Len Lye

(2009)

co-edited by the curator Tyler Cann and the writer, critic and poet Prof. Wystan Curnow is a tribute to one of New Zealand’s most internationally acclaimed artists is the most comprehensive visual presentation of Len Lye’s art to date.

Len Lye, *****

Over 1,000 new photographs were created and hundreds of them selected for this image-rich publication, presenting the full range of Len Lye’s work, from drawings and paintings right through to his photograms and kinetic experimentations.

Also published for the first time are photographs of recently reconstructed works including Moon Bead, Zebra and Convolution plus other sculptural works soon to be restored or reconstructed. Additionally there are reproductions of rarely-seen paintings, sketches and artist’s notes.

Len Lye is aimed at readers of all ages and backgrounds - the refreshing new imagery alongside commissioned content make it a totally engaging book to visit and revisit.

The book is co-edited by the Gallery’s Len Lye curator Tyler Cann and the writer, critic and poet Prof. Wystan Curnow. Included are essays by the editors, as well as Roger Horrocks, Guy Brett, Evan Webb and Tessa Laird.

Source: Govett-Brewster

ISBN-10: 0908848250

ISBN-13: 978-0908848256

Len Lye, *****Len Lye, *****

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Len Lye: A biography (2001) by Roger Horrock tells for the first time the story of an extraordinary New Zealander, a brilliant artist with an international career who never lost the informality, the energy, the independence of spirit of his South Pacific origins. Len Lye began as an unsettled working-class kid with limited prospects and became a leading modernist artist in London and New York. Roger Horrocks's exhaustive study of Lye has taken many years and is based on interviews with many of those close to the artist as well as on voluminous documentary sources. (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery)

Art That Moves: The Work of Len Lye (2009) by Roger Horrocks, author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed 2001 Len Lye: A biography, shifts the focus from Len Lye's life to his art practice and innovative aesthetic theories about "the art of motion," which continue to be relevant today. Going beyond a general introduction to Len Lye and his artistic importance, this in-depth book offers a detailed study of his aesthetics of motion, analyzing how these theories were embodied in his sculptures and films. (Amazon)

Optical Poetry (2004) by Dr. William Moritz is the long-awaited, definitive biography of Oskar Fischinger. The result of over 30 years of research on this visionary abstract filmmaker and painter. In addition to Moritz's comprehensive biography, it includes numerous photographs in colour and black and white (many never before published), statements by Oskar Fischinger about his films, a newly created extensive filmography, and a selected bibliography. (John Libbey Publishing)

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Len Lye (1901-1980) was an experimental film-maker, poet, painter, kinetic sculptor, eccentric and ebullient personality. Len Lye was one of the few filmmakers working in inter-war Britain to have established an international reputation in experimental filmmaking. Though his British oeuvre was by no means limited to the making of abstract films, this was the area that most interested Len Lye and he has sometimes been viewed as the only genuine avant-garde filmmaker of this period. (screenonline)

Free Radicals (1958) - In arguably his greatest film, Len Lye reduced the medium to its most basic elements – light in darkness – by scratching designs on black film. His scratches were as energetic as lightning in the night sky. He used a variety of scribers 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"). (centre for art tapes)

Rhythm (1957) was intended as a publicity film for Chrysler, Len Lye used rapid editing to speed up the assembly of a car, and synchronized it to African drum music. Chrysler was horrified by the music and suspicious of the way a worker was shown winking at the camera. (centre for art tapes)

Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1939) - The four-minute, hand-painted Dufaycolor film with a colour accompaniment by Len Lye, matches visual motifs to musical instruments: diagonals introduce piano phrases, circles express drum beats, wavy horizontals represent guitars licks, vertical lines map base parts, etc. Primary red, blue and deep green colour fields are rendered frameless by upwardly cascading kite shapes, luminous tapered stripes, and batik-like patterns. (Senses of Cinema)

Peripetics (2008) or The installation of an irreversible axis on a dynamic timeline. Zeitguised made a piece in six acts for the opening exhibition at the Zirkel Gallery. It entails six imaginations of disoriented systems that take a catastrophic turn, including the evolution of educational plant-body-machine models and liquid building materials. Sound design by Zeitguised with Michael Fakesch. (Zeitguised)

Computer Music Journal: Visual Music (2005) - The articles in this issue are all devoted to the topic of Visual Music: audiovisual creations in which the artist strives to endow the video component with formal and abstract qualities that mimic those of musical composition. (Computer Music Journal)

Carsten Goertz (*1981) works in interaction design, graphic design and media scenography projects. International practice as designer, lecturer and media artist in high profile design studios and institutions. Experimental and interdisciplinary orientation with strong conceptual skills and technological affinity. (Carsten Goertz)

Do While (1995) by Sebastian Oschatz is the 24-minute opener of 94 Diskont, arguably one of the most radical electronic albums of the 1990s. Oval equally drew praise and controversy for their assault on techno's restrictions by literally deconstructing music and digital audio by using X-acto knives, paint, and tape to damage the surfaces of CDs, only to stitch it back together in loops of melody punctuated by the CD's physical skips. (Stylus)

VJam Theory: Collective Writings on Realtime Visual Performance (2008) presents the major concerns of practitioners and theorists of realtime media under the categories of performance, performer and interactors, audiences and participators. The volume is experimental in its attempt to produce a collective theoretical text with a focus on a new criticality based on practitioner/ artist theory in which artist/ practitioners utilise theoretical models to debate their practices. (VJ Theory)

Visual Music Archive

Len Lye

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