WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2010 at 8:00 PM
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(Various directors, 1961-70, USA, 16mm, 73 min)

Synaesthesia: A physiological or psychological phenomenon whereby one sensory stimulus triggers a second kind of sensation. For example, a color may be experienced as a particular sound tone.

Aesthetic: A particular theory or conception of beauty or art.

Still from OffOn (1968) by Scott Bartlett and Tom DeWitt.

The 1960s brought an explosion in experimental cinema, at once influenced by its forebears and liberated from them by the revolutionary lysergic ethos of the time. Its influence continues to reverberate today.

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.

Films include a newly-restored print of Jud Yalkut’s Turn, Turn, Turn (1966), Scott Bartlett and Tom DeWitt’s landmark “electronic film” OffOn (1968), Robert Breer’s Blazes (1961), Storm DeHirsch’s Peyote Queen (1965), and Barry Spinello’s Six Loop-Paintings (1970).

We culminate with the purest and most intense of ’60s visual music experiments: The Flicker (1965) by avant garde composer Tony Conrad, who conceived the film in explicitly musical terms and used alternating pure black and white light to create hypnotic impressions of paradoxically vivid colors.

All films are being presented in their original 16mm format.

Special late addition!
When the Organ Played ‘Oh Promise Me’ (ca. early 1940s)
Cecil Stokes
DigiBeta (originally 16mm), color, 3 min.

Unseen for 50 years!  An extremely rare example of Auroratone films, originally created as a therapeutic aid in the treatment of PTSD and anxiety disorders.  Bing Crosby sings a melancholy song accompanied by organ, while beautifully abstract, color time-lapse images of crystalline growth slowly evolve.  It’s date makes it an odd fit, but we believe this to be the only surviving Auroratone film, and it just had to be shown.  Due to its rarity, we will be showing a new, high-resolution video transfer made especially for this program.  Our thanks to Robert W. Martens for making this film available to us.

Blazes (1961)
Robert Breer
16mm, color, 3 min.

100 basic images switching positions for 4 thousand frames. A continuous explosion.

“A form of visual orgasm.” — Guy L. Coté, Film Culture

“We look at Breer’s work and we begin to smile…like when you see anything beautiful and perfect.” — Jonas Mekas, Village Voice

Peyote Queen (1965)
Storm De Hirsch
16mm, color, 9 min.

A further exploration into the color of ritual, the color of thought; a journey through the underworld of sensory derangement. Part of a trilogy that also included the films Divinations (1964) and Shaman, A Tapestry for Sorcerers (1966).

“I wanted badly to make an animated short, but I had no camera available. I did have some old, unused film stock and several rolls of 16mm sound tape. So I used that — plus a variety of discarded surgical instruments and the sharp edge of a screwdriver — by cutting, etching, and painting directly on both film and [sound] tape.” — Storm DeHirsch

“A very beautiful work! The abstractions drawn directly on film are like the paintings of Miro moving at full speed to the rhythm of an African beat.” — D. Noguez, La Nouvelle Revue Francaise.

“Among my favorites…beauty and excitement.” — Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice.

Turn, Turn, Turn (1966) – newly restored print
Jud Yalkut
16mm, color, 10 min.

Sound by USCO. A kinetic alchemy of the light and electronic works of Nicolas Schoffer, Julio Le Parc, USCO, and Nam June Paik. An exploration of the effect-versus-content thesis of Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message/massage.”

“Turn, Turn, Turn, a film of the eye-shattering, flashing, rotating light sculptures programmed by USCO to turn turn turn the popular song into a rich electronic fugue on the word NOW: Let’s take the OW out of NOW; let’s turn the NO out of NOW.” — Film Quarterly.

“Absolutely stoned by the film. One of the most beautiful experiences of my film-watching consciousness.” — John Schofill

“A torrent of hurtling colors and lights, forms blinking, whirling and surging. Image follows image in rapid-fire succession, distorting awareness of time and space as the sensory bombardment continues.” — R. E. L. Masters and Jean Houston, Psychedelic Art.

Notable past exhibitions include: Ann Arbor Film Festival; Award of Merit, 1966 Bellevue Film Festival, Washington; The Museum of Modern Art in Paris; the Finch College Museum “Projected Art” exhibition in New York; the San Francisco Cinematheque in 1967; and the premiere show of the Wednesday Magazine series on Channel 13, WNET-TV, New York.

OffOn (1968)
Scott Bartlett, with Tom DeWitt
16mm, color, 10 min.

An acknowledged classic in experimental film, OffOn is a dynamic abstract display of virtuoso film and video techniques used directly and poetically to evoke a visceral awareness of fundamental realities below the surface of normal perception.

“The language of OffOn is evocation. We gaze at these iconic forms hypnotically, much the same as we are drawn to fire or water, because they make us aware of fundamental realities below the surface of normal perception.” — Gene Youngblood

“OffOn is so striking a work, so obviously a landmark, that it has been acquired by virtually every major film art collection in America, from the Museum of Modern Art to the Smithsonian Institute.” — Sheldon Renan, Curator, Pacific Film Archive

“…a perfect, magical fusion of non-verbal communication and advanced technological filmmaking… Indeterminacy, the union of opposites, the cosmic, the expansion of consciousness, the going beyond rationalism; all these are intimated purely visually, almost subliminally, to those willing to see.” — Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art.

Six Loop-Paintings (1970)
Barry Spinello
16mm, color, 11 min.

“In Six Loop-Paintings, as in [the earlier film] Soundtrack (1969), sound and image are hand applied directly on to 16mm clear leader. The image at a given instant is repeated both on the image track and soundtrack, so that the viewer is visualizing the image he is hearing. However, unlike Soundtrack, the images and sounds in Six Loop-Paintings are not painted; they are made by cutting to size and pasting acetate self-adhesive patterns (Micotape and Zipatone) directly onto the clear film. Each pattern yields a distinct sound. Patterns of lines yield square wave sounds; patterns of dots yield sine wave sounds; patterns of diamonds yield sawtooth wave sounds, etc. The finer the pattern, the higher pitched the tone. The further spaced the pattern, the deeper the tone …. I especially recommend Six Loop-Paintings to those interested in the texture of sound and image, and in the ways sound and image can relate to each other” — Barry Spinello

Past exhibitions include: KING-TV, Seattle; on tour with the American Institute of the Arts’ New American Filmmakers Series.

Barry Spinello came to animation from painting, and completed a number of films in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Soundtrack; Sonata for Pen, Brush and Ruler; and tonight’s Six Loop-Paintings) that explored various techniques of painting and drawing images and soundtracks directly onto 16mm film.  His films have been shown at the Whitney Museum and at various international film festivals, and he taught animation at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Flicker (1966)
Tony Conrad
16mm, black and white, 30 min

Advisory: This film is potentially hazardous for photogenic epileptics or photogenic migraine sufferers.

“This is a notorious film; it moves audiences into some space and time in which they may look around and find the movie happening in the room there with them. Much has been written about The Flicker. It is a library of peculiar visual materials, referenced to the frame-pulse at 24 frames per second. ” — The Film-makers’ Cooperative