Op Hop/Hop Op by Pierre Hébert
"Ročno izdelan eksperiment z utripajočo animacijo v slogu praskanke na filmski trak. Prikazuje skupino tiriindvajsetih abstrahiranih podob, ki se na zaslonu razporejajo in prerazporejajo v različnih kombinacijah. Rezultat je spreminjajoč se vzorec zvoka in slike, ki ima za oko in uho drugačen ritem.
A hand-made, scratched-on film experiment in intermittent animation. The images are a group of twenty-four visuals, all non-representational, which arrange and rearrange on the screen in many combinations. The result is a changing pattern of sound and image that has its own rhythm for eye and ear. "
(Animateka International Animation Film Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Pierre Hébert (NFB), Kanada/Canada, 1966, 35 mm, 3'30''
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Anemic Cinema (1926) by Marcel Duchamp
"This characteristically dada film by Marcel Duchamp consists of a series of visual and verbal puns with nonsense phrases inscribed around rotating spiral patterns, creating an almost hypnotic effect. Silent.
Anemic Cinema (various versions were made in 1920, 1923 and, finally, in 1926). Essentially a film by Duchamp with help from Man Ray. Calvin Tomkins: 'Duchamp used the initial payment on his inheritance to make a film and to go into the art business. The film, shot in Man Ray's studio with the help of cinematographer Marc Allégret, was a seven-minute animation of nine punning phrases by Rrose Sélavy. These had been pasted, letter by letter, in a spiral pattern on round black discs that were then glued to phonograph records; the slowly revolving texts alternate with shots of Duchamp's Discs Bearing Spirals, ten abstract designs whose turning makes them appear to move backward and forward in an erotic rhythm. The little film, which Duchamp called Anemic Cinema, had its premiere that August at a private screening room in Paris.'"
(UbuWeb)
Marcel Duchamp (1926). "Anémic Cinéma", 7 minutes, B&W.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Dara Ó Briain's Science Club: The Story of Music
"Special guest James May explores how music is inextricably linked to our emotions, materials scientist Mark Miodownik takes apart an electric guitar and neuroscientist Tali Sharot reports on the ground breaking research which treats Parkinson's Disease with rhythm. Plus, science journalist Alok Jha asks whether computers are ruining music."
(BBC Two, UK)
Fig.1 this animation is from Episode 6 of 6 of Dara Ó Briain's Science Club, Tuesday 30 Dec 2012 at 9pm on BBC Two, voiced by Dara Ó Briain, animated by 12Foot6, Published on YouTube on 19 Dec 2012 by BBC.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Influential American experimental cinema: Meshes of the Afternoon
"Meshes of the Afternoon is one of the most influential works in American experimental cinema. A non-narrative work, it has been identified as a key example of the 'trance film,' in which a protagonist appears in a dreamlike state, and where the camera conveys his or her subjective focus. The central figure in Meshes of the Afternoon, played by Deren, is attuned to her unconscious mind and caught in a web of dream events that spill over into reality. Symbolic objects, such as a key and a knife, recur throughout the film; events are open-ended and interrupted. Deren explained that she wanted 'to put on film the feeling which a human being experiences about an incident, rather than to record the incident accurately.'
Made by Deren with her husband, cinematographer Alexander Hammid, Meshes of the Afternoon established the independent avant-garde movement in film in the United States, which is known as the New American Cinema. It directly inspired early works by Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and other major experimental filmmakers. Beautifully shot by Hammid, a leading documentary filmmaker and cameraman in Europe (where he used the surname Hackenschmied) before he moved to New York, the film makes new and startling use of such standard cinematic devices as montage editing and matte shots. Through her extensive writings, lectures, and films, Deren became the preeminent voice of avant-garde cinema in the 1940s and the early 1950s."
(MoMA, 2004)
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999.
Maya Deren (1943). "Meshes of the Afternoon", 16mm film, black and white, silent, 14 min. Acquired from the Artist.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Trinidad Cuba, Folkloric Ballet
"Music fills every corner of this culturally rich town. In an empty courtyard on weekday mornings the Trinidad Folkloric Ballet moves to Afro-Cuban rhythms, preparing their repertoire for audiences at home and abroad. 'Some of our dance traditions are similar to those in other parts of Cuba, but others are specific to here,' says Gisela Zerquera Calderón, the group's director. 'We think it's important to keep them alive and show them to the world'"
Fig.1 "Trinidad, Cuba, Folkloric Ballet", from "Cuba's Colonial Treasure," October 1999, National Geographic magazine
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
