Free Fall 

(1964) 

is an experimental film from Arthur Lipsett. Free Fall is an assortment of film trimmings assembled to make a wry comment on humankind in today’s world. It evokes a surrealist dream of our fall from grace into banality.

Arthur Lipsett, a Canadian filmmaker most active during the 60s, is almost unknown in the U.S., but his films rank among the most powerful experimental work I've ever seen, documents of industrial dehumanization colored by a deepening sense of personal despair. In Free Fall rapidly edited footage of sun through trees is more fragmented than lyrical, nature filtered through some infernal machine. Faces on city streets, stripped of context and frighteningly disconnected from each other, become haunting fragments, and by matching and mismatching sound and image Arthur Lipsett creates hallucinatory voices, disembodied sentences offering weird commentary on what we're seeing. Most extraordinary is the way his editing mirrors the logic of depression, each new fact reinforcing one's despair.

 

Source: Fred Camper

 

 

In the proposal for his next film, Free Fall (1964) Arthur Lipsett describes the film as an "attempt to express in filmic terms an intensive flow of life – a vision of a world in the throes of creativity – the transformation of physical phenomena into psychological ones – a visual bubbling of picture and sound operating to create a new continuity of experience – a reality in seeing and hearing which would continually overwhelm the conscious state – penetration of outward appearances – suddenly the continuity is broken – it is as if all clocks ceased to tick – summoned by a big close-up or fragment of a diffuse nature – strange shapes shine forth from the abyss of timelessness." (...)

 

In his use of superimpositions, percussive tribal music, syncopated rhythms and a brisk 'single-framing” technique at the end of 21-87, Arthur Lipsett may have been attempting to create synesthesia through the intensification of image and sound. Citing Siegfried Kracauer, Lipsett writes that, “Throughout this psychophysical reality, inner and outer events intermingle and fuse with each other – ‘I cannot tell whether I am seeing or hearing – I feel taste, and smell sound – it’s all one – I myself am the tone.’” Incidentally, Free Fall was originally intended to be a collaboration with the American composer John Cage, modelled on his system of chance operations. However, Cage later withdrew his participation fearing Arthur Lipsett would attempt to control and thereby undermine the aleatory organisation of image and sound.

 

Source: Senses of Cinema

 

 

Free Fall, found footage, animals, 2nd generation, editing, people, Film

Reading

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.

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. (Govett-Brewster)

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)

 

SEE ALSO

Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (1994) by French critic and composer Michel Chion reassesses audiovisual media since the revolutionary 1927 debut of recorded sound in cinema, shedding crucial light on the mutual relationship between sound and image in audiovisual perception. (Colombia University Press)

Antonin De Bemels (*1975) discovered video art and experimental cinema at Ecole de Recherche Graphique, from 1993 to 1997. His main areas of interest are movement and the human body, and the dynamic relationship between sounds and images. Since 1997, he has made more than 15 short videos that were screened all around the world. He also creates video backgrounds and soundtracks for contemporary dance pieces, and occasionally performs as a VJ. (Videomedeja)

Paul Sharits (2008) edited by Yann Beauvais. Known primarily for his experimental cinema and pictorial works, Paul Sharits developed an oeuvre that evolved around two central themes: one, closely related to music and the world of abstraction, the other, within the psychological and emotional arena of the figurative. This complete monograph, drawn from a recent exhibition, explores the connections between these two practices, and in addition provides a general introduction to a remarkable body of work. Illustrated throughout, the monograph also includes several essays, texts by Paul Sharits and interviews. (les presses du réel)

formula (2000), a constantly evolving work updated with each presentation, is a perfect synchronization between Ryoji Ikeda's sound frequencies and the movements on the screen. It places the viewer in a binary geometry of space, and exploits the darkness to amplify the perceptions, with outstanding success. (Ryoji Ikeda)

Logic of mind (2006) by Robert Heel. The scenario of this piece is a static shot of a wooden floor. Main elements for the composition are a synthesizer, a drum machine and different parts of the screen for percussive sounds of knocking. (Robert Heel)