kaidan, Samurai Rebellion) and for his significant contributions to aesthetics and music theory. I am a fan of Takemitsu’s early experimental period, and his anti-academic Jikken Kōbō (experimental workshop) had a profound impact on the animator Yōji Kuri, who has used experimental composers like Takemitsu extensively in his films.
"The soundtrack of Love does not fall into the category of “music” in the classical sense, but in the postmodern sense of creating music using unconventional techniques and instruments. The recorded voices (H. Mizushima and Kyōko Kishida) have been distorted using a synthesizer. Sometimes the voices draw out, like a record playing at the wrong speed, or at other times they playback at pitches impossible for the human voice to attain. The tempo and volume is varied in order to create tension."
"Yōji Kuri is an animation artist most known for his work during the 1960's and is known to be of large importance to the history of animation. Known to be dark humored, independent and minimal artist, his work seems to capture a disturbing perspective of love and sex. Some such films as Human Zoo (1960) and Ai-Love (1963) depict this type of imagery and end fairly quickly. The time range for Kuri's work seems to be shorter then ten minutes, perhaps implying the shorts are more of a thought then a statement. He later produced an animation film The Bathroom (1970), it too was along the same subject matter as previous work. One part of the film at the end depicts butt and leg sculptures; the style and location (bathroom) reminded me of the TV show Shin Chan. Shin, a 5 year old boy whom is obsessed with human privates, frequently flaunts his rear and enjoys time in the bathroom. Yōji Kuri continues to draw today as well as teach animation at the Laputa Art Animation School." - animation blog at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
"Kuri’s films have bite and he helped lift Japanese animation out of decades of cozy narrative cartoons into a new era of graphic and conceptual experimentation. His films mock and shock, attacking technology, population expansion, monotony of modern society while playfully toiling with the tricky goings-on between guys and gals. Witnessing the surrender of Japan during WW2, the devastation of his country followed by the quick rise of Western inspired materialist culture and rampant consumption, Kuri, like many of his colleagues of the time, questioned the state and direction of his society and world. One of his more experimental, stream of consciousness works is AOS (1964). Working with a vocal composition by Yoko Ono, Kuri takes the avant-garde artist’s assorted screams, moans, licks, and grunts and twisted them into a haunting and surreal series of black and white scenarios often involving discombobulated body parts of frustrated and repressed men and women who exist in cramped, isolated trappings – desperate but unable to connect or touch the other" - Chris Robinson, Animation World
